In this final episode of season 3, Dr Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen chat about memory and flashback and the ways in which authors can use them to add colour, realism and plot twists to their work. Harking back to our episode about unreliable narrators, we look at the ways in which our memory can play tricks upon us and we examine memory-loss as a plot device. As always we end with a writing exercise from Rachel.
Rachel, Emily and Chris would like to thank everyone who has listened to season 3. Listen out for a new series coming up in 2025.
Endings and Beginnings is the theme of our Christmas workshops this year; how winter stories focus on these and, for similar reasons, on darkness and light. One example, and the first many of us think of, is A Christmas Carol. Its mix of the spooky and the sparkly reflects winter as a time of grieving what’s going and gone – in order to (not instead of) truly realise we have power to use the next chapter for good, even when (especially when) it’s not as long as we’d like.
Whether you’re a Dickens fan or not, celebrate a winter festival or don’t, you probably have personal stories and symbols, personal rituals that matter to you. That’s what inspired one of the exercises in Part 1 of our Christmas workshops, which I’ll be expanding on in our second Christmas workshop next Saturday. It’s called Trusting the Image. It’s something I try to do off the page as well as on, particularly at this time of year: what is important in this story? What is extraneous detail and what is the image at the heart?
Knowing the difference on the page is a way of trusting the reader. In our winter diary, it’s also a way of not overspending our time (or money) and being truly present in the key scenes. Like writing a first novel, Christmas can bring temptations to pack in everything it could possibly contain. But the truth is the reader (and writer) will enjoy the results more with focus, and saving what doesn’t fit to have its own space in the next new book, the next new year.
A delightful beginning this week was bringing Coffee and Creativity to its new monthly ‘home’ at Olympic Studios. This is a monthly space to turn curiosity into creativity, whether you’re building creative and professional writing skills, or writing a new chapter in your professional and personal life story. It was such a pleasure to be part of taking dreams for life, work and art and turning them into realisable goals, through specific habits. Every person in that room left with clarity on how to take something they wanted and create the reality. I’m so looking forward to returning on 10 January. But first, there’s lots of December to come…
Join me this week:
Here are this week’s events. I’d love to see you at any or all of them:
The Writing Room | 11-1pm Mon 9 December FREE for everyone on my mailing list (if you’re reading this, that’s you!). No expectations, no readings, just an open chat box and ten minutes’ (totally optional) chat together at the end. Click here
The Writers’ Gym Monthly Workout | 6.30-7.30pm Tue 10 December A guaranteed boost to your knowledge, enthusiasm, confidence and your word-count. Creative exercises, supportive discussion, specific tips and techniques for the unique writer you are. Free for members: type your discount code where indicated.Click here
The Writers’ Gym Podcast | Wed 11 December The current series of The Writers’ Gym airs every Wednesday with me, Emily Inkpen and Chris Gregory. Find us on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm Wed 11 December Quality writing time and quality company! Grab a coffee and have your creativity recharged with your fellow creatives. Free for members: type your discount code where indicated.Click here
Writing Room EXTRA | 3-5pm Thur 12 December Members only: link in Voxer messages.
Endings and Beginnings: Christmas Writing Workshop | 2-3.30pm Sat 14 December Part two of our Christmas workshops, exploring beginnings and endings. Whether you’re an experienced writer or just beginning, enjoy exercises, discussion, tips and techniques to build your strength, knowledge and creativity 30% off for Writers’ Gym members: type your discount code where indicated.Click here
Writing Feedback Soiree at the Writers’ Gym | 6.30-8pm Monday 16 December Our end-of-year Writing Feedback Soirée is a chance for Writers’ Gym members and new faces alike to share work, set goals for the new year and celebrate their writing. We’ll start with an opening exercise, a writing chat and then those who have submitted their work will receive feedback in a friendly and supportive environment. Free for members: type your discount code where indicated.Click here
You don’t have to be a member to join a Writers’ Gym session. Just sign up for any session. But if you’d like to access our weekly programme for free, and receive 30% off all our other events, email thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com or download a brochure at writersgym.com
For personal training and creative confidence for life, work and art, email info@rachelknightley.com or visit rachelknightley.com
Whether it be ensuring the correct amount of nourishment for your body, exercise, a good sleep or combinations of aspiration and fear, writers tend to need to look after themselves in order to produce their best work. In this episode Dr Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen look at fuel for writing. And coffee…lots of coffee.
One of the greatest signs you’re a writer is you have a great argument for why you’re not a real, proper writer.
