This week at the Writers’ Gym

Before this week’s calendar, a look ahead to our autumn programme:

Fiction, Memoir and Truth Afternoon Retreat | 3pm-6.30pm Saturday 28 September 
A truthful story is about so much more than ‘what happened’: whether we’re exploring the stories that made us who we are or imagining the versions of ourselves resulting from paths untaken, fiction and memoir are equally magical to write. Join Dr Rachel Knightley for an afternoon retreat at the Writers’ Gym and see where your stories go next. 30% off for Writers’ Gym members. Click here

Short-form Fiction Writing with Dr Rachel Knightley | 1-2.30pm Tuesday 10 September
Part of our six session course, Rachel will take you through the process of creating and submitting your short fiction. Artistically and professionally, this course is the place to build your knowledge, deepen your confidence and increase your enjoyment in your creative writing both as a medium and within a writing career.  Save and book the full six weeks: email us at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com, or to book week by week click here. 30% off for Writers’ Gym members. 

This Week at the Writers’ Gym:

The Writing Room | 11-1pm Monday 2 September 
FREE for everyone on my mailing list (if you’re reading this, then 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’ chat at the end. Click here

Sponsored Write Interview | 12pm Wednesday 4 September 
This year’s page is now open for Green Ink Sponsored Write for Macmillan Cancer Support. Rachel will be in conversation with Writers’ Gym staff member and Sponsored Writer, Isabella Barbieri on Instagram Live: @drrachelknightley @jointhewritersgym

Coffee & Creativity | 1-2:30pm Wednesday 4 September 
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. Click here

Writing Room EXTRA | 11-1pm Friday 6 September 
Members only: please check your Voxer messages for this link.

Members and VIP Members: please use your exclusive codes on any online workshops to activate your discount. Forgotten/lost your code? No problem: just email info@rachelknightley.com or ask Rachel in the Voxer app.

Download a Writers’ Gym membership brochure at writersgym.com or email thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com

Listen to The Writers’ Gym podcast with Rachel Knightley, Emily Inkpen and Chris Gregory on Apple, Spotify or any of your favourite platforms.

Public Speaking Confidence comes from what we want to say and who we really are.

One of my earliest memories of my own public speaking training is a leadership training course at a national youth club event. Two of the teenagers that ran the international executive committee opened and closed the weekend with sketches that seemed to suggest one tiny child, played by one of them, was a natural-born leader and the other wasn’t. The final scene of the playlets showed the children’s abilities the other way around as they grew up. The message was ‘There’s no such thing as a natural-born leader’. It was very helpful for me as a very shy teenager to hear that: what’s gone before doesn’t equal what’s ahead. We grow. We choose. We grow more. We choose more.

My LAMDA student Monica, who has just received her distinction for Bronze Medal (Grade 6) Public Speaking, is – to use the profession term – a zillion zillion times more confident a speaker than I was at that age. However, two things about Monica’s courage and thoughtfulness in the preparation of her speeches reminded me of that message I’d so needed to hear back then – and that I believe we’re all better for hearing, even if that just means reminding ourselves.

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1. Everybody’s just as scared as you are. So, welcome the audience to your space.

When I talk about ‘welcoming the audience to your space’, it’s a reminder they want a good relationship with you and what you’re here to say. It’s always a relationship, even when it’s just you and the camera. Monica worked with me over Zoom for her speeches and her growing confidence came from her growing clarity of ‘who’ we’d decided her imaginary audience was of which I was a part. Speaking to an audience isn’t about proving ourselves. It’s about connecting. Monica did this beautifully not just because she picked brilliant topics she cared about (more of that in a minute) but because she dealt with any worries and concerns by focusing not on herself but on her objective: sharing with someone who needed to hear what she had to say. That’s how a speaker deals with their own insecurities and the audience’s at the same time.

2. It’s not about being interesting. It’s about being interested.

This is one of my First Draft Commandments in Your Creative Writing Toolkit because it’s the difference between finishing an authentic draft and standing in your own way by mentally bringing the audience too soon. But it doesn’t stop at the first draft. When Monica wrote her speeches authentically (from her own beliefs and interests) and specifically (using knowledge she backed up with references, research and experience; using vocabulary suited to the imagined audience’s age and interests), she could show up with her whole self. It’s not putting on a mask to keep yourself separate, it’s utilising who you are and what you know to reach out and make someone else feel connected.

