well and truly stupid

Yes, I am breaking the silence. (Mostly so I can get out of the habit of staring at that pic of Dan shirtless. I'm sure people have passed by this blog wondering when that was going to go away. :-p) I am also going to clear my head of a truly random thought. Three thirty in the morning is obviously not a good time for me to be blogging, but I'll have daylight hours to regret this decision.

Well and truly fucked.

Yeah, that. Bad phrase. I've seen it in many bad romance and erotica novels (and even a couple of good ones) and I have yet to fully understand what it means. Is that like when he sticks it in so deep it gets stuck and the couple has to spend the next few hours squirming around on the bed/balcony/floor in front of the fireplace trying to get it out because they didn't use enough lube and the girl had been practicing those Kegals a little too much and they both walk a little funny in the morning, but the excuse they give their friends for limping around looking like they got run over by a 16-wheeler is that they and their soulmate were "making love" all night? Or, you know, some other totally plausible scenario.

Right.

My point is that stupid, pointless phrases plague a lot of stories, but that doesn't make the writing as a whole bad. Common usage of such horrifying phrases (like cream-filled love Twinkie - yes I am going to use that soon) do not make a genre as a whole substandard either. I think some of it depends on a writer's comfort level - some people can't write love scenes to save their lives and rely on trite phrases to just get through it. Other times it can be indicative of a writer with a lack of imagination and/or good editor.

I admit, I do not like someone else telling me something about my writing needs to change. But I rely on my inner editor to catch things like this by turning the corny/freaky/just plain stupid indicator on full blast and reading the story as if I'm critiquing someone else's work. Usually, it works. Thank goodness it does. I wouldn't be able to read my own writing if it involved anything as remotely pathetic as flower or food euphemisms in the bedroom.