Post number one. Hi there!

Blog

Post number one. Hi there!

November 19, 2015July 21, 2023 353

Welcome to the Ghostwriters Central blog. This blog will be authored by me, for the time being. We do hope you will find it to be useful, informative or entertaining. Or all three. –Michael McKown.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G.K. Chesterton

I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has just put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or banana split.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.

Tom Clancy

It’s an accepted fact that all writers are crazy; even the normal ones are weird.

William Goldman

Anecdotes don’t make good stories. Generally, I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.

Alice Munro

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

Clarence Budington Kelland

Do not place a photograph of your favorite author on your desk, especially if the author is one of the famous ones who committed suicide.

Roddy Doyle

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

If you start with a bang, you won’t end with a whimper.

T.S. Eliot

If you wait for inspiration to write, you’re not a writer. You’re a waiter.

Dan Poynter

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

I have a structured songwriting process. I start with the music and try to come up with musical ideas, then the melody, then the hook, and the lyrics come last.

John Legend

I don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

Roald Dahl

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Raymond Chandler

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: “House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1,500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”

Neil Gaiman

No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.

Thomas Wolfe

Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round.

Sherman Reilly Duffy

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.