Good writing requires eliminating
Clichés
Ah, the dog days of summer! The sun was shining, birds were chirping, and I was footloose and fancy free from high school. Sayonara, senior year! No more teachers, no more books! At least not until I rose the ranks to those ivy-covered halls of learning! But no sooner had I taken off the cap and gown than I traded it in for a suit and tie.
With my trusty catalog in hand, I went knocking on doors to drum up sales of knives for home and hearth. From chef's knives to table knives! Parers and choppers and slicers, oh my! Try as I might, for the life of me I couldn’t sell them to a single soul. I was down in the dumps. Here I thought these babies were good as gold and worth every penny!
Luckily, Mommy Dearest swooped in and bailed me out. She sprang for a jackknife for dear old Dad’s birthday. Sure enough, it came in the mail like clockwork. We lived out in the country, away from the hustle and bustle, so the mailbox was way down at the end of our long and winding driveway. (Yep, I was a country boy. Yee-haw!) So we picked up the package (what's in the booox!?) and had it in the family jalopy (hey, it got us from point A to point B) on our merry way to the airport. I was answering the call for a taste of the missionary life, down south of the border.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I pried open the package and pulled out the knife. But before I knew it, I got all butterfingers and sliced myself right on the hand! Talk about the unkindest cut! See what I did there?
That was the end of that. I drew the curtain on my short-lived sales career, and the very next summer I was just another working stiff, clocking in at ye olde donut shoppe every morning. And the rest is history. Hey, it’s a living. The ladies love a man in uniform!
Speaking of clichés, here’s one of my favorite comedy videos about comedians. It’ll ruin a whole genre of mediocre stand-up for you:
Suck it, zeugma!
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