Read about communication and performance coaching here.

My new audio drama ask whether we are more than the stories we tell ourselves

In approximately 1997 when I would have been 15 or 16, I attended Limmud (the Hebrew for ‘to learn’) – a music, culture, literature and All The Things I Like event – for the first time.

I put up my hand at a prominent author’s Q&A and asked why being Jewish wasn’t ever just one aspect of a characters’ lives in his books. It was always the most important or visible thing about them. It was never a thing, but always the thing. That author said there was no point in them being Jewish in the story unless that was the most important thing about them. I didn’t disagree aloud, however strongly I felt this was, at best, the opposite of my own experience of what Judaism being a fundamental part of my identity felt like. The best Q&As are, after all, Q&As. They are not ‘This is more of a comment than a question’ territory. I wasn’t prepared to (or brave enough to?) turn it into that. I listened to his answer and saw it as his answer, and knew it didn’t have to be mine. 

But I continue to disagree, and to feel that Judaism never seen as one of many things about who a character is in themselves is a significant missed opportunity. 

How important something is, how fundamental it is to who you are, doesn’t always equate with how visible it is. 

Thinking the opposite, or not thinking about it at all, is why those of us who are have that permanent background exhaustion that goes a little deeper every time the BBC posts a picture of ultra-orthodox, male Jews praying in an instantly visible way whenever they talk about anything Jewish; whether that picture is representative of the story or not. The tiredness of having to say (or live with not saying) every day that just as a government doesn’t equal a country, just as a country doesn’t equal a diaspora, just as a diaspora doesn’t equal everyone agreeing about everything any more than a family equals identical units who agree about everything… that I am just as Jewish as any first-in-the-Shutterstock-images choice the news makes. I am just as real a picture of what my identity means. 

I don’t directly explore this in Winter Spring, my new audio drama coming out on the Alternative Stories platform on 13 September. Instead, I do something I think there’s far more of a call for, if we really do want society to be about living together rather than apart.

Alice Winter, her brother Ash Winter and cousin Harris Spring are the third generation of a family property company, founded by their German immigrant grandfather who taught them the one thing the world would always need was good landlords. Three generations later, in order to survive, Ash has turned the business into an estate agency: the thing their grandfather hated most. A new tenant, only known as Poppy, moves into the top floor of what she discovers used to be their family home. Alice lives in the other flat with Kit, the imaginary friend she’s had since childhood. As stories of future and past fight to be ‘true’, the story asks are we more than the stories we tell ourselves?

None of this is autobiographical in its specifics, but it’s ethically autobiographical. It’s what I inherited not just from my parents and grandparents but from the songs, the stories and the ceremonies around them that have shaped our life cycles for two thousand years.

Poppy doesn’t pick up on Ash’s Jewish identity through looking at him; she gets it through listening to his stories, his history, his view of the world. The connection they begin as a result makes her rethink what being an estate agent means (based on me facing one of my own real-life prejudices: someone who is now a really good friend I at first thought had to be fake, the depth to which we got on had to be a trick because he was an estate agent. I discounted our growing up in the same town, knowing the same places and laughing at the same geographical in-jokes because of my prejudice. That friend was the first person I shared the idea for this script with).

From escaping domestic violence to the relationships we have when stories offer us imaginary friends, Winter Spring is about what it means for a story to be true. Like audio drama itself, the stories we carry our truest stories without pictures. It’s about remembering that and be ready to listen – to others’ stories and to our own. Because they can all be true.

Winter Spring by Rachel Knightley, an Alternative Stories production, will be released on 13 September. Watch this space.

www.rachelknightley.com

This week at the Writers’ Gym

Grab a workout for your word-count with us this week…

The Writing Room | 11-1pm Monday 26 August 
FREE for everyone on my mailing list (if you’re reading this, then 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’ chat at the end. Click here

Sponsored Write Interview | 1pm Wednesday 28 August 
This year’s page is now open for Green Ink Sponsored Write for Macmillan Cancer Support. This week, hear Writers’ Gym staff member and Sponsored Writer, Isabella Barbieri, in conversation with Writers’ Gym member and first-time Sponsored Writer Stacey Michelle Warner on Instagram Live: @jointhewritersgym 

Writing Room EXTRA | 11-1pm Friday 30 August 
Members only: please check your Voxer messages for this link.

Members and VIP Members: please use your exclusive codes on any online workshops to activate your discount. Forgotten/lost your code? No problem: just email info@rachelknightley.com or ask Rachel in the Voxer app.

Download a Writers’ Gym membership brochure at writersgym.com or email thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com

Listen to The Writers’ Gym podcast with Rachel Knightley, Emily Inkpen and Chris Gregory on Apple, Spotify or any of your favourite platforms.

Why the first response to ‘Any tips on…’ will never be advice.

The happiest, most relieved expression I have potentially ever seen in my life, I saw this week in the face of a coaching client in response to my offering to wave an invisible magic wand.

We’re both adults. We both have MAs in Creative Writing. But she’s a member of the Writers’ Gym so she understands exactly what the magic wand’s power is.

‘If I waved my magic wand and removed [thing you think you’re ‘supposed’ to do as a writer, that’s currently stopping you from enjoying writing’] from the universe until your first draft is finished and ready to edit, how would you feel?’

The answer was clear from her face; from the way the tension left her shoulders. 

But I didn’t bring out the magic wand even then. I brought out something else first. 

I often joke (the way we do about things that are absolutely true) my invisible magic wand is the most significant professional tool I ever use. But, really, just as important to the process is this small piece of paper:

I’ve given them to people in person, I’ve ‘passed’ them through Zoom screens to different towns, countries and continents (there’s even one in Australia) where the recipient writes/draws it on their end of the call in whatever note, banner or journal form speaks to them. It’s always quite a long way into the session, usually very near the end. It tends to come from conversations that began with the client asking: 

‘What are your tips on…’ 

‘I need you to help me decide…’

The question might be about a career move, or a choice between jobs, homes, lifestyles, relationships. Maybe it’s taking command of a schedule to finally put the time and space it takes to gradually create the life, work or art they want in a way that has felt impossible before. 

Here’s why the answer doesn’t begin with tips, or advice. 

Here’s the good news and bad news that can feel frustrating at first but in the end is the path to true confidence, and true freedom:

You are the expert on you. And you listen best to that expert when you have the support and the courage to stay listening to them long enough to hear them, understand their thinking, clarify their objectives and create a plan to achieve them. The coaching conversation is a chance to listen to that expert, with support, structure and new questions to implement what we learn. 

That’s why writing coaching isn’t just about the writing. It’s about the writer: getting the writer into the best position in their life and mind to do the writing they want.

Only when I know want you want (in this client’s case, ‘I want to finish my novel and I want to enjoy the writing process that gets me there’) and what you fear (‘What if the fact that I find plotting boring/difficult/scary means I’m not a real writer and shouldn’t be doing this?’) that we decide together what needs to be given, or taken away, to free you to do exactly that.

That’s the permission. And – whisper it quietly – only you can give yourself that, even if it’s my writing on the piece of paper.

Then I wave the wand. And then the visible tools come out. The deadlines for material, the editing techniques and, yes, where appropriate the technical tips and examples from existing writing that mean you’re not reinventing the wheel before you go on your unique journey. The writing tools are visible in a way the magic wand isn’t. But, like good writing, everything begins with the courage to be specific about who your character is (in non-fiction as much as fiction, starting with you the writer!) and what they want. The more specific you grow in what you want to create, the quicker we wave the wand and start it happening.

Read about writing coaching here or join Rachel every Monday between 11am and 1pm for a free co-working session in The Writing Room. Links come out on this newsletter every Monday at 10am, an hour before the session starts.

There are two more places available for the Writers’ Gym Afternoon Retreat in central London on Saturday 24 August. Any questions? Email thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com

The Writers’ Gym podcast returns in Autumn. Listen to previous episodes on Apple, Spotify or any of your favourite platforms.

This week at the Writers’ Gym

Grab a workout for your word-count with us this week…

The Writing Room | 11-1pm Monday 19 August 
FREE for everyone on my mailing list (if you’re reading this, then 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’ chat at the end. Click here

Sponsored Write Interview | 5.30pm Monday 19 August 
This year’s page is now open for Green Ink Sponsored Write for Macmillan Cancer Support, the annual writing event hosted by Rachel and the Writers’ Gym. Hear Rachel in conversation with author, screenwriter, paranormal expert and fellow Sponsored Writer Lisa Morton on Rachel’s Instagram, @drrachelknightley

Coffee & Creativity | 1-2:30pm Thursday 22 August 
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. Click here

Writing Room EXTRA | 11-1pm Friday 23 August 
Members only: please check your Voxer messages for this link.

Afternoon Retreat IN PERSON AND ONLINE at the Writers’ Gym | 3-6.30pm Saturday 24 August 
Join Dr Rachel Knightley for a day of tutored writing workshops, quality writing time and one-to-one coaching. Whatever your creative and technical writing life needs, you’ll come away from our Afternoon Writing Retreat with practical steps to turn your dreams into goals and goals into realisable habits. 30% Off for Writers’ Gym members: type your discount code where indicated. Click here

Members and VIP Members: please use your exclusive codes on any online workshops to activate your discount. Forgotten/lost your code? No problem: just email info@rachelknightley.com or ask Rachel in the Voxer app.

Download a Writers’ Gym membership brochure at writersgym.com or email thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com

Listen to The Writers’ Gym podcast with Rachel Knightley, Emily Inkpen and Chris Gregory on Apple, Spotify or any of your favourite platforms.

This week at the Writers’ Gym

Grab a workout for your word-count with us this week…

The Writing Room | 11-1pm Monday 12 August 
FREE for everyone on my mailing list (if you’re reading this, then 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’ chat at the end. Click here

Sponsored Write Interview | 5.30pm Tuesday 13 August 
This year’s page is now open for Green Ink Sponsored Write for Macmillan Cancer Support, the annual writing event hosted by Rachel and the Writers’ Gym. Hear Rachel in conversation with author, journalist and fellow Sponsored Writer John-Paul Flintoff on Rachel’s Instagram, @drrachelknightley 

Coffee & Creativity | 1.15-2:45pm Thursday 15 August 
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. Click here

Friday Writing Workout | 12-1pm Friday 16 August
The perfect creative start to the weekend: boost your confidence and your word-count with a lunch-hour writing workout. Whether you’re an experienced writer or just beginning, enjoy exercises, discussion, tips and techniques to build your strength, knowledge and creativity. Free for Writers’ Gym members: type your discount code where indicated. Click here

Members and VIP Members: please use your exclusive codes on any online workshops to activate your discount. Forgotten/lost your code? No problem: just email info@rachelknightley.com or ask Rachel in the Voxer app.

Download a Writers’ Gym membership brochure at writersgym.com or email thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com

Listen to The Writers’ Gym podcast with Rachel Knightley, Emily Inkpen and Chris Gregory on Apple, Spotify or any of your favourite platforms.

How does it help the reader? Let me count the ways…

An extract from my work-in-progress.

Let’s say there’s a paragraph.

It might end, it might begin. Some of the sentences might take longer than others, so the text goes conveniently over to the next line and gives me a convenient example to share with you.

Good, that worked. Now I have enough text to explain.

There is no maximum or minimum length to any paragraph. You take as long to say what you need to say as suits your meaning. Just don’t take longer than that.

Not for its own sake.

Why not?

Because the writer and the reader come to the page for the same reason: 

Meaning.

Help the meaning along all you can with your words. Avoid the opposite: leaving words in meaning’s way, for it to trip over.

Oh, by the way, have you noticed the gap between these lines? Aren’t they beautiful? Double-spacing is my favourite. It helps your reader almost as much as your words do. Sometimes submission guidelines give you other options but double-spacing never hurt anyone.

But this is Substack, and I am conforming to its submission guidelines. It knows the formatting that works best for it. This above all else: to submission guidelines be true.

