Because every
story begins
with words

video mister ed

Exclusive ghostwriting videos!

Mister Ed: We discovered an error in the theme song!

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.

Bob Dylan

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.

John Campbell

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

John Irving

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.

Gloria Steinem

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.

Truman Capote

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

Raymond Chandler

Don’t annoy an author, you’ll end up in their book and you won’t look good.

Lawrence Wray

A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.

Joseph Conrad

If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.

Stan Lee

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

Read a thousand books and your words will flow like a river.

Lisa See

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

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.

Orson Scott Card

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

Editor: A person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain

It always comes down to characters, and individual stories about courage.

Steven Bochco

Critics are people who sit on the mountaintop and look down on the battlefield. When the fighting is finished, they take it upon themselves to come down from the mountain and shoot the survivors.

Robert Altman

What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.

Jeanette Walls

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.

Chet Cunningham