Before my @drracheknightley Instagram became a pro account, the bio said ‘Loves cheese, cats and coffee.’ Then I added ‘vegan’ before cheese, because I’d given up dairy. Then I took vegan out again, because as Poppy (played by the magnificent Holly Gillanders, who happened to introduce me to instagram!) would go on to say in my audio drama Winter Spring, “There’s no such thing as real cheese. It’s not like apples or sunlight. Humans invented it… If we use cow or cashew milk it’s no more or less real.” Then I deleted cheese, cats and coffee entirely and replaced them with Author and Coach.

Then, as I got to feel more at home on Instagram, I noticed all three coming back. They weren’t back in the bio, but they were in the visuals of my life and work. It wasn’t deliberate, but what I was sharing was authentic. As a result, there they were, over and over again. Because it was true. I do love cheese, cats and coffee.

I’ve been thinking a lot his week about what it means to feel at home in our life and work. How we build that home, one authentic step at a time. When clients come to clarify the writing voice they want to unlock, it’s sometimes for their fiction and non-fiction, or for their public speaking and social media voice. Whether it’s for life, work or art, the work we do together is based on who they truly are and how truly at home they want to be in what they do, say, write and live. The reason these things (creative writing, social media presence, job interviews, you name it) get easier is when we speak from a place of authenticity then performance means doing, not pretending. We’re showing up authentically.

When we don’t yet feel at home in our self-expression, it’s hard to imagine feeling different is possible.

Which can mean we focus on others’ expectations – or, let’s be honest, our own picture of those expectations! – and create our own monsters, our own reasons to stay quiet, or stay stuck.

But it’s not only possible – it’s wonderful.

And once the itch is there, once that call to adventure is heard, it’s time to get curious. Authentically curious. What do I love? What do I enjoy? What do I offer? How we move that message out and build our own audience starts with how we make ourselves at home in who we are.

The Writers’ Gym membership platform will be a year old next month. I’m so proud of every single person in it.

I’m proud of how everyone has dared to turn distant dreams into specific goals, and step into the habits that mean achieving them. Whether you join us for the Writing Room (free every Monday, for everyone on this mailing list), as a member, a one-to-one client, or are just curious about what you’re ready to create, I’m so glad you’re here. And I’m here to help you love being authentically you.

Audio Drama is on a half-term break this week but join me in person at Write, Sip, Create at the Century Club, 28 February 7-8.30pm and Coffee & Creativity at Olympic Studios, 7 March, 10-11.30am or online here:

Come and Write This Week:

The Writing Room | 11am-1pm Monday 17 February
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.

Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm Wednesday 19 February
Hosted by Writers’ Gym staff member, Bella Barbieri. Quality writing time and excellent 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 | 3-5pm Thursday 20 February
Members only: please check Voxer messages.

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

If you’re not in the UK, find your timezone here.

Want to bring more of yourself into your life, work and art? Get in touch.

For Writers’ Gym personal training or creative confidence coaching for life, work and art, email info@rachelknightley.com or visit rachelknightley.com

Creative Confidence for Life, Work and Art | Write with us this week (scroll down for calendar)

‘How shall I bear so much happiness?’ asks Jane, when such an ending is finally in sight. It’s a rhetorical question, an achievement in itself given how much of Pride and Prejudice she’s spent being in touch with everyone’s feelings but her own; such a pro at not being disappointed or sad or angry about the actions of her friends and family that Bingley’s friends hadn’t had to work hard at all to convince him she wasn’t interested. 

Being good at hiding emotions is a skill. 

So is smoking. 

So let’s be careful what we get good at. 

Suppressing inconvenient feelings doesn’t make them go away. It does, however, distract our energy away from creating what we want. It at best diverts and at worst cuts off the source of our fuel as writers: what interests us, what moves us, our questions and observations about the world and ourselves, that make up our unique ‘artist’s palette’. 

