"Colors Answer Feeling" by Liz Flaherty

Colors answer feeling in man... - John Sterling

I think a lot about color. Life's Too Short for White Walls got its title from the Flaherty living room, kitchen, and hallway being painted off-white for way more years than I could bear. Actually, after the first week of what seemed like acres of blandness, I'd have been okay to paint again. Now our living room and hallway are gray, and the kitchen and dining area a welcoming bright blue, all with white trim. I love every bright inch of it. 

Although I love most colors--I could illustrate life from a 24-box of Crayolas--blue is my favorite. Which blue calls loudest to me changes from day to day. I had a couple of entire seasons when everything I wore, wrote, or decorated with was teal. This Christmas, we had a white tree with royal blue lights and garland. When it was lit, the gray wall behind the tree became a soft lavender in response. I could hardly bear to take the tree down. 

I love the peacefulness of earth tones, but when orange and scarlet and shades of yellow light up autumn, it lends a bump of pure joy to that peace. 

I sew. I make quilts, but I also make things like coasters and potholders because they're quick and easy and I like to give them away. Mostly, though, I love the colors that find their way to my cutting table and arrange themselves in unexpected ways.

I took a picture the other day of a tree in the yard, standing tall and stark against the snow. There was no color in it at all other than black and white. And yet...

Colors are like our stories. They change with the light of day, with our moods, with the palette of words we tell them on. 

The working title of my work-in-progress is Pieces of Blue. Maggie North loves blue, especially cobalt and its closest cousins, and the color shows up everywhere in her story. So does the stark black and white of trees against the snow, the flat gray of a still lake in winter, and...oh, look, cardinals...

Like the work we do as writers, there is joy and unexpectedness and occasional failure in putting colors together. I wrote last week about being a lucky writer, which I am, and now here's another reason!