Cliches

People often say they worry about their writing being cliched. Sometimes this even stops them from making progress. In twenty-five years of teaching and writing, I have found that what leads writing to be cliched (and everyone is susceptible at times) is actually shallowness, or lack of honesty with ourselves. We're looking to sound a certain way: clever, for example. We're looking at the surface of our writing, rather than really going to a raw or risky or unknown place with it. It's when you allow yourself to make a mess that you move through and beyond the place of shallowness and cliches. If this worry gets in your way next time you're writing, try this. Instead of asking yourself, "Does this sound stupid/clever/cliched," ask, "Does this feel true?" (Or does it feel real, honest--find the word that works for you.) 

“I had this idea that to be a good writer you wrote these pretty sentences. The biggest thing I learned at [the] Iowa [Writers' Workshop] was that being a good writer has everything to do with telling a truth about what it means to be a human being.”
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—Ayana Mathis