Why am I talking about this now? 

Because a number of coaching clients and Writers’ Gym members are finding it a lot easier to blame themselves for ‘difficult’ feelings than listen to what those feelings are asking for. What they’re a call to action for, whether that’s writing on the page or creating in life. 

It can be a lot easier to tell ourselves what we ‘should’ feel than listen honestly, let alone build the habit of transcribing some of that truth.

When we train ourselves to become estranged from what we feel – when the muscles we prioritise exercising are the ones for holding back from instead of thinking on the page – we can still be efficient. We can still have neat handwriting. We can still be intelligent and articulate. But we can also start to wonder if we’re being glib, or shallow, or didactic, or notice we’ve taken to preferring exclamation marks or looking up the ‘right’ or ‘best’ word over the vulnerability of emotional depth. 

In a week where the world has provided so many ways of reminding us that anger and sadness and fear can be appropriate responses, we need to be able to honour these real emotions for joy and enthusiasm and passion to be real emotions too. We can’t create the world we want, on the page or off, from a place of denial. 

This week, allow your emotions to be your writing prompts. 

Give them to someone else by all means: mix someone from the colours of your memory, imagination, observations and questions – that unique artist’s palette every writer has (and has every right to). Bring your reality into your characters. Maybe into your developing dialogue, if you’re joining us and Chris Gregory at the Writers’ Gym on Tuesday afternoon for Writing Audio Drama. Fiction matters. It has made us all feel seen, heard, understood. It’s why we read. It’s why we write. It’s why it’s hard and why it’s important.

Instead of telling your feelings they’re a problem, listen for the opportunity. They have something to say. Whatever it is, it’s entirely your story to tell.

Some of our amazing writers and creative confidence builders at Olympic Studios on Friday for Coffee & Creativity. Join me at The Century Club, 28 February 7-8.30pm and Olympic Studios, 7 March, 10-11.30am. 

Come and Write This Week:

The Writing Room | 11am-1pm Monday 10 February 
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: Fiction and Memoir | 7-8.30pm Monday 10 February
All the inspiration, support and techniques you need to weave initial ideas into fully realised stories. Whether you’re working on a story, novel or non-fiction, want some creative inspiration, or whether you’re intrigued by the idea of writing and want a creative outlet, this is the place to discover and develop your ideas and your voice. Click here.

Writing Audio Drama: Dialogue, Characters and Episodic Writing | 1-2.30pm Tuesday 11 February 
Audio drama has enjoyed a huge growth in popularity over the last few years. Major players are commissioning their own original dramas and there’s never been a better time to create your audio play. With producer and independent supplier to the BBC Chris Gregory, develop the skills to write your drama and the confidence to pitch it. Click here.

Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm Wednesday 12 February 
Quality writing time and excellent 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 | 3-5pm Thursday 13 February
Members only: please check Voxer messages.

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

If you’re not in the UK, find your timezone here.

For Writers’ Gym personal training or creative confidence coaching for life, work and art, email info@rachelknightley.com or visit rachelknightley.com

Last week, I was asked one of what I privately call The Questions about creative writing (there are about ten of them, I might share another next week):

‘When you have more than one idea, how to you know which one to pick?’

Depending on who’s asking, and what level of challenge they’ve told me they’re up for, the are the answer will be one of these (all of them equally true):

1. You don’t. You guess. You write one and either get to the end of that (recognising the subjectivity of having ‘finished’ is the next level in the being-a-writer video game) and move on to another. Or, more often than not, you find different shades from both/all the options mixing in together as you go.
2. You don’t. You start writing anyway, not quite knowing which one you’ve picked and let the paving stones form beneath your feet. The result? Something that is a bit like one or all of your ideas. But you don’t get to choose. David Lynch’s man on the other side of the door with the jigsaw pieces gets to choose.
3. You don’t. You only know what article is due, or what callout is coming up, and you prioritise based on those external circumstances.
4. You don’t. You start writing one of them and either stay there or find your brain has rebelled and picked another.

