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Video: A screenwriting ghostwriter has an ethics problem.

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

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

William Shawn

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.

Anton Chekhov

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

Mickey Spillane

The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.

Douglas Adams

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

C. J. Cherryh

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

Gloria Steinem

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

No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.

E. B. White

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk — away from any open flames — to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.

George Singleton

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

Sidney Sheldon

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

You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won’t be able to take a break from being a writer.

Stephen Leigh

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 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

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

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

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

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.”