Post number one. Hi there!

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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.

Ding! Going down? An astonishing description of the World Trade Center collapse.

June 2, 2026June 3, 2026

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Mr. & Mrs. Vintage Typewriters, Bremerton, WA.

May 31, 2026June 3, 2026

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A.I. writing and publishing: Busted!

May 20, 2026June 13, 2026

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Why independent thinking matters to writers.

March 13, 2026June 3, 2026

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How desktop publishing put a Linotronic Imagesetter in my office.

March 12, 2026June 3, 2026

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The late-night drunk caller.

March 11, 2026June 3, 2026

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Screening ghostwriters: Run a simple test.

December 27, 2025June 3, 2026

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How a professor caught students cheating by writing with A.I.

November 20, 2025June 3, 2026

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The great dinner delay of August 3, 2015.

October 2, 2025June 3, 2026

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Which to write first – the manuscript or screenplay?

September 3, 2025October 9, 2025

Write the manuscript first, or the screenplay? By- Michael McKown Co-founder & president, Ghostwriters Central, Inc. Book or Read More...

Reading and weeping opens the door to one’s heart, but writing and weeping opens the window to one’s soul.

M. K. Simmons

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

My aim is to put down what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way I can tell it.

Ernest Hemingway

Stories are never too long or too short. They’re too interesting or too boring.

William Shawn

I haven’t got 10 rules that guarantee success, though I promise I’d share them if I did. The truth is that I found success by stumbling off alone in a direction most people thought was a dead end, breaking all the 1990s shibboleths about children’s books in the process.

J.K. Rowling

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

Joseph Conrad

Every writer with half a brain knows to surround himself or herself with editors who are smarter, far more articulate and infinitely better looking.

Chris Claremont

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

If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it — whatever it is they’re doing — it hasn’t been written right.

Sloan Wilson

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

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

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

Lisa See

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

T.S. Eliot

A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil, trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.

William Faulkner

The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.

Mickey Spillane

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 Quote

It is perfectly okay to write garbage — as long as you edit brilliantly.

C. J. Cherryh

To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.

Quentin Tarantino

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