If you’re unpublished, the example you might point to of a real writer might be publication.
Once you’re published, the example might be someone writing in a different genre. Or for a different age group. Or the person who encouraged you to write in the first place and what they did/didn’t do/could have done themselves.
If I could roll up all the time and energy every single one of us has ever put into assessing our own reality, and re-channel it into time in our own curiosity, we’d be too busy writing to prove to ourselves we’re writers. That’s why I opened the Writers’ Gym, where everyone can access prompts, support and self-knowledge to build creative confidence and make work-in-progress a regular habit. It’s also why I make a space in every week for Coffee & Creativity, networking and creative co-working.
Bring any work, any questions about moving forward with work-in-progress and wider life: find space to explore your questions; support to think freely and connect with your own ideas. The result? Options, clarity, confidence, creative thinking about what the next steps look like on the page and in life.
This week, I’m very, very happy I’m bringing all my favourite things about sharing the writing space into the ‘real’ world:
Whether you’re utterly new to what I do, or to writing or co-working, or whether this is all familiar territory, I’d love to see you. This is your space to grow connections, build motivation, unlock inspiration and gain confidence through turning curiosity into creativity – whether you’re here for your word-count, or for writing a new chapter in your professional and personal life story.
Congratulations Shravya and Sharanya! | Rachel Knightley Coaching
I am enormously proud to report my LAMDA students Sharanya and Shravya achieved distinction and merit (respectively) for well-researched, passionate speeches on slime and Queen Victoria (not at the same time).
I do love the LAMDA Exams Public Speaking syllabus. It encourages you to celebrate what you truly love and so connect authentically with the audience you want. Writing and speaking in a very accurate, life-affirming nutshell.
Join me this week:
Here are this week’s events, including Coffee & Creativity. You’re very welcome at any or all of them:
The Writing Room | 11-1pm Monday 2 December UK time UK time FREE for everyone on my mailing list (if you’re reading this, that’s you!). No expectations, no readings, just an open chat box and ten minutes’ (totally optional) chat together at the end. Click here.
The Writers’ Gym Podcast | Wednesday 4 November The current series of The Writers’ Gym airs every Wednesday with me, Emily Inkpen and Chris Gregory. Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other podcast platform.
Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm Wednesday 4 November Quality writing time and quality company! Grab a coffee and have a mid-week chat, a write and then another chat with your fellow creatives. Free for members: type your discount code where indicated.Click here
Coffee & Creativity at Olympic Studios, Barnes | 10-11:30am Friday 6 December Grow your connections, build motivation and unlock inspiration in this creative networking event with a difference. Whether you’re building creative and professional writing skills, or writing a new chapter in your professional and personal life story. Click here
Endings and Beginnings: Christmas Writing Workout | 12-1pm Friday 6 December This December, the Writers’ Gym is offering a two-part workshop exploring beginnings and endings in our writing, and our writing lives. Whether you’re an experienced writer or just beginning, enjoy exercises, discussion, tips and techniques to build your strength, knowledge and creativity. Click here
You don’t have to be a member to join a Writers’ Gym session. But if you’d like to access our weekly programme for free, and receive 30% off all our other events, email thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com or download a brochure at writersgym.com
For personal training and creative confidence for life, work and art, email info@rachelknightley.com or visit rachelknightley.com
In this episode Dr Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen discuss prologues and epilogues and how writers can use them to create intriguing openings and satisfying endings for their fiction. As usual we range from novels to TV, film, and audio drama looking at good and not-so-good examples.
A friend of mine used to call them “Brain Weasels”. They scuttle around our thoughts saying terribly articulate, logical things about why and how we’re useless; why and how we’re a total disappointment to ourselves, everything and everyone we love. The more rational and articulate they sound, the more confident they sound, the more we believe them. Because, inside our heads with our own thoughts – as with outside our heads with the words of others – confidence sounds like being right.
Those “You should be better/different/other” thoughts fluttered and swarmed, for me, in a way weasels didn’t. Perhaps that’s why I now describe them as “Should Fairies”. An airborne mythical creature instead of one based on real-life furry beasties. I was never much of a fan of flower fairies. They weren’t furry, which made them (as far as seven-year-old me was concerned) a total waste of time compared with Fluppets, Sylvanian Families or Fuzzy Felt. All that flapping about looking skinny and vacant. So much more fun to be had. But I still have the badge my friend made for herself and her friends saying “Shoot the Brain Weasels” (copyright Alice Macklin). That, as much as the delightful alliteration, is another part of why “Shoot the Shoot Fairies” became such a thing in the Writers’ Gym.
