pjthompson | Entries tagged with cliches

Random quote of the day:

“My stories come to me as clichés. A cliché is a cliché because it’s worthwhile. Otherwise, it would have been discarded. A good cliché can never be overwritten; it’s still mysterious.”

—Toni Morrison, Black Women Writers at Work, ed. Claudia Tate

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Clichés are the cockroaches of language. We may sneer, but they will outlive us.”

—Joyce Carol Oates, Twitterfeed, 3/3/14

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“The cliché always flourishes in the creative arts because the familiar gives a sense of comfort and security.”

—Roy Huggins, “The Ten-Point Guide to Happiness While Writing or Directing a Maverick”

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Lucy and Ethel, Justin Bieber, or the Kardashian Klan. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“Any great truth can—and eventually will—be expressed as a cliché—as cliché is a sure and certain way to dilute an idea. For instance, my grandmother used to say, “The black cat is always the last one off the fence.” I have no idea what she meant, but at one time, it was undoubtedly true.”

—Solomon Short (David Gerrold), The War Against the Chtorr

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

What goes around comes around of the day:

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_2229686.html

[Vampire Hunters Drive Stake Through Milosevic's Heart]

Link stolen from

handworn. As he said, it was just too good not to pass on.

Odd bit of information of the day:

The word "startlement" is not in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged but it is in the OED. So I guess it's a word that exists in English, but not in Americanish.

Writingness of the day:

I so love it when my characters start talking in bad movie clichés. It makes me feel so special, especially after three plus two days of no writing. But on days when you're in a cash-in-my-chips-and-leave-the-game kind of mood, as I was yesterday, sometimes clichés are the best you can do. It's better than actually cashing in the chips, I guess. And there are rewrites. Also, after my blood sugar righted itself, my cash-in-the-chips mood went away. Sometimes you get to rewrite moods, too.

The other thing I love: when you're writing chapters that bore you, it's probably a safe bet they'll bore the readers, too. This isn't always a one-to-one correlation, but often is. If it takes me too long to get between points I get antsy—and in my first drafts that happens a lot. I spend chunks of time in rewrites cutting out the padding and reducing the clutter bridging one high point with the next. A story can't consist solely of high points and action-action-action. That gets boring too, and readers need a chance to catch their breath, but it's a delicate balancing act, parceling out the action and the breath-catchers.

I managed to do 1250 words yesterday at lunch (at last!). 250 of that had to be cut as being an unproductive tangent; another 250 turned out to be notes for events coming up in the next few chapters. That left me with a balance of 750 new and I'm-keeping-them words. Not great, but not bad. Still, as it's my only solid production for the week so far, I'm less than thrilled. But it couldn't be helped. Some weeks are just like that. (And I'm hoping to get more done today and on the weekend.)

Random quote of the day:

"Adults are just obsolete children, and the hell with them. You want to catch them before they become obsolete."

—Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

I ran across this today and added it to the cliché discussion that

sartorias held last week, but I thought I'd post it here as well.

http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/language/gruntled.html

Quote of the day:

"Stories are like mirrors...when they've gone dark and the glass is obscured, it's maybe for a reason. Polish them and you might not want to accept the person looking back at you as yourself. We carry these stories inside us—mirrors we can look into, or show to other people."

—Charles De Lint, Somewhere To Be Flying

Goofiness of the day: The fight scene finally got underway--well-launched, in fact. However, at one point someone lost a limb and I couldn't help typing:

"It's only a flesh wound!" he screamed. "Come back here and I'll bite off your kneecaps!"

Clearly, I had too much Python in my formative years. I'm wondering now if I should leave it in for the amusement of my local betas. But that probably wouldn't be fair. It's a serious scene. Maybe I'll do an alternate version for them on the DVD.

Writing blah-blah of the day:

The battle clichés were jumping around like a troop of pixies on a trampoline, so I won't bother enumerating them today. It's easier to write the trash to keep the scene moving and worry about refining later. Characterization also suffered muchly, I fear, as well as some of the tactile stuff. Must cram it in later.

I haven't got any newspaper, so I've been wrapping knick knacks in recycled pages of my ms. That should be interesting when I start to unpack. I'll be getting some newspaper tomorrow, so these will be little surprises scattered here and there.

Writing business of the day: I needed to reread chapter twenty to see how I handled a certain situation because I thought it had parallels with the chapter I'm currently on, chapter 28. I wanted to make sure I wasn't repeating myself. Parallels are a good thing; repetition, not so much. I think it's okay. Similar, but different, emotional subtext; different trigger; somewhat different outcome.

Typo of note: I took a depp breath

I must have been thinking of Le Johnny getting his hands in cement at the Chinese Theater. sigh

Cliché du jour: I nearly jumped out of my skin... My God, that's just about as bad as it gets.

Your Birthdate: September 22

While sometimes employing unorthodox approaches, you are capable of handling large scale undertakings.
You assume great responsibility and work long and hard toward completion.
Often, especially in the early part of life, there is rigidity or stubbornness, and a tendency to repress feelings.

Idealistic, you work for the greater good with a good deal of inner strength and charisma.
An extremely capable organizer, but likely to paint with broad strokes rather than detail.
You are very aware and intuitive.
You are subject to a good deal of nervous tension.

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

After a 1500 word sprint today, chapter 25 is in the bag. Once I got over my whining, this one came together really fast. I'm not sure one of the characters is a fully rounded human being, and I'm not sure whether the latest plot tangent may be a bit too tricksy, but that's for worrying about in the second draft.

And I'd just like to say, God bless the heat when the gorgeous shirtless men go jogging.

A Tale of Two Joggers:

♥

Sunday I went shopping with The Mom. We made the turn off Alla Road onto the Marina Freeway and there was this little old dude jogging down Culver Blvd. wearing nothing but baggy navy swimming trunks. Brown as a berry, a fine crop of snowy hair all over his back and chest, hanging down from his chin and blowing on top of his head—though a little thin up there. In this heat, I worried for his health because there wasn't a lick of shade to be found anywhere around there, but he looked like he did this kind of thing every day. Very buff for an ancient mariner, really in quite good shape—but jogging real slow and heading out on a part of Culver that's isolated as it heads towards the bridge over Lincoln Blvd. and on into the wetlands. Eventually, if he kept heading that way, he'd make it to the beach at Playa del Rey.

Maybe two hours later I'm heading back down Culver on my way home from mom's place in Westchester—and there's the ancient mariner in almost exactly the same place I saw him before near the Marina freeway, only jogging the other way. Same pace, slow and steady, but much sweatier—and his navy trunks are seriously wet. I didn't know, actually, if he was just that sweaty of if he'd taken a dip somewhere. I was definitely hoping for the latter.

♥♥

Driving home last night, a tall, handsome young man with shoulder-length dark blonde hair, tan, great body—really well-cut pecs, and abs that were nice, but not too overdone, if you know what I mean...What was I saying? Oh, nothing to report there. He just gave me the shivers, that's all. In a good way. Handsome Guy jogged on the shady side of the street, unlike the ancient mariner.

Things I thought of blogging today: A rant on how Carly Simon sings all her songs at the same bland, plain vanilla emotional pitch with not a thought in her head as to what the lyrics say. And something about the good ol' gals of jazz singing like Etta Jones and Nina Simone and Judy Garland.

Why I didn't blog it: I'm cranky and shouldn't be let that far off the lease.

Cliché du jour: "Gwyddog and all who stand with him will feel my wrath! It's just like writing for TV, folks!

Do you ever ask yourself, "Who the hell snuck into my novel and wrote that bilge?"

Significant milestone of the day: I passed 100,000 words on Night Warrior.

Book news of the day: Thanks to

sartorias I am thoroughly enjoying Warprize by Elizabeth Vaughan. I'm afraid my research reading has gotten rather short shrift since I started that novel. I'd thought to do a chapter a night of research, but that got reduced to a section Monday night, and last night I gave up all pretense of reading anything but Warprize. What fun entertainment it is! Just what I need right now. I've read other books in the new Tor Romance line, but this is by far my favorite.

Quote of the day:

"Never own more than you can carry at a dead run, except books. Books are worth taking risks for."

—Kage Baker
(Harcourt Trade Publishers interview)

Ironically, Harcourt dropped her contract. She's now with Tor. Yay Tor!

