For some reason I always loved teaching about clichés. As I said yesterday, they are, for one thing, always an opportunity to write. And I suppose as a teacher they are an easy way out... (coincidentally that is exactly what they are for the writer as well...) because I can look at one, say -- nope, no good, try again -- and I can easily tell you why.
Anyway -- today the prompts are all about this tired old territory.
Littles:
((((small warning if you are reading this with littles -- there is one word at the end -- in the grown-up part of this blog which is a big grown up word you might not want to explain <3))))
You might not know what the word cliché is, but I bet you know what some of them are!
Her eyes were as blue as the sky -- that's one example.
Here's an idea for you.
Can you think of things that your family always says? They say those things so much you know it before they even begin?
Write down as many of those as you can think of. A really fun thing to do as a writer is to sit and observe. You can ask someone to put on a timer for you -- maybe 5 minutes -- and for that whole time watch what is going on around you. Write down as much as you can.
My favorite thing to do used to be to write in a cafe. I used to love to watch people -- what they said to each other -- what they looked like doing the things they were doing.
Now -- draw pictures of what you saw them doing.
Add crazy words. Maybe your mom asked your sister if she wanted some chicken soup. (My daughter spent most of yesterday sick on the couch). What if instead mom said, "what if the couch was a time machine?" Or "that couch belongs in the front yard."
Can you write a story (bonus for a picture story!) with your new crazy ideas?
Middles:
Ok -- list as many clichés as you can. I tried, but all of mine sounded like they were out of some crazy sit com from a date so old you wouldn't believe it. Of course, there's the tried and true "her eyes were as blue as the sky," and "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse."
Most clichés revolve around a metaphor or a simile.
Try to start with at least 5.
Now -- rewrite them!
Her eyes were as blue as the sapphire in the locket she always wore around her neck.
I'm so hungry I could eat every single pancake every IHOP every cooked.
When you are done, let your list prompt you to write a story or a poem. As always, you can look ahead to the big prompts. The only difference between theirs and yours is they get a little more complicated. Personally, if I were stuck in quarantine, I would start with the littles, then do the middles, then the bigs. But that's just me... I like to write.
Bigs:
When I was in poet school I had to write papers -- about poets and poems and books... so fun. Anyway -- I came across something in a set of poems by Jane Kenyon -- I still haven't ever seen this written about -- which is a fun thing to come across. Anyway -- a few of her poems seem to me to be built around clichés:
Take this poem for example (warning -- it's a sad poem):
In the Nursing Home
She is like a horse grazing
a hill pasture that someone makes
smaller by coming every night
to pull the fences in and in.
She has stopped running wide loops,
stopped even the tight circles.
She drops her head to feed; grass
is dust, and the creek bed's dry.
Master, come with your light
halter. Come and bring her in.
Can you find the cliché? Ok... it's actually an idiom. Here's what Miriam Webster has to say:
Definition of put out to pasture
1: to bring animals to a large area of land to feed on the grass there put the sheep out to pasture
2: to force (someone) to leave a job because of old age I'm not ready to be put out to pasture yet.—sometimes used of thingsI put my old computer out to pasture.
So this is your prompt today --
Think about a cliché (or an idiom). Think about what it is getting at -- all idioms and clichés are based on something real. Then write the poem about that reality, without mentioning the cliché.
Notice for Kenyon the title is really blunt about the actual situation. Then the poem itself is a metaphor.
In the poem, the speaker has put her mother in a nursing home -- put her out to pasture, as it were. And then we see this horse -- in a pasture -- and understand the way that life diminishes for one whose physical world -- but also life itself -- is curtailed by their new reality.
Here's another example -- one that I wrote. See if you can spot the idiom.
Years After He Raped Her
The current moves
fast now, slow again
but always there
is ground
under the bridge
with the imprint of decision
sharp splinters from the planks
fall, and remnants of white
paint peel
the stream remains
in August
only a parched-lip trickle
winters, freeze
takes hold.
- After Jane Kenyon
(hint: it's water under the bridge.)
Your turn!
A pen, what for? To see it dance.
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