Fi Phillips

This month's exercise is one I was set about two decades ago by the wonderful poet and my then writing instructor, Pat Borthwick . Thanks, Pat, for the inspiration. Choose a colour. Make a list of things that you associate with it it. For example, Red - lipstick, blood, silk. Blue - sky, air, calm. White - cloud, age, daisy. As you can see, these can be material things, feelings or concepts. List as many things as you can think of. Now, using your list, all or just some of what you have written, write a short passage. It can be a poem or prose, even dialogue. Here's my green passage: Calm. That's how I felt, breathing in the sweet scent of freshly cut grass, my bare feet damp with the newly released sap as I crossed the lawn. 

I'm a very visual person. What I mean by this is that what I see affects me the greatest out of all my senses - colours, the way things move, the contrasts between light and darkness. All of these capture my attention. I'm a big kid for rainbows and flowers. It's therefore not a surprise that Pinterest appealed to me as soon as I came across it. This summer, I'm taking up the challenge set by Christina Katz  to set up colour boards on Pinterest, collections of images that excite and inspire me. Click on the images and have a look. You can also find the board for my novel ' Haven Falling ' on there too. If you're a visual person like me, Pinterest can be a wonderful place to source inspiration for your writing.

I can feel it setting in. The greyness of the season is slowly creeping into my bones. I need colour, and plenty of it. Red berries Peach roses Yellow daffodils Blue skies

Do you colour co-ordinate your Christmas home? It seems to be the fashionable thing to do. The magazines provide us with themes too - Scandinavian red and white, Jewel inspired teal and gold - and I have to say that I'm very impressed by the efforts some of my friends go to in the styling of their Christmas homes. TV presenters share their festive decorating secrets with us. Everyone seems to be in on the plan to make Christmas as stylish and colour-matched as possible. The adult in me wants to buy into the whole festive interior design experience but the child in me feels differently. The child in me delights in an overload of clashing, vibrant, wonderful colour. In past years, golden angels have sat beside an orange bauble which in turn hung over glittering, red tinsel on our tree. I refuse to keep back decorations made over the years by my children simply because they don't match each other (or anything else in the room). When I was young, Christmas was a feast for a...