You’ll have seen that what these all have in common is not just the two words they start with. What they really have in common is not remotely entertaining the alternative. Th alternative being, ‘You wait to be sure.’ Or ‘You don’t write anything because you’re not sure.’ Or ‘You wait to feel confident.’ Or ‘You wait until you have enough time.’

I love deadlines. They make us so much less precious about what’s in our heads. I love other people for the same reason. Other people remind us an idea can be good when it’s still incomplete, still developing. Discovering Chris Gregory of Alternative Stories loved the ideas behind Winter Spring did wonderful things for me. He was curious about what I was curious about. That shared curiosity meant I developed that idea and brought something into the world I might never have if I hadn’t shown him an incomplete, vulnerable idea.

I’m so glad I did.

That’s why I’ve invited Chris to run Writing Audio Drama for the Writers’ Gym this week. Everyone who books will receive a recording of each session as well as entry to the live workshops. I think this will mean as much to you as it has to me. As Chris says, ‘Writing can be a solitary game, but in audio drama you know when you’ve written those words other people will be bringing them to life with you.’

So, for anyone who’s ever asked themselves (or someone else) ‘How do you know which idea to pick?’, come and listen to your own answers. Because, I promise you, you’ve already got loads of them.

Come and Write This Week:

The Writing Room | 11am-1pm Monday 3 February
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.

Writing Audio Drama: Week 1 | 1-2.30pm Tuesday 4 February
Audio drama has enjoyed a huge growth in popularity over the last few years. Major players are commissioning their own original dramas and there’s never been a better time to create your audio play. With producer and independent supplier to the BBC Chris Gregory, develop the skills to write your drama and the confidence to pitch it. Click here.

Monthly Writing Workout | 6-7pm Tuesday 4 February
Take your word-count for a workout at the Writers’ Gym. Creative exercises, supportive discussion, specific tips and techniques for the writer you are. A guaranteed boost to your knowledge, enthusiasm, confidence and your word-count! Free for members: type your discount code where indicated. Click here.

Writing Room EXTRA | 3-5pm Thursday 6 February
Members only: please check Voxer messages.

Coffee & Creativity, Olympic Studios, Barnes | 10-11.30am Friday 7 February
Grow your connections, build motivation and unlock inspiration in this creative networking event with a difference. Dr Rachel’s gently powerful facilitation provides a space to turn curiosity into creativity, wherever you are in your writing journey. Click here. Click here.

Lunchtime Writing Workout | 12.30-1.30pm Friday 7 February
Boost your confidence and your word-count with Dr Rachel Knightley’s 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 members: type your discount code where indicated. Click here.

If you’re not in the UK, find your timezone 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

My actual birthday was a weekday, and not one of the cooler ones. Rather than move work out of it I moved it out of my workday, giving myself the gift of the kind of time I truly relish. Not an absolutely empty day: however well-behaved I manage to be about utilising my time, a totally empty day is way too shapeless for me to really enjoy it. What I really love is a workday with a hard, ‘stop now’ deadline at the end. That deadline was my penultimate Realise Your Writing Resolutions session. After the workshop, I’d asked my partner to put in place another excellent deadline: pizza would be arriving as I finished the Zoom. It was a beautiful Thursday, balancing time to play with the kind of work that needs to feel like play to be done well.

Giving yourself what you want can sound so easy. So obvious. But that’s not what it felt like. I don’t know about you, but it took me decades to accept the possibility – no, the existence – of there being skill or strength involved. Time was something we simply didn’t have enough of. Anybody who didn’t appreciate how busy we were was a privileged idiot. Yet creating time – not literal hours in the day but the self-knowledge and then the self-esteem to make it healthy and sustainable – can only happen when we give ourselves Room to Dream (thank you again, David Lynch).