Of course there are “shoulds” worth having. Punctuation, for example. The road signs of our created worlds. The visuals that denote the writer cares about their reader enough to do what they can to achieve their shared aim: getting what’s in the writer’s head smoothly into the reader’s as smoothly and apparently effortlessly as only a smooth road makes possible.
But then there are more sinister shoulds. The ones that replace self-esteem, and therefore curiosity, and ultimately creativity. Anxiety loves a “should”. When I have a writing client asking me for a should – this time period or that? Which version of this line is stronger? This plot development or that? – I follow the should backwards. I ask about the idea it came from, the thing it wants to say (Yes, another example of Say The Thing). I don’t leap in with a help-my-coursework-is-due-tomorrow-style answer (unless that is actually the writer’s situation). Coaching takes a deeper route. It asks the writer to clarify their intentions. It goes with them on the journey. Its interest is the whole story. Which is the only meaningful route to a happy (and by happy, I mean authentic) ending.
Come and Write with Us This Week
The Writing Room | 11-1pm Monday 25 November FREE for everyone on my mailing list (if you’re reading this, that’s you!). No expectations, no readings, just an open chat box and ten minutes’ (totally optional) chat together at the end. Click here.
Riverscribes: Creative Writing | 7-8.30pm Monday 25 November A lively and supportive creative writing forum where you are invited to share, discuss and develop your work. Author of Your Creative Writing Toolkit and two short story collections, Dr Rachel Knightley shares the tools at the heart of fiction and storytelling. Click here
The Writers’ Gym Podcast | Wednesday 27 November The current series of The Writers’ Gym airs every Wednesday with me, Emily Inkpen and Chris Gregory. Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other podcast platform.
Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm Wednesday 27 November Quality writing time and quality company! Grab a coffee and have a mid-week chat, a write and then another chat with your fellow creatives. Free for members: type your discount code where indicated.Click here
Writing Room EXTRA | 3-4.30pm Thursday 28 November Members only: please check your Voxer messages for this link.
You don’t have to be a member to join a Writers’ Gym session. But if you’d like to access our weekly programme for free, and receive 30% off all our other creative workouts, email thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com or download a brochure at writersgym.com.
For PT sessions and creative confidence for life, work and art, email info@rachelknightley.com.
In this episode we look at the role of narrators in fiction and discuss when, how and whether to deploy them. As usual Dr Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen bring examples from their own writing and from the wider worlds of literature and drama.
Rachel would like to point out that it was Arthur Dent’s upper arm that was bruised and not his elbow.
It’s creeping towards the time of year I figure it’s wise to put the calendar at the top of the newsletter. November can feel like a rehearsal for December: getting done all the things we might not get done otherwise, before we have the same but bigger jigsaw to do next month. If you’re looking for permission to show up for your writing (no matter what that is), to take and hold your time, to carve it in digital stone and let life fit around it instead of fitting it around life, here’s that permission:
The Writing Room | 11-1pm Monday 18 November FREE for everyone on my mailing list (if you’re reading this, that’s you!). No expectations, no readings, just an open chat box and ten minutes’ (totally optional) chat together at the end. Click here.
The Writers’ Gym Podcast | Wednesday 20 November The current series of The Writers’ Gym airs every Wednesday with me, Emily Inkpen and Chris Gregory. Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other podcast platform.
Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm Wednesday 20 November Quality writing time and quality company! Grab a coffee and have a mid-week chat, a write and then another chat with your fellow creatives. Free for members: type your discount code where indicated.Click here
Cocktails & Creativity | 5-6.30pm Thursday 21 November Grab a drink, pen or keyboard and join us at the virtual pub! Bella is hosting tonight’s chat, writing time and another chat at the end. Free for members: type your discount code where indicated. Click here Writing Room EXTRA | 11am-1pm Friday 22 November Members only: please check your Voxer messages for this link.
Your Fear: Your Creative Superpower | 1.30-3pm Saturday 23 November Turning the things that haunt us into equally haunting, unique stories is a great way of building creative confidence – and of connecting with your audience. Explore the stories you’re already telling yourself, and how they might just show the direct route from fear of the blank page to the curiosity that fills it. In association with Carrion Events and Hell Tor Festival. Click here.
