elbow-grease

As simon with a book points out #28 it's no good just having a decent idea or inspiration, I need to put the elbow-grease in and take my work beyond the outline stage!

Making Light: Rowling's being sued for plagiarism again 2010

A normal "creative workday" follows to give you an idea of just how much self-discipline and regular old elbow-grease your average "artistic" type employs each and every day.

Jilly Gagnon: The Creative Process 2009

If that sounds like too much work, why not run the existing German versions into English using Google translator and some elbow-grease.

Studying the Mandaeans: Sources and Questions James F. McGrath 2009

The bundlers, the men and women who skirt campaign finance laws by bundling cash, a bundle of $2,000 here and a bundle of $2,000 there -- and some, though certainly not all, of the elbow-grease: grassroots Obama volunteers, loyalists from day one.

Marcy Winograd: Obama Delegate Purge -- Slash and Burn in California 2008

‘On elbow-grease — hard work, that is — and I must work hard now if I mean to take advantage of today’s sitting.

The Last Chronicle of Barset 2004

‘Not at all, Mrs Broughton; success depends on elbow-grease.’

The Last Chronicle of Barset 2004

He believed in shoe-leather and elbow-grease, not divination.

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine 2004

It takes a lot of elbow-grease, blood, sweat and tears to keep the wheels of change turning.

ANC Daily News Briefing 1999

The Widow was accustomed to say, "It takes a good deal of elbow-grease to keep everything trig and shiny"; and though she was by no means sparing of her own, the neat and thriving condition of the household and the premises was largely owing to the black Chloe, her slave and servant-of-all-work.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 Various

Dame Fossie's best scrubbing brushes, another was dusting the ceiling with a feather broom; whilst several, seated round the four-post bedstead, were polishing it with bees 'wax and "elbow-grease."

Soap-Bubble Stories For Children Fanny Barry