Bin The Cliches!

'Good writing is perfect control,' said Ezra Pound, and he was damn right. This control is not slapdash or reliant on feeling, but careful and nuanced. Too often writers end up with a product that is sloppy. The good writer knows the value of returning again and again to the poem, story, article, or chapter. This is the callous truth about good writing - it's a kind of work, requires a mildly obsessive quality, a willingness to look at a paragraph or a stanza over and over again, removing a phrase or re-positioning it. This is quite the opposite to many dreamy notions of writing, the sort that imply writers have a lovely time, work drifting easily from them like autumn leaves falling from the trees.

You can easily spot a writer that hasn't tried hard enough by their use of cliches. I know. I've done it often enough. Get rid of any dark clouds or doornails that are dead. They are useless. Instead, reach for original expressions - if you're not sure, reach for a volume of poetry by Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage or Sharon Olds. But resist, at all costs, the cliches. Instead, aim for writing that is fresh and alive. Go back to the work. Try again. Repeat the process. Put it aside for a while and then come back again. This is where a good writer succeeds, despite the small pain. It hurts. But not like hell.