One day at a time.
A heart of gold.
Slow and steady wins the race.
He just got a slap on the wrist.
These are all clichés that you don't want to use in your writing because they’re trite and overused.
I always recommend writing the first draft of your story, article, essay, blog post or manuscript in a loose style. Get those thoughts out of your head and down on paper. Don't worry about grammar, facts, or details that may slow you down. Having a completed work is such a great feeling; it makes it much easier to return to refine your material. That’s when you want to go through it with a fine tooth comb—just testing you. That's a cliché! Let's paraphrase that: that’s when you want to assess your material to remove too many adverbs, adjectives, and stale or outdated expressions.
By trimming your work and using crisp and unique terms, you’ll take a good piece of writing and make it brilliant.
Read more about punctuation in my third book, Be Your Own Editor, available in print (http://tinyurl.com/3xkoths) and now a bestseller on Kindle (http://tinyurl.com/3y3nuzb). Or get 20% off the regular price by writing directly to me.
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