Somehow script writers haven’t figured out how to include the second generation of Earnshaws, Lintons, and Heathcliffs into the story that would expose Heathcliff as the abusive, vengeful old man he becomes after Catherine’s death. For example, I would say kidnapping your ex-lover/foster sibling’s daughter and forcing her to marry your son isn’t what I would call a romantic gesture. Or is it? It’s complicated.

Sometimes I find a half-scrawled story like the one above months later, and forget where I was going with it. I no longer connect with the character, so it is abandoned to the center console or the glovebox.

As I started college—and as my frontal lobe began cooking on high—I pulled Why Clichés off of Amazon for almost two years. I was horrified at the idea that I had undertaken a project relying on expertise at such an early age. I ended up privatizing the book after rereading it and being repulsed by how mean it is: