I love wine. I love dry reds, dry whites, a few semi-dries. No sweets. I know what I like when I taste it. I’m lost when someone tries to describe “what” I’m tasting.

Tiger Lily decided to help me out by showing me other people are as lost as I. She grabbed an article from HuffPost.com, and for a few newsletters, she is going to give us an example of overused phrases and ideas.

Here is #2.

It really pops the mouth. This was fashionable in the recent past and, while on the wane, is still heard at gatherings. What does it really mean? That the wine tastes good? That the flavor suddenly expands in one's mouth? I've attended meetings where it was used extensively by participants and winery representatives, often to boost wines of non-distinction. Sometimes shortened to "It really pops." It's an example of a phrase which enters wine culture for a season or two, and then fades away.

“I Want to Become a Writer”

Austin Kleon famously said: Lots of people want to be the noun without doing the verb. They want the job title without the work.

People complain about competition in writing, but the truth? There’s no competition.

Sure there are tons of people aspiring to write, but 99.99 percent of them want to be writers, they don’t want to write. These people aren’t my competition. They’re failed careers waiting to happen.

The air is thin up here, not for successful and wealthy authors, even (I’m not one. I’m okay at best), but for people who make it longer than six weeks to six months.

I’ve written hundreds of blog posts, two books (working on a third now), and have probably crossed the million-word mark. Still, I don’t think I’m that good. I doubt my skills all the time. But I use that doubt as fuel to work even harder. .

The antidote to your lack of success is more work.