But let’s say you’re writing a novel. Because, let’s face it, you probably are. Or actively not writing one. Which is the same thing in terms of what’s useful to you here. Where was I? Oh yes. Whether anyone is talking or not, paragraphs in double-spaced text work like this: indented on the left; continuing until there’s a reason to start a new one. Or until there’s nothing else to say.

Keep a layout document that follows these rules as an example. Or, better still, create your own. Don’t worry what goes in it. Remember the golden rule of unblocking yourself as a writer: Think On the Page. Because no matter how good your formatting is – or how good a writer you are – you cannot edit what you haven’t written.

Thank you for supporting this newsletter. I do hope you enjoy this preview of my non-fiction work-in-progress, The Creative Writer.

If there’s a particular aspect of writing you’d like me to address here, let me know!

Remember, too, as a paid subscriber you receive 30% off Writers’ Gym events. Email thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com to receive your discount code.

When one door closes, sometimes (just sometimes), a far shiner one opens.

Last week, I thought I’d be telling you about a small, sold-out Afternoon Writing Retreat coming up three Saturdays from now. I thought it was going to be at my local club, where the size of the room meant places were very strictly limited, so selling out pre-newsletter had been very nice but not a great surprise. 

The surprise came in the form of an email I got last week from that venue. It told me they had now decided they would be closing for the week of my booking and apologised if that caused me any inconvenience. 

Reader, it did cause me inconvenience. 

But it also made me realise what being unceremoniously dumped is always really good for making us realise. It made me realise I could do better. It made me think what better could look like.

A new home-from-home

My other home-from-home, a club on Dean Street in central London, has been absolutely wonderful. Both in commiserating me for the reasons for the urgent venue change and in helping me make the changeover smooth and positive for my writers in all the ways I and they could think of. 

The Afternoon Writing Retreat on Saturday 24 August still begins at 3pm, in even more beautiful surroundings and with a few extra places at the workshop table. There’s also the option of joining online. 

If you’ve been wondering about what the Writers’ Gym feels like to be a part of, here’s the perfect time and place to find out. 

Opening shinier doors

Nobody ever wishes for a door to shut in their face. But that means it’s rare for us to look as hard as we might for shinier options. Ones that might actually be better for us, and us for them. A door often has to shut for us to notice the shinier ones were right there, all the time. 

All of which has been a great reminder to me of how much less rewarding autopilot really is than taking the time to ask myself:

What’s good about where I am?

Where do I want to go next?

What’s one small step I can take today towards where I want to be?

I hope you enjoy Thinking on the Page about life, work or art in response to these questions. And if you want more of what Think on the Page can do for your creative confidence in writing and in life, the downloadable summer course is now available to enjoy in your own time right here.

Join the Afternoon Writing Retreat, 
3pm Saturday 24 August

Download Think On the Page

This week at the Writers’ Gym

Grab any writing workout this week, or download Think on the Page for six weeks of creative confidence exercises to develop your writing and your creative confidence for life off the page too.

Our sold-out Writing Retreat on 24 August has moved to a fabulous new (and bigger!) home in central London, so have released six more places. Join us here.

The Writing Room | 11-1pm Monday 5 August 
FREE for everyone on my mailing list (if you’re reading this, then 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’ chat at the end. Click here

Sponsored Write Interview | 10am Wednesday 7 August 
This year’s page is now open for Green Ink Sponsored Write for Macmillan Cancer Support, the annual writing event hosted by Rachel and the Writers’ Gym. Hear Rachel in conversation with fellow Sponsored Writer and creative writing lecturer Alex Davis on Rachel’s Instagram, @drrachelknightley

Coffee & Creativity | 1-2:30pm Wednesday 7 August
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. Click here

Writing Room EXTRA | 11-1pm Friday 9 August 
Members only: please check your Voxer messages for this link.

Members and VIP Members: please use your exclusive codes on any online workshops to activate your discount. Forgotten/lost your code? No problem: just email info@rachelknightley.com or ask Rachel in the Voxer app.

Download a Writers’ Gym membership brochure at writersgym.com or email thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com

Listen to The Writers’ Gym podcast with Rachel Knightley, Emily Inkpen and Chris Gregory on Apple, Spotify or any of your favourite platforms