Clichés are the viruses that infect your writing with diseases.
― Pawan Mishra

I’m currently obsessed with clichés and getting rid (beware … Idioms also on the loose) of the little blighters from all works in progress.  Death to the cliché! And to the idiom too.  It’s time for you guys to hit the road.

OK … the cliché and idiom counters are now officially running.  

Looking back I wonder how I used to juggle my clichéd life.  Burning the candle  at both ends.  It seems I used to function well on precious little sleep.  As a no pain, no gain fitness freak I was up at the crack of dawn raring to go.   Jogging with the dog on the cliff path, returning home to have a bath, slipping into a suit and arriving at the office as fresh as a daisy.

Idioms are expressions that do not have a literal meaning; rather, they establish their connotation by how they are used in speech. Clichés are expressions that are so common and overused that they fail to impart any real impact on your sentence.

In the middle of the working day, I would take time out for a sandwich break and challenge myself to think outside the box and write 500 words.  After finishing work at 5.00p.m., I would take the dog and myself for another jog then head for an exercise class or play in a tennis match.  After feeling the burn, I would socialise with friends in the bar afterward and feed my face.  Go home, write some more until I drifted off and slept like a log.

These days my life is a little more laid back.  I still survive on precious little sleep, but sleeping like a log or a baby is only in my dreams.  Awake on the hour, every hour, I officially get up anytime after 4.00a.m. feeling half-dead.

Whilst still in my pyjamas, I write until I am ready to decide what item of clothing I will be able to squeeze into and take Cassie the Blog Dog for a leisurely walk.  I walk, she goes like a bat out of Hell.  

After years of sport, my joints are wrecked but I still knuckle down to daily workouts sweating over a hot keyboard.

At the end of the day and I think it goes without saying that my life seems to have become nothing short of a clichéd idiom and it’s time I snapped out of it!

Filed under: Getting Older, Humour, Life, Writers, Writing Tagged: #CutTheCliches!, Cassie The Blog Dog, Clichés, Cut the clichés!, evilenglish.net, Idioms, modernRetroWoman.com, Pawan Mishra