Sleep deprivation of the day: My waking, rational mind talks me out of a lot of worry and fear and guilt. At night and in dreams, however, the rational mind has no say. At night, the worry-fear-guilt holds court and fills my dreams with devils bearing pitchforks, so I haven't been sleeping well. Not nightmares, exactly, but I'm startling awake from unpleasant or uncomfortable dreams every couple of hours—or I have the devil's time going to sleep in the first place. Today my mind is wuzzy, darting in and out of coherence like a small fish in hostile waters. I found myself at lunchtime riding up and down in the elevator because I kept pushing the wrong buttons and not realizing it until I wound up on the wrong floor. There may be a bit of Warprize going on here, too, because I have a sense of barbarians trampling the flowerbeds of my dreams. Nothing like a good story to get a girl cranked up.

Cliché du jour: The smile died from Arthur's face.

Darling du jour: The trees hung heavy from the morning mist. The growing light burned in the droplets so the top of the leaves shone a saturated green, while the undersides remained dark and moody.

Not really attached to anything, just an observation I made on the drive to work this morning and had to write down. The light in the trees along Venice Boulevard was so beautiful, one of those moments that make you think, "Okay, maybe it is good to be alive."

Sleep deprivation seems to be a good inspiration to the poetic imagination for me. I updated several poems today, made them stronger, truer.

Poetic observation of the day: You have to tell the truth in poems. You can certainly put on poetic masks, and there have certainly been poets who are liars. But underneath the masks and the lies, the truth will always win out whether you want it to or not. It shows like an old lady's slip as she's climbing onto the bus. If it doesn't, the poem is usually bad. There's a knowingness in good poetry; an indefinable bare root essence that bad poetry lacks.

Socks of the day: Rather conservative dark grey with little white flowers.

I passed 99,000 words on The Novel yesterday. Can I finish this up in another 40k as I'd hoped? Maybe. That's about 160 pages. I can't imagine this going longer than that, but my friends laugh at me when I make such a statement. No really, I think it's possible. Really. Stop laughing!

Boy who cried wolf of the day: About 2 this afternoon we had a fire drill—a serious, scheduled fire drill. We've had so many of these that nobody takes them seriously. If a real god-forbid happened, many of us would probably perish as we take the time to finish the sentence we're typing before grabbing our belongings and leaving.

Darling du jour: It's dark on purpose so just listen.

It keeps playing and playing in my mind. And the best part is that I don't have to ever cut it ever because it isn't mine. It's the first line of a poem by Lawrence Raab called Visiting the Oracle. If you want to read it all, go here, two poems down:

http://www.blueridgejournal.com/poems/lr-visit.htm

Goofy thought of the day: Menachem is beggin' the question.

(My) Cliché du jour: But the denial died on my tongue.

"If, as you live your life, you find yourself mentally composing LJ entries about it, post this exact same sentence in your Live Journal."

But you all knew that about me anyway.

Things I thought of blogging about today: Of how some readers confuse current times with historical times and think current cultural mores are the way things have always been.

Why I didn't blog it: Bizzy. I may still blog it. Or just think about it.

Goofy thought of the day: I should start a band called the Jimi Schmendrix Experience.

Cliché du jour: I stared open-mouthed at him.

Darling du jour: n/a - Nothing really opened up my third eye.

Gratitude of the day: To those who offered to beta my novelette. 'Preciate skit!

Agony of the day: Boiling down the two page synopsis for Shivery Bones to one page. Oh. The. Humanity.

Refrigerator of the day: In deference to those who have moral standards (unlike myself), I've put this behind a cut. If

buymeaclue wanders by, the erotic Ancient Greek pot we discussed some months back is right below the green car.

Here There Be Man Parts&

[broken link]

Strange event of the day: So I'm in the cafeteria and a guy says, "I think you dropped your money." I look down and there's a severely wadded up bill on the ground, so wadded I couldn't even see the denomination. I'm pretty sure it isn't mine because my money is neatly folded in my pocket, but I pick it up, of course. I unfurl it and wow! It's a ten dollar bill. I check my pocket and my own ten is still there. "This isn't yours?" I ask the guy. "No." "It isn't mine, either." He laughs and looks a little disappointed. "It is now." He turns and walks away, as if wishing he hadn't been a nice guy and had grabbed it himself.

