Fi Phillips

Spring is sprung de grass is riz I wonder where de boidies iz It's true! Spring is finally upon us. The grass is going rampant in our garden. However, the noisy pigeons that sit on the roof of our house and coo loudly first thing on a morning leave me in no doubt where de blummin' boidies iz. Facebook is in the news again (when isn't Facebook in the news?) about the Cambridge Analytica 'situation' but I'm more interested in how Facebook's algorithm changes will affect my page's visibility. Fauzia Burke discusses just this topic on the Writers Digest website in How Upcoming Facebook Updates Will Impact Authors . I've also come across a brilliant article on Three Different Ways to Approach Blogging as a Novelist from Aliventures. Finally, I've a video for you from the Creative Penn on how to find time to write. Enjoy the Spring.

This is how March started where I live - snow. My dog loved it. My teens loved it (and the resulting days off school). Being self employed at home, it wasn't quite so popular with me. Theoretically, as a home worker the weather shouldn't affect me but with the teens home two days out of the last week, my dog constantly nagging to go out so she could roll in the snow (and then gift it to the rest of the house by shaking herself over anyone nearby and jumping on the sofas), and the fact that our unfinished house isn't the easiest to keep warm, I was a tad disturbed and disgruntled by the plentiful supply of snow. Having said that, the snow is almost gone and today is grey and drizzly. Maybe the snow wasn't so bad after all. This month, I launched the website for my new copy and content writing (with a side order of social media) business. You can find the website here . I'm also on Facebook and Twitter , and posted my first introductory blog post on the day...

Back in January and February, I returned to an old love of mine - acting. It was a small part in a pantomime, and it's definitely not the most attractive I've ever looked, but I enjoyed it immensely. It wasn't until after the show had finished that I realised how acting on the stage had sharpened my scriptwriting skills, reminding me how my plays felt to perform and looked to the audience. Fellow writer Nick Cross came to a similar conclusion recently. His blog post Can Acting Make You A Better Writer?  appears on the Notes from the Slushpile site. Have a look.

This month's photo inspiration is a snapshot from my family life. I saved this photo on my computer as 'shopping trip' but it could be so much more. What do you think? What clues can you find to a new story?

After an introductory month to my new role as freelance copywriter in February, I'm now set firmly on the course of this fresh career path. With plenty of work on the way, I'm enjoying the challenge of writing for a different arena. Writing to order isn't new for me. Plenty of my murder mystery plays were commissioned by customers. Being economic with time and wordcount, however, is something that I haven't had to deal with much in the past but it's a new development that I'm relishing. Murdering The Text This year, I will have been writing murder mystery plays for twenty years. Twenty years! How did that happen? To celebrate this impressive anniversary, I'm writing a new, as yet untitled murder mystery that relates back to the original script that started this journey. I already have a cast, a setting and a decade (the 1980s). I'll let you know when the script is finished and ready to be performed. Shadowbinder I'm still working on the re...

At the beginning of the year, my camera broke. Then a couple of days later, the camera on my phone stopped working. Thankfully, our visit to Venice didn't suffer as my husband took his new posh, multi lens camera with him. It produces incredible shots but I find it too large and bulky to carry around with me. I wanted something that I could have with me on the off chance that I saw something I wanted to photograph. My husband came to the rescue with a surprise mother's day gift, a neat, little digital camera that is small enough to fit in a jacket pocket. I've been trying it out, and all its settings, ever since. The result of one such experiment is this. What do you think? Spooky? Inspirational? What story does it bring to mind?

Spring starts this month (20th March in the UK) but there are already daffodils and crocuses in the garden, and birds chasing each other around in an amorous fashion. I like spring. Seeing the buds on the trees and petals poking through the earth makes the world seem a happier place to live in. With the milder winters in the UK, I'm not sure if any of our animals hibernate anymore, but spring always feels like the land (and my motivation) is waking up. Writing Not a great deal to report here except that I'm getting on with what I was doing in February. I initially had a plotline for the whole trilogy but after making so many changes to novel 1, I had to rethink the entire story arc. I discussed part of the process of doing this in Cut, Paste, File Away and now I'm dipping back into novel 1 to make sure all the clues needed for the big reveal at the end of book 3 are in place. Literary Agents I'm still waiting on hearing from a couple of agents. The latest ...

The idea for this month's writing exercise sprouted on a weekend trip to a place called Bodelwyddan Castle. This is what got me thinking. My children dashed into the maze ahead of us and disappeared from view. We could hear them running along passageways, with the occasional glimpse of them through a gap in a hedge, but we didn't meet up again until we found the exit. Imagine a maze. What does it look like? What purpose does it serve? Is there a centre or just an exit? Is the entrance also the exit? Are the walls of the maze made from hedges, bricks or some other material? Is it open to the sky or enclosed by a roof? Is it joyful or frightening? Are there distractions along the way? Are there statues in your maze? Can you see the light of the sky? Do you cross waterways? Are there clues in your maze? Go on. Tell me about your maze.

Last month was manic for me, and not in a creative way. Real life took me away from my writing and I completely forgot to give you a photo inspiration post. This month, I'm giving you two photographs to make up for it. Written on the back of this photo - Nov 1946, left to right Peggy, Margaret, Marie. Written on the back of this photo - Nov 1946, left to right Billy, Margaret, Peggy. These two photographs are from a collection I have of unknown faces. I'm sure if my mother was still alive, she could tell me who they were but in her absence, I can only surmise that these were friends of hers or her family. Which photo are you drawn to and which face within that photo? Personally, I can't see much of a family resemblance between them. I know that Billy is Margaret's child. I have no idea where this was taken but I assume that it's somewhere in Yorkshire, England. What do you think? Was this a trip out with family? Was it summer time? 1946 was th...

At this time of year, the crows always return to nest in the trees at my children's school. The street that the school sits on is lined on both sides with hefty horse chestnut trees. The crows reside in each of those trees, a community of raggedy nests and cawing neighbours.  They're intelligent birds, majestic when seen in flight. They have ties to Norse mythology and Native American legends . They're also survivors, adapting to the spreading reach of mankind. Yet for all this, they are often dismissed as villains or henchmen. We have books about rabbits , otters , and owls , but crows rarely figure as heroes.  Years ago, a fellow member of a writing class told me a story about crows. Nancy was quite elderly by this time, American with a slow, drawling accent. She and her husband had been posted in Burma for some years (her husband had some bureaucratic role). In the grounds of their home, an old, immense tree had housed a community of crows. She call...

I recently joined the 'Creative Every Day' challenge. The theme for March is 'nest' and I decided to take it literally. I wanted to try my hand at making a nest charm and let's face it, I rarely need an excuse to make myself a new piece of jewellery. The eggs in my nest are three freshwater pearls. I've teamed the nest charm with green aventurine round beads, prehnite cube beads and flowers made from amazonite and rose quartz. I think the result is rather spring-like. I just need some spring weather to go with it.