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.
My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.
A true author, no matter the medium, is an artist with godlike knowledge of his subject, and the proof of his authorship is that his pages smack of authority.
Ever heard of a carpenter not going to work because he has “carpenter’s block”? If a writer can’t write, it’s because he doesn’t really want to, he isn’t ready to get it on paper or he’s just plain lazy.
A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.
No writer has ever yet been known to hang himself as long as he had another chapter left.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.
Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.
I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.
Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round.
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.
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.”
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
It is only natural to pattern yourself after someone. But you can’t just copy someone. If you like someone’s work, the important thing is to be exposed to everything that person has been exposed to.
My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.
Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.