"Wow, found money!" I think, but immediately afterwards, as always happens these days when I find money, I think about a time I lost $15 that I desperately needed—it was all the money I had for the week. And I think about how desolate I was and I remember that finding money is a good thing, but always predicated on a bad thing happening to someone else. That always takes the glee off the moment. What if the person who lost that ten needed it as much as I needed that $15 way back when?

As it happens, I could really use that ten myself, so I'm trying not to be too big of a nerd about this and enjoy my good fortune. But I do think it's important to think of the other guy, too—in a karmically balancingly kind of way.

Irony of the day: Today is the birthday of the President of the United States and of Nancy Reagan. It is also the birthday of my friend, Lynn, who hates Bush with the heat of a thousand bonfires and likes Nancy only somewhat better. "What kind of weird cosmic projection is that all about?" she wonders.

Other irony of the day: This has been a point of much hilarity to all of us who know Lynn. This morning when NPR mentioned it was Dubya's birthday I laughed and said, "Ha ha! And Lynn's. Oh sh*t! I forgot to mail her birthday card!"

I don't share a birthday with anyone infamous, that I know of: Tommy LaSorda, Scott Baio, and Elizabeth Bear. Oh, and of course Bilbo and Frodo Baggins.

Cliché du jour: gore-encrusted claws (Don't worry, it didn't even survive the sub-first draft.)

Darling du jour: n/a - Nothing really floated in my moat.

Typo of note: his death's group wouldn't loosen

Words of the day: A miraculous (for me) 1250—the push to finish chapter 23. And ah, it's finished.

Socks of the day: Dark green with little white dots.

This is one of those days when I really feel the weight of the novel on top of me. I'm sure I'm repeating images and character bits; the prose becomes more and more laden with placeholder clichés and deadish dialogue tags because I'm just too tired to think of anything else right now.

That's why I actually like the rewrite process. It gives me a chance to have new skin. The first draft is for pushing through, the second is for scraping away the dead cells.

Unfortunate juxtaposition of headlines on Netscape News of the day:

• Keep work stress in check: 7 tips

• Wine bars uncork nightlife trend

Cliché du jour: Bedwyr rode grim-faced beside me

Darling du jour: In the torchlight his face wavered like the moon reflected in black water

I'm not even sure that makes sense, but I like it. At least until I read it again some months from now during the rewrites.

Typo of note: The cursing of the ne... which of course made me think of the knights of Monty Python fame...

Surreality of the day: Learning a former boss of mine was targeted for assassination by Al Qaida. He was a jerk, but that seems extreme. I guess that's why they call those Al Qaida fellows extremists.

Exciting news of the day: My friend's husband was asked to be a judge at the Venice Film Festival in September. She gets to go to Italy!

Synchronicity of the day: I talked to my other friend today and she told me she did her annual summer solstice walk Saturday. She and her group walk from Pasadena, over the Santa Monica Mountains, and to the beach at Santa Monica—done every Saturday before the solstice if not the solstice itself. They do this in the spirit of pilgrimage, a way of breaking themselves out of the ordinary and commonplace, in the spirit of commitment. At the precise moment I was walking around Woodlawn taking pictures, she and her group were walking past Woodlawn on their way to the beach. Neither of us knew the other was there.

Things I thought of blogging about today: About how much problem and reluctance I've had lately in getting my chapters started because I've got the "end-of-the-book-but-not-near-enough-to-the-end" sluggishness thing going now.

Why I didn't blog it: Although I felt like I'd have a problem, I had no idea how to start, could feel the resistance building in me to start chapter 23 today...I had no problem starting chapter 23. The first line popped right up and I was off. I wound up writing 1500 words—which is a pretty big daily bump for me. The Muse was being tricksy.

Typo of note: To hit the kind is not nothing.

Cliché du jour: as grim as death

Darling du jour: n/a - Nothing really lit my pipe today.