Making time is one of my favourite things when I work on in audio drama. What the experience in a character’s head isn’t someone with more or fewer hours than the rest of us, yet how hurried the thoughts and emotions, how busy and cramped or echoey and lonely the psychological landscape, we experience the location and tempo their story takes place in, because that’s what it’s like to be human. We make our own time, whether we’re ready to acknowledge it or not, but it takes time – our time – to learn do it in a way that works for us.

Last night, I had my ‘actual’ (or, I suppose, non-actual) birthday. There was much cake and even more Angelo Badalamenti. I was talking to a friend I met through TM (thank you again, David Lynch) about this way of having a birthday week: making time for the things and people I value, and the value of being able to create that jigsaw of time that is genuinely representative of me. She mentioned another mode of thinking about how we’re honouring ourselves when we do that: the week, rather than the day itself, will cover the moment the planets align as they did when we arrived. I thought about that image, that bigger picture I’ll never see: zooming out, something restored or returning, like those traffic lights outside the action of Twin Peaks commenting (or not commenting: it’s always up to the viewer) in their silent, unobserved consistency and ever-changingness. We don’t make time. We don’t make space. But we have more to do with how we experience our reality than I dreamed.

Audio Drama:

Writing Audio Drama with producer Chris Gregory | From 4 February
Audio drama has enjoyed a huge growth in popularity over the last few years. Major players are commissioning their own original dramas and there’s never been a better time to create your audio play. With producer and independent supplier to the BBC Chris Gregory, develop the skills to write your drama and the confidence to pitch it. Book here.

Come and Write This Week:

The Writing Room | 11am-1pm Monday 27 January
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 Fiction and Memoir | 7-8.30pm Monday 27 January
All the inspiration, support and techniques you need to weave initial ideas into fully realised stories. Whether you’re working on a story, novel or non-fiction, want some creative inspiration, or whether you’re intrigued by the idea of writing and want a creative outlet, this is the place to discover and develop your ideas and your voice. Click here.

Your Creative Writing Toolkit: Editing, Rewriting, Publishing! | 2-3.30pm, Tuesday 28 January
Based on my book of the same name, this is the final session in the current workshop series series solidifying the key skills of writing creatively – whether you’re focusing on fiction, memoir or any other genre or audience. Click here.

Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm Wednesday 29 January
Quality writing time and excellent 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 | 3-5pm Thursday 30 January
Members only: please check Voxer messages.

Realise Your Writing Resolutions | 6.30-8.30pm, Thursday 30 January
Don’t just make a commitment to your writing for Christmas and New Year: show it your love throughout 2025. If you’re ready to create more time with and space for your writing, and identify the places you and your writing want to go together, this is where to begin your strongest writing year yet. FULLY BOOKED: JOIN WAITING LIST

If you’re not in the UK, find your timezone 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

https://drrachelknightley.substack.com/p/the-most-practical-thing-a-writer

When I was introducing Coffee & Creativity at Olympic Studios on Friday morning, I proposed a drinking game.

(The drink was coffee. That’s probably obvious from the title of the workshop. And it being 10am.)

When someone says “I’m not a writer”, we drink. When we hear our own thoughts say “I’m not a writer” or its other versions such as ‘“X is a proper writer, I’m just…” or “Y is the creative one, not me…”

We don’t judge the thoughts, or each other, or ourselves.

We just drink the coffee.

(Or water.)

We notice the thoughts.

It’s not about the drinking, obviously. It’s about the noticing; the acknowledging. It’s spotting the thinking that – if unnoticed – disguises itself convincingly as logic; stops us opening the conversations with the coaches, agents, peers, colleagues, communities who can help us take our ideas out from the limbo of being a perfect thing in our head and start the process of becoming a real thing in the world.

Every person in that circle on Friday morning had a different reason for being there, but also had the same reason.

