Feelings

This week, our way into writing is going to be via our emotions

Think back to times when you felt very happy. Make notes on three of these times. Then decide on one which you will write about at greater length. Think about how you can get across the feeling; doesn't just have to be you, the narrator, telling us: show us, maybe through what you do, how you behave, what you wear - even through what the weather was like! (Fancy term alert coming up: when a writer makes the weather mirror the mood of the main character, it's called the pathetic fallacy.)

The piece can be memoir or, as ever, for those who prefer to write fiction, it can be a story.

Then, if you have time, it would be an interesting exercise to choose a very different emotion - sadness, say, or anger, or spite - and do the same with that.

The Scream, by Edward Munch