Having just finished chapter 22 of The Novel and having just posted chapter 14 to OWW, I decided to take a break from Night Warrior today and work on an old novelette I thought I could fix. It was going great until I hit scene five and then splat. You know, having many months perspective on this since I last worked on it, I can see the splattage point quite clearly. I'm just not quite sure what to do about it. Cut some stuff, obviously. But what? I always get so confused about what to cut and what to leave in my short stories. I suck at short stories.

Synchronicity of the day (day being a 24-hour period and me having seen this as I was driving home last night after just posting about a tsunami): A bright red convertible sports car with the license plate, TSUNAMI. And when I got home, CBS news (which I don't usually watch) had a report on the Asian tsunami as well as the scare in Crescent City.

Interesing sight of the day: The blue-gowned graduates waiting around outside the auditorium as I drove by my alma mater Venice High School last night.

My response: To start whistling Pomp and Circumstance, of course. Then I wondered if I had beans at home to go with my chicken, tortillas, and pico de gallo. I continued to worry about beans and whistle Pomp and Circumstance all the way home although I really would rather not have. (I didn't have beans, but it was delish anyway. I made chicken-flavored rice to go with it.)

Alternate interesting sight of the day: While driving in this morning, seeing some workmen pulling down a billboard sign. I usually never see them in process—it's just something new when I drive by. This one was like a giant plastic sheet which they unbolted and let drop whole. Not like in the old timey cartoons and movies where they paste strips of paper up like giant wallpaper.

Things I thought of blogging about today: Cliches and how I use them as placeholders and don't necessarily clean them all out of my ms. until the second draft so as to just keep pushing forward and stop obsessing. The purpose of the first draft is to get finished, not to be beautiful.

Why I didn't blog it: It seemed boring even to me.

Cliche of the day: Or she had new eyes and could see for the first time.

Darling du jour: The sky loomed behind the lantern of the moon, the stars washed out to a pale blur by lunar glow and the lights from the neighborhood.

I have been reluctant to do daily stats like several writers in residence on LJ do.

Partly it's superstition: I'm afraid that if I pick too closely at the scratch of my writing it will all turn to chicken poop.

The other thing is, it'll be righteously boring. I pretty much plunk it out and don't think about it much and occasionally something swell happens, but mostly it's just plunk plunk plunk. I can't see reporting on that being much help to me or anybody else.

Occasionally, I get stuck and frustrated and whereas writing about that might help someone like they aren't alone in their frustration, it's not particularly helpful to me in getting over the hump. I just keep trying stuff and tricking myself and playing with things until the log jam clears and then it's whoosh. Followed by more plunk plunk plunk. That might be really irritating for people to hear reported on.

But I do get all this stray stuff floating through my head, stuff I think I'll blog but never get around to, or strange artifacts of the day that I want to share, but never seem to get around to, either. So, for that purpose and to not to feel too left out and in a desperate attempt to fill LJ space (because, Lord knows, LJ needs more verbiage) I've come up with something that suits my fractured personality. But I'm not sure it will be all that interesting. The topics may change, and I can't even guarantee I'll do this every day. Lord knows I don't need anything else in my day to be obsession-compulsive about.

There are even some vaguely writerly bits at the very end of this list.

Things I thought of blogging about today: The earthquake and the reaction of the California newbies here at work to it. Tsunamis were mentioned. We're very close to the beach. It was an inland quake. Eventually the building stopped swaying.

Why I didn't blog it: The day eluded me. Too caught up in getting another chapter of Night Warrior posted to OWW and devising this post.

Strange thought of the day: Am I dizzy? No wait, it's just an earthquake.

Strange event of the day: I guess that would have to be the earthquake. Although they aren't that strange around here these days.

Cliche du jour: My chest swelled with pride.

Darling du jour: n/a - Nothing really lit my pipe today.

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Echoes in a Hollow Space

I'm here because I'm here because I'm here

Entries tagged with cliches

Cliché

Clichés

Avoid cliché like the plague

Barking up the wrong tree

TGIF grab bag

Ingenuous language

Mirrors and flesh wounds

As bad as it gets

The rime of the ancient mariner

Bare roots

It's dark on purpose so just listen

Here There Be Man Parts

Ten dollars

The knights who say...

Tricksy

Splat

List—but not much of a one, really

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