You can write it, or you can hire a writer and spend YOUR time making more money. It’s your choice.
Words are my business.

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Words should mean something not just to you but, more important, to your audience. A good writer can help you figure that out.
Words are my business.

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Words, like money, don’t grow on trees. Someone has to nail them there – usually a writer.
Words are my business.

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The difference between using just any word and using just the right word is using a good writer.
Words are my business.

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I think I know the amazement the character Dave in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey may have felt when he finally looked into the monoliths hanging in space and saw that they were full of stars. I’ve seen space full of stars, and I was amazed. More than that, I was transfixed.

This is M13 shot from the Hubble Space Telescope. It approximates the amazing intensity of stars I saw above me that night. Credit: NASA and STScI.

Imagine a Midwest man surrounded by city lights for most of his life. At most, I’ve been isolated with a backyard that borders on a golf course north of the city, but it was on the edge of town and adjacent to a busy road. Our street had street lights, and many of the homes and surrounding lots had outdoor lighting. Then he travels to Kings Canyon National Park in California, in the mountains with its crystal clear air and high elevation, no light pollution for miles. Any that there might be is blocked by the mountains. Above you like a touchable ceiling done in laser tipped lights are an infinite number of stars.

I was in California writing a story about Amway distributors (now called IBOs) who use white water rafting trips to motivate the distributors in their organization. Over the weekend, they loaded up rafts, sleeping gear, tents, food, and other gear and headed to a mile of white water that snakes through Kings Canyon. There’s a campground at the end. My photographer and I flew to Oakland, then to Fresno, then drove to Visalia where we met our hosts. From there it took a couple of hours to drive into the canyon, first on decent roads but eventually ending up on narrow dirt paths.

We arrived and while part of the crew set up camp, the rest of us drove up river to look for places to shoot pictures of the group white water rafting. After intense safety instruction, the group went down a couple of times for us in two or three rafts, then returned so we could experience the thrill of white water rafting. By now, it was edging toward evening, the sun nestling behind the mountains. They cooked turkey and steak in the ground and we sat around a camp fire telling stories of past exploits, and new rafters were initiated. Terry and Donna Gallian were our hosts and they had rented a tent in case I wasn’t comfortable sleeping in the wild. But when I walked away from the glare of the camp fire and looked up to the sky, I was dumbfounded, lost for words. I couldn’t waste the view on a tent. I rolled out the pad and bedroll and looked up. I couldn’t make out a single constellation, there were so many more stars than I had ever seen before. I’d set up my place on the rock strewn ground around 10 pm but it was well past 4 am before I could get to sleep, it was such an amazing sight.

We got up the next morning and went down the river one more time before heading home, going back the same way we’d come. I took a shower by hanging a water bladder from a tree, although I probably got a good bath when I fell out of the raft at an undulating stack of rapids.

It’s a trip I’ll never forget and the stars are a sight I will never erase from my mind…truly a magnificent moment.

Today I looked at “make ends meet” and “make no bones about it” as two possibilities to recast. Neither one was particularly easy, but I felt “make ends meet” was just too bare-bones to rewrite. But the problem with “make no bones about it” is that it has such obscure origins and actual meanings that it’s hard to rethink the original. And it turns out, it’s not that hard to rethink “make ends meet.”

Make ends meet originates from bookkeeping or accounting days, although it may also have origins in tailoring. So I can twist it more than I usually would a cliche to something like:

• make dollar bills cover the paper bills
• hope coins cover charges
• ensure pluses equal minuses
• beep the bottom line above the bottom line
• make the sums cover the differences

The structure isn’t parallel, but I think it works in this case. These different versions certainly mean the same thing. And that’s what recasting is all about – rewriting something so it says the same thing in a fresh way.

Cliches are trite, overused words or phrases that we too easily fall into using in our writing or speaking. When we do, they make us sound unoriginal or — often — lazy. It’s best when we take the time, effort, and creativity to find alternatives. As in the case of “make ends meet,” recasting or rewriting a cliche isn’t as hard as it sounds, and the payoff in others’ improved opinions of our work can be very handsome.

You might think this is misusing or perhaps abusing Twitter a bit. I don’t think so. This page was never meant to interact as such, although that’s what Twitter does best. This audience doesn’t expect responses from the Twitter account, it really appreciates a heads up to look at the other vehicles, where the content has more room to communicate.

I am a big fan of Twitter. I have three accounts, and I spend some time on them. The nice thing about Twitter is, you can use it as you need to, and no one — no one — is using it the “right way,” everyone is using it the way that makes sense to them.

For one thing, she is able to vary the intensity of the screen, and she can adjust the the font size of the text, making reading a lot easier. In addition, she is able to change background and font colors, and reading white text on black or other dark-colored backgrounds is even easier on her eyes.

I have the Kindle app on my iPhone. She has the Barnes and Noble app on her iPod touch. They’re worth trying because of their versatility, but also because they’re less expensive and take up less room. I’m not likely to convert to e-Book soon, because I like holding the book and manipulating the page in my hand, but I can see why it might be easier on some. I think minds are still being made up on this one!