Peter’s Comments (group member since Feb 25, 2011)

Peter’s comments from the Read Like a Writer group.

I try to nurture my fledglings and get tougher as they mature, but alas, I too frequently fall in love with them. Rather than giving them the boot telling them to earn their keep, too often I kiss them on the cheek and say "It's okay." Like most relationships, eventually...sometimes after a year or two...I get tough and can finish it off or file it in the hopeless box and move on.

GL: Do you read your own work as a teacher or reader:
before it is finished? when it is "finished"? after it is in print?

What have you read lately? What do you think? How might it affect you as a writer?

"Let's have some new cliches." - Samuel Goldwyn

Eliminate cliches which are the vermin of imaginative writing. Initially fresh images, cliches have been taken over and made mundane by too frequent usage. They have lost their original authority, power, and beauty. They raise their predictable heads (aaah, a Cliche!) in the early drafts of even the most experienced writers. Turning a cliche against itself by intentionally using it in an inverted form can revive it. Puns can give a cliche a renewed life. For example,"Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder" or "Time wounds all healing." However, if a poem or other piece of writing is merely going to repeat a cliche, cut it out.