The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

02 Dec, 2019

I came across this today and broke up laughing. These are seriously clever! Thanks to the Washington Post. I wasn't aware of their neologism contest, but I am now! Read and enjoy. Pass it along.

The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

December 2, 2019May 9, 2025

I came across this today and broke up laughing. These are seriously clever! Thanks to the Washington Post. I wasn’t aware of Read More...

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

Harlan Ellison

If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages.

William C. Gault

If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

Jim Morrison

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

Thomas Wolfe

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.

Jodi Picoult

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

T.S. Eliot

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

E. B. White

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

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

Stephen Wright

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

Stan Lee

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Lawrence Wray

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

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort and the dullard’s first choice.

Stephen King

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

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

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

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.