How I Write Clips(@PerellClips):"You get at most one cliché per book." Jonathan Franzen doesn't finish most books people send him. He reads until the second cliché, then stops. "People send me a galley of a book that's coming out. I read along until I get to the second cliché, and I say, thank you." "They tell me this is not an attentive writer. Aren't you aware that that's a cliché? Didn't it occur to you to stop and take 20 minutes to find a better phrasing than that?" "You can also have borrowed feelings, borrowed ideas, borrowed situations. Sentiment can be clichéd, or unearned."

2026.09.14 15:00

"You get at most one cliché per book." Jonathan Franzen doesn't finish most books people send him. He reads until the second cliché, then stops. "People send me a galley of a book that's coming out. I read along until I get to the second cliché, and I say, thank you." "They tell me this is not an attentive writer. Aren't you aware that that's a cliché? Didn't it occur to you to stop and take 20 minutes to find a better phrasing than that?" "You can also have borrowed feelings, borrowed ideas, borrowed situations. Sentiment can be clichéd, or unearned."

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