The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

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The Washington Post’s neologism contest winners.

December 2, 2019July 21, 2023 1892

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.

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

T.S. Eliot

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

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

M. K. Simmons

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

William Shawn

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

Lisa See

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

Jodi Picoult

What I loved most about calling myself a reporter was that it gave me an excuse to show up anyplace.

Jeanette Walls

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Oscar Wilde

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

William Goldman

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

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

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

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

George Bernard Shaw

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

Mickey Spillane

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

Joseph Conrad

Just don’t be boring!

Robert Liebmann

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the Internet.

Zadie Smith

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

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

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.