It starts with a lexicuum, or hole in the language that I feel important enough to fill, or a dysology, or term that has lost its value because of excessive misuse, initial illogic or some like defect that I feel important enough to replace. Once I have a fairly thorough idea of my definition (which I try to make as rigorous as possible), I start auditioning neologies. First off, the neology must be tactically effective. That means (in order of importance): (1) it ought to be unique, its meaning limited to whatever I intend it to represent; (2) it ought to suggest reasonably well what it means (in English); (3) it ought to be reasonably easy to pronounce; (4) it ought to be catchy.

The neology must also be strategically effective. This seems to me only a tick less important than its working well tactically. I want it (1) to interact logically with some full system of understanding semantically; (2) to seem familially related to that system--by sound and/or variety of word-parts.

My principal way of making a word is to search for words that are close in meaning (in English) to what its meaning is to be, and fashion it of parts of those words. I'm not particularly concerned with etymological considerations, and--if using Latin or Greek suffixes or prefixes--couldn't care less if I fuse something Latin with something Greek. The only reason for not doing this is tradition. But the Latin and Greek I might use have long since become English--if they hadn't standard English meanings, I wouldn't want to use them in the first place. So it is a dead tradition, a tradition for pedants only.

Naturally, it is near-impossible maximally to satisfy all the intentions mentioned previously. Compromises are close to impossible to avoid. I just do the best I can. I think I did about as well as possible, though, with my "juxtaphor," to go to a specific example of how I operate. It began with a lexicuum, the absence of a one-word term for "implicit metaphor." "Juxtaphor" occurred to me pretty quickly, I think--a combination of "juxta" from "juxtapose" and related words, and "phor" from "metaphor." Latin and Greek, I believe, but don't care.

I couldn't think of any word in English like it, and my definition for it was sufficiently narrow, it seemed to me, so it satisfied my first tactical requirement. "Juxta" and "junct" seemed to say "near" or "next to" or "in proximity to" pretty clearly, and "(a)phor" would almost certainly make a reader think of "metaphor"--at least one finding the term in a text about poetics or poetry, and where else would he be likely to find it? So, it satisfied tactical requirement number two. I found it easy enough to pronounce, and even somewhat catchy. That took care of the other two tactical requirements.

The full system of understanding I wanted it to interact logically was my poetics. It already had the neology, "equaphor," for "trope" or "figure of speech" as a major category of poetic devices, which it fit quite logically under, to satisfy my main strategic requirement for it. (I coined "equaphor," by the way, because I felt "trope" had become a dysology, and because "figure of speech" was a phrase, and I believe one-word-terms prefereable to phrases, and because it didn't cover symbols, which I wanted my term to cover; "trope" didn't, either.)

"Juxtaphor" shared "phor" with "equaphor" as well as with "metaphor," which was in my poetics for "entity equated with some other entity though not identical to it." Later, I added "visiophor" to my poetics as the name of any visual element in a visual poem that acts as an implicit metaphor for what a textual element in the poem denotes. This gave "juxtaphor" a third word to share "phor" with and thus tighten its familial relation to the system I put it into. Consequently, it amply satisfied my second strategic requirement for it.