We all have ideas. We all have questions about the world and our place in it. We all have a unique perspective and voice. We don’t always channel our creativity into making them real. The more anxiety gets of our creative software, the more we channel into writing the stories about how our stories won’t work, what will be wrong with the story/book/course/workshop/career step/personal life step.

We’re writing all the time.

Hello new members of the Writers’ Gym and new paid subscribers! If you’re not sure of your discount codes, just ask thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com or message me.

Come and write this week:

The Writing Room | 1.45-3.30pm Monday 13 January
PLEASE NOTE UNUSUAL TIMES FOR THE WRITING ROOM THIS WEEK AND NEXT! 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 Fiction and Memoir | 7-8.30pm Monday 13 January
All the inspiration, support and techniques you need to weave initial ideas into fully realised stories. Whether you’re working on a story, novel or non-fiction, want some creative inspiration, or whether you’re intrigued by the idea of writing and want a creative outlet, this is the place to discover and develop your ideas and your voice. Click here.

Your Creative Writing Toolkit (2 of 4): Description and Dialogue | 2-3.30pm, Tuesday 14 January
Based on my book of the same name, this is the second of four Creative Writing Toolkit workshops solidifying the key skills of writing creatively – whether you’re focusing on fiction, memoir or any other genre or audience. Click here.

Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm Wednesday 15 January
Quality writing time and excellent company! Grab a coffee and have a mid-week chat, a write and then another chat with your fellow creatives. Ably (and brilliantly) hosted this week by Writers’ Gym assistant, Bella. Free for members: type your discount code where indicated. Click here.

Writing Room EXTRA | 3-5pm Thursday 16 January
Members only: please your check Voxer messages.

Realise Your Writing Resolutions | 6.30-8.30pm, Thursday 16 January
Don’t just make a commitment to your writing for Christmas and New Year: show it your love throughout 2025. If you’re ready to create more time with and space for your writing, and identify the places you and your writing want to go together, this is where to begin your strongest writing year yet. FULLY BOOKED: JOIN WAITING LIST

If you’re not in the UK, find your timezone 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

It’s a question, not a promise | Come and write this week (scroll down for calendar)

One of the technically unimportant things that is very, very important to me is eyeliner. It is not (again, technically) the source of all my powers. But I feel more me in it. I feel illustrated. I feel I’ve arrived in the day, the room, the moment. I feel ready. 

Ready is one of those things we never quite feel, not for anything truly important at least, so perhaps a truer word here is presence. I feel more present when I feel illustrated. 

We all have these things, and yours might be something else entirely. It may even be the opposite of mine. But something we can all offer ourselves is to acknowledge the power we have to move our focus from ‘But what does it say about me?’ to ‘What is it?’ I could tell myself make-up is unimportant and I ‘shouldn’t’ need it (see Shooting the Should Fairies) but what it gives me is important, and me honouring that is also important as it’s a way I invest in myself (and, by extension, everyone else in my life). It gives me what, in a different way, my equally beloved black coffee, the right music and ring-fenced writing time also give me: the power to be me, but more so. As such, the one resolution I’m making, today and every day, from this new year to the next, is not a promise but to keep asking myself a question: What can I give myself that allows me to be me, but more so?

Maybe make-up or black coffee don’t do that for you. But I’d love to hear what does. What are the things you can live without but live more fully with? And will you resolve to ask yourself what you can give yourself today so you can be even more fully you?

Join me this week:

The Writing Room | 11-1pm Mon 6 January 
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.

Your Creative Writing Toolkit | 2-3.30pm, Tuesday 7 January
Based on my book of the same name, this is the first four Creative Writing Toolkit workshops solidifying the key skills of writing creatively – whether you’re focusing on fiction, memoir or any other genre or audience. Click here.

January Writing Workout | 6-7pm, Tuesday 7 January
Creative exercises, supportive discussion, specific tips and techniques for the writer you are. A guaranteed boost to your knowledge, enthusiasm, confidence and your word-count! Click here.

