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The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

December 2, 2019May 9, 2025 2042

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.

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein

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

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

Thomas Wolfe

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 don’t care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finishes the book.

Roald Dahl

Socially, a journalist fits in somewhere between a whore and a bartender. But spiritually he stands beside Galileo. He knows the world is round.

Sherman Reilly Duffy

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

Jodi Picoult

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

Thomas Jefferson

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

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

C. J. Cherryh

Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.

Michael Burke

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

Lawrence Wray

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

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

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

Stephen King

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

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

William Shawn

Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.

Michael Crichton

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

Gloria Steinem

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.