Resurrect a cliché
Rewrite your least favorite buzz phrase
A few years ago, my nephew Evan — aka one of the five most adorable boys in the world — was attending Catholic preschool.
BLAH BLAH BLAH: "Clichés are a sign of a mind at rest," says author Sol Stein. Wake up your writing — and your reader — by reinventing clichés.
It was his introduction to Jesus and heaven, and he’d been busy processing how all of this applied to his own life. When his uncle died, he wondered aloud when Jesus was going to finish fixing Uncle Carl and send him home.
When he and I sat down for a visit a few months after school started, he asked, “Aunt Ann, why is your hair white?”I answered the way I answer all the 4-year-olds who ask that question: “I don’t know, Evan. Why do you think my hair is white?”
“Because you’re going to visit Jesus?”
he ventured.
Thankfully, Evan’s guestimate has been wrong to date. But it’s not the first interesting response I’ve received about my loopy hair since it started turning white when I was 16. And since I belatedly made rock star stylist Mary Jane Van de Castle CEO of my head, may hair has been getting longer and kookier.
My sister, Lynn — the one who inherited all the good judgment in my family — has started urgently counseling headbands. Then last month, at a spa, a woman asked a question similar to my nephew’s, though less gracious:
“What’s that on your head?” she asked.
“A Chia Pet?”
Though I couldn’t take that as a compliment, I did appreciate her excellent use of analogy.
It goes without saying that my next stop was the headband store. When I showed my husband my new purchases, he said: “How nice. A Chia-management solution.”
“Darling,” I said, lovingly, “I believe you’ve just resurrected a cliché.”
What’s your least favorite cliché or buzz phrase? How can you revive that cliché to turn it into wordplay? Try:
- Reversing, combining or flipping overused expressions
- Riffing off of worn-out sayings
- Twisting tired turns of phrase
Play with your words
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