I Love Clichés and I Cannot Lie

Writers are often told to avoid clichés, those familiar sentences that spew from your mouth without even thinking about it. It's a rule they say but since I've never really been one to follow rules in general, I tend to use the cliché now and again, both in my writing and when I am speaking. But as a reader, that's another thing entirely.

I admit it, I love the occasional familiar slip of the tongue, old hat, been there, done that, type of sentence. There is safety in clichés, when you are on that E-Ticket ride of a thriller and the author slips a well worn phrase at the end of a chapter to bring you safely back down to earth and give your heart a minute to catch up with the rest of you.

There is comfort for me in that moment...it tells me, yes, the roller coaster might be careening off the tracks in the next chapter, killing you and everyone else in a blaze of glory, but for now, we are safely on the ground.