The power of looking for permission never stops amazing me. The double-bluff of catching myself doing something because I think I have to, or not doing something because I think I’m not allowed to. Time is the biggie – isn’t it always? – and, in this case, the things that are “supposed” to be done first and perfectly. First, at least, exists. Perfect has the virtue of being impossible, so we can let perfect merge with not-quite-ready in our minds and never take that step beyond the comfort zone, never let an idea become a reality. Sometimes I notice it on the page. Other times, I’m looking at examples in my own life: when to call a task finished, in favour of more time in my own head or connecting with others. My promise to to November: be present. Even if it means finishing what needs to be finished in favour of what deserves to be started.
You don’t have to be a member to join a Writers’ Gym session. But if you’d like to access our weekly programme for free, and receive 30% off all our other creative workouts, email thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com or download a brochure at writersgym.com
For PT sessions and creative confidence for life, work and art, email info@rachelknightley.com or visit rachelknightley.com
In this episode we look at reading and how it can help to fire creativity and inspire imagination for authors. As usual, Emily and Rachel bring plenty of stories and anecdotes about ways in which books have inspired them. We end with a look at books about writing.
Books mentioned in this podcast include: Ursula Le Guin: Steering the Craft and Conversations on Writing Stephen King: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft Rachel Knightley: Your Creative Writing Toolkit Margaret Atwood: Negotiating with the Dead David Lynch: Catching the Big Fish John Cleese: Creativity: a short and cheerful guide Sandra Newman & Howard Mittelmark: How Not to Write a Novel
Every Wednesday in The Writers’ Gym messaging group, we have Wednesday Wishes.
This is not for ‘instant world peace’ or ‘being able to fly’ (though both would be fabulous).
It’s for ‘I wish I knew more about…’ ‘I wish I had clarity on…’ and we work through them together, either in one-to-one chat or in the group.
Last Wednesday, one message read ‘I wish it were a better news day!’
This is what I said:
“Okay, yeah, on that.
I wish I will keep my eyes, ears and self-esteem open for the ways I can make my immediate world better.
I wish I see, hear and appreciate the dangers of thinking bigger/more important people will always make the right decisions.
In my own corner, I wish to utilise Say The Thing for myself and those who benefit from me using my voice for good.”
Later I added:
“Despair is always easier. Reinforced sense of what we CAN do is always more useful.
If you, like me, are finding that hard today, know that the world needs what we can put into it now more than ever. Never stop doing what you can do.”
Two days before Bad News Wednesday, I was at Roehampton University lecturing on Life as a Freelance Writer. Talks like this are an opportunity to share all the things I wish someone had known how to talk to me about, back when the idea of what a writing career might look like was so new. The timing, in retrospect, feels like an important reminder. Like creative writing itself, creating our careers means we need to be able to imagine clearly in order to create specifically. If we’re too polite to fate, expect it to know best, put it ahead of imagination, if we believe more in the past than the future, we don’t create paths that are the result of who we are. And then, whoever has more confidence and potentially less empathy/sanity gets to choose. We’ve seen what that looks like. Let’s not emulate it. Let’s keep showing up with our creativity, with our power.
Below the photos are ways to put yourself in a creative space this week…
The Writing Room | 11-1pm Monday 11 November FREE for everyone on my mailing list (if you’re reading this, that’s you!). Time and space to think and write with like-minded people. No expectations, no readings, just an open chat box and unmuting for ten minutes’ (totally optional) chat together at the end. Click here.
Riverscribes | 7-8.30pm Monday 11 November A lively and supportive creative writing forum right by the river at Hammersmith’s wonderful arts venue Riverside Studios. This week we’re exploring character and point of view. Book here.
Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm Wednesday 13 November Quality writing time and quality company! Grab a coffee and have a mid-week chat, a write and then another chat with your fellow creatives. Free for Writers’ Gym members: type your discount code where indicated.Book here.
The Writers’ Gym Podcast | Wednesday 13 November The current series of The Writers’ Gym, where I’m joined by Emily Inkpen and Chris Gregory, airs a new episode every Wednesday. Type The Writers’ Gym into any platform, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts, to join the conversation. Writing Room EXTRA | 11am-1pm Friday 15 November Members only: please check your Voxer messages for this link.
You don’t have to be a member to join a Writers’ Gym session. But if you’d like to access our weekly programme for free, and receive 30% off all our other creative workouts:
Email thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com or download a brochure at writersgym.com
For PT sessions and creative confidence for life, work and art, email info@rachelknightley.com
