Today, our creative writing prompt/exercise is all about using language to describe temperature in relation to the weather.

But can be quite difficult to convey the experience of extreme heat or cold in your writing without resorting to clichés.

So here’s your writing challenge for today: Find another way to express very hot or very cold. Try to avoid:

• Cold as ice
• White as snow
• We’re having a cold snap
• I’m freezing
• The weather is roasting
• It’s like an oven out there
• Phew, it’s a scorcher today
• Very anything (there’s usually a better word to be used!)

You might begin by listing lots of words associated with hot or cold (I suggest you settle on one or the other for this exercise). Your trusty Thesaurus might help here.

If you’ve chosen to write about ‘cold’, tell me about someone you know (or a character you have invented) who is facing a challenge associated with the cold (perhaps the perils associated with handling a frozen object).

You may just keep it simple and write the instructions for building a snowman with your bare hands – but if you can, avoid the word ‘cold’.

Try 300 words of fact or fiction and see where you go…

I’m fortunate to live in a temperate climate here in Ireland where we don’t have too many extremes to deal with (although below freezing temperatures INSIDE my garden polytunnels were a recent chilly experience, despite it being spring). Summer doesn’t get too hot here, either, thankfully.

Keep writing, enjoy yourself, and try to take pleasure in the process. If writing is not giving you a warm glow, you’re either not doing it right or you’d be better off choosing a different pastime!

Call back next week, as always, 5pm (Dublin time/GMT) on Wednesday for another prompt to help trigger some new creative writing.