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The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

December 2, 2019May 9, 2025 2326

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.

A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

Matthew Arnold

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

Lisa See

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

It’s an accepted fact that all writers are crazy; even the normal ones are weird.

William Goldman

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

Jim Morrison

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

Steven Bochco

There are three primal urges in human beings: Food, sex, and rewriting someone else’s play.

Romulus Linney

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G.K. Chesterton

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.”

Neil Gaiman

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

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

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

Jodi Picoult

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

Stephen Wright

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

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Arthur Balfour

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

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

I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.