Writing Exercise: I Hate Mondays

I would guess that every teacher of creative writing has, at some point, admonished his or her students not to use clichés. But you know what? I love clichés. Like I love sentence fragments. And starting sentences with conjunctions. And exclamation points!

Okay, I don’t love clichés, but I do love a challenge and clichés can provide that: How do you turn a cliché into something new?

So. Let’s try it.

The cliché of the day: I hate Mondays. BUT! Can you use it outside its clichéd context? Jot down a few ideas–this is a writing exercise, so I’ll limit you to three. Do that now, before you read the rest of this post. When you’re done, scroll down and read mine:

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Magical Moments in Motherhood

After-bath baby hair: a parenting perk.

When gushing about the magic of motherhood, you’ll hear a lot of clichés. For example, “These are the best years of your life!” and “Cherish every moment,” and “It goes by so quickly.” These usually come from people who are not mired in the quicksand that is early motherhood–their brains have already produced those chemicals necessary to wipe away the memory of days that lasted at least 36 hours or the way time seems to stretch nearly to snapping when a toddler is trying to put on a pair of pants. Our brains all produce these chemicals eventually, and they allow us to frame family stories under rose-colored glass, thus encouraging our children to reproduce, thus encouraging the continuation of the species. Thus another cliché, reconciling the two feelings: “The days are long but the years are short.”