From Spooky Season to Sparkly Season: November-December at the Writers’ Gym

The clocks may have gone back last weekend but my personal clock resets tomorrow: from Spooky Season to Sparkly Season. As a child I loved winter at school: the bright multicolour of baubles and tinsel, the multicultural stories (because we didn’t just hear about Christmas in assembly; we heard the Chanukah stories I heard at home, and the stories of the festivals classmates of other cultures and religions celebrated too – even if I got told off for saying I wanted to act in the school play but not sing the words of carols I didn’t believe: personally, I would not have told me off for that!). 

Then, as a teenager, Spooky Season was when the gothic and ghost stories and the witchy/rock vibe I loved also became a shared celebration. There’s a decorative spider I bought at sixteen when I visited family in America, when such things weren’t mainstream in the UK yet (maybe I brought the spirit of it back in my suitcase?). That spider was in a cupboard for the years I spent believing I ‘should’ grow out of such things and be an ‘adult’. Until I realised grown-ups were like unicorns, gryphons and other things along those lines: a beautiful idea, but they don’t exist. Adulthood if it were to mean anything – at least anything meaningful – would be about growing into who I truly am. That spider now lives on our bedroom curtain rail, all year round. Skulls, too, have always spoken to me of connection to past and future; the ultimate acknowledgement of Hineini (“I am here”/”here I am”). All this was about finding my place in stories and how we can authentically share them; that, while we may not literally believe someone else’s story (or, potentially, our own) we are richer for knowing them.

September
It’s been over a month since Winter Spring joined the Alternative Stories podcast. It was one of the harder things to get into the world because although I heard what my producer loved about it, what the cast loved about it, even what I loved about it – all were less real in my head than my memories of ‘just don’t bother’ feedback I’d had on it before. I’m sharing this with you because what I didn’t know then, and what every time I share it I remind myself a little more deeply, is even when any piece of writing is cooked instead of raw, even when (as it is now and wasn’t then) it’s found itself, even then it still won’t be right for everyone. The person who didn’t like it probably still wouldn’t like it. But you might. If you’re curious about the things I’m curious about, then you will. Then you’re who I’m speaking to; you’re the audience who will connect. What that is, by the way, is an exploration of how the stories we tell ourselves – the ones we grow up with, the ones we write in our heads to make sense of ourselves and the world – and their power to help us grow into new versions of ourselves or hold us back in old versions. Surviving domestic violence, using the cultural and religious stories of youth as an estate agency business manual, and sharing a flat with the imaginary friend you had in childhood: are we more than the stories we tell ourselves? 

Read about Winter Spring in Jewish Renaissance here. 
Listen to my interview here.

October
Last week I celebrated the first birthday of my short story cycle Twisted Branches with Writing a Short Story Cycle at Olympic Studios. It was my first event to have participants on three continents and was a pleasure to recap how the connected stories affected each other’s identity for the characters themselves and for me in creating them. It traces the same theme as Winter Spring, the power of stories and how they shape our self-perception and the lives we do and don’t let ourselves live as a result. Read Twisted Branches here.

So that was spooky season. Now, we enter sparkly season. 

November
I’m continuing my residency at Riverside Studios with Creative Writing Toolkit on Mondays 11 and 25 November. Then, on Saturday 23 November, join me for a creative writing and creative confidence workshop in association with Hell Tor Festival: Your Fear: Your Creative Superpower. We’ll be turning the things that haunt us into connection with our audience, whether that’s prose, screenwriting, public speaking or any other form of self-expression.

December
If you’re looking for feedback on your work-in-progress and a sense of what it’s like to be a member of the Writers’ Gym community, join us for our Christmas Feedback Soirée, or for one or both of our two-part Christmas Writing Workout, Beginnings and Endings (Friday 6 and Saturday 14 December: links coming soon).

But there’s no need to wait: Our regular programme of The Writing Room, Coffee & Creativity and our evening session Cocktails & Creativity takes place every week. It’s open to all and free to Writers’ Gym members. Book here.

Not sure where to start? Start with hello! Email thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com