Writing Word Wordplay

By Brandy Stoner

Okay, let’s call this a writing exercise, instead of a shameful display of how much time I have on my hands… Writer’s Digest just ran a Word Wizards competition, inspired by the annual Washington Post competition of the same variety.  WD challenged writers to take any writing term, change a few letters, and give it a new definition.   You know, it has been said somewhere, sometime, by somebody, that making up new words is a sign of intelligence.

Naturally, my singular submission to the contest is not included here, on the off chance I might actually win or place.  Maybe other writers will have more luck than I did with parts of speech besides the noun, one lonely adjective, and an awkward prepositional phrase.  Here’s my silliness to get you started.

Qweary (adj.):  How editors feel at the end of a day spent reviewing submission ideas that all sound the same.

Submession (n.): Wrinkled manuscript with coffee stains.

Greeting curds (n., plural): What writers send during the holidays when their careers are going, um, sour.  Nothing like cottage cheese to brighten someone’s day.

Shirt story (n.): Short coming-of-age piece about a jersey from a boy.

Manuscrapt (n.): Novel formed from the crumpled pages discarded in writers’ wastebaskets.

Synapsis (n.): What an editor takes when the synopsis of a book proposal is too long and too slow.

Acknowledgemint (n.): Rather than actually thanking you in the book for your 103.7 hours of proofreading, listening to re-writes, and crying on your shoulder, your sister sends you a small yellow butter candy.

Litterary (n.): What shredded pages become to a writer’s cat, because we can’t afford kitty litter and printer paper, for crying out loud!

Foremat (n.): Warning cry yelled out by an editor before he hits you over the head with suggested revisions.

On speck (prep. phrase): How to describe a manuscript submission that is written entirely on a kernel of rice.

Rechecktion (n.): Since editors don’t like submissions that all sound the same and have obviously been sent to several people, they now send a small payment to writers just for reading their form rejections.

Table of discontent (n.): Section of a non-fiction book that includes pages where a reader would have found information that the publisher eliminated.

Brandy Stoner writes on writing, for children and their parents, and poetry. She facilitates poetry workshops, and is launching the online poetry journal, Subcutaneous, which will feature an annual competition for teens, and angst-ridden verse on a regular basis.

She has a young daughter and an old cat, and they all live together in a little crooked house in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Brandy is studying to teach high school English. Visit her on the Web at http://www.geocities.com/ston_bran or get more info on Subcutaneous at http://www.geocities.com/subq_editor/index.htm.
 

Sponsored links

Ring binders

 

Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer!

How to find a book publisher

Home

Text on this site Copyright © 1998-2007 Absolute Write, all rights reserved.
Please contact the authors if you'd like to reprint articles on this site.  All copyrights are retained by original authors.  And plagiarizers will be rounded up, handcuffed, and stuck into a very small and humid room wherein they must listen to Barney sing the "I Love You, You Love Me" song over and over again.

writers writing software