Realise Your Writing Resolutions | 6.30-8.30pm, Thursday 9 January
Don’t just make a commitment to your writing for Christmas and New Year: show it your love throughout 2025. If you’re ready to create more time with and space for your writing, and identify the places you and your writing want to go together, this is where to begin your strongest writing year yet. Click here.

Coffee & Creativity at Olympic Studios | 10am-11.30am, Friday 10 January
Grow your connections, build motivation and unlock inspiration in this creative networking event with a difference. “Dr Rachel’s gently powerful facilitation creating a 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.” Free to members of Olympic Studios, a select number of tickets available through Eventbrite: Click here.

If you’re not in the UK, find your timezone 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

I considered posting a retrospective about 2024. Then, I went right on considering it and doing absolutely nothing. Granted, that’s partly the cold I shared with my loved-one over Christmas but that brain-fog was clearing. This fog was made of questions. Would it look like bragging? Would it (simultaneous with the fear of bragging) look pathetic compared to what others have achieved?

Once I caught myself asking myself these, there could only be one meaningful answer.

The reason I realised it was important for me to do it was what I spotted when I went through the photos of 2024. I saw how much had been personally or professionally significant for me, that I’d then discounted. I saw how easy it was to turn reflection into comparison, hide our own progress in the shadows of our idealised versions of others and what they might be thinking; our idealised versions of ourselves and what those selves might or should have done instead, or as well.

I saw how easy it was to turn reflection into comparison, hide our own progress in the shadows of our idealised versions of others

One of my favourite songs (or, depending what mood I’m in, one of the songs that seems to be pointing right at me) is Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. Like any time we spot ourselves clearly in the stories of others, it’s not really about me. It’s a human truth that writer’s hit on and in this case one which, released seven years before I was even born, would turn out to be the lesson about myself and living my life I’d eventually be most grateful for.

“So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell? Blue skies from pain? Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell?” Gilmour/Waters, 1975

I’ve pretty much always felt, at every stage in my professional and personal life, it’s never been better and it’s never been worse. I’ve never had more going for me and never felt further away from the expected (i.e., let’s face it, idealised) version of myself I thought I was heading for, never more certain that version was finally lost. Wish You Were Here captures an important reminder that now, and not what brought us to it, is what we have to work with. The clearer we are about what we want to do with it, the more practiced we are at recognising avoiding what we fear is not the same as working towards what we want, the less we write ourselves into corners or stay silent on the truths we want to approach – and the more we reach for those truths in the life we want to create.

So here’s my great big thank you to everyone I reached out to this year in work or life, and everyone who reached out to me. I’m enormously grateful and proud to be part of every story here, and every story not pictured. I’m proudest of all to be part of the quietest stories: the Rachel Knightley Coaching clients and Writers’ Gym members who, with the smallest steps, make biggest changes of all. That’s where every story that was once impossible begins. Here’s to every new chapter, on the page and off.

January: Nigel Planer and Friends (the friends being me and filmmaker/novelist Simon Rumley) and Writing Short Stories at Riverside Studios

February: Recording the first of three series of The Writers’ Gym podcast with Alternative Stories creative directors Chris Gregory and Emily Inkpen; my short play Behind the Sofa selected for the Questors Theatre’s QWho night celebrating the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who; one of my workshops on writing and speaking at Olympic Studios

March: Some of my Genre Fiction and Novel Writing students at Roehampton University, and quotes from the podcast and weekly Writing Room

April: My first appearance alongside new Writers’ Gym member and soon-to-be Writers’ Gym podcast producer Ashley Levine; a talk for careers week at Roehampton University and another Writing Room quote

May: Back at Riverside Studios for Your Creative Writing Toolkit

June: My first time voice recording for an audio drama with Alternative Stories

Join us in January:

The Writing Room returns 6 January. Book your free ticket now.

For free weekly Coffee & Creativity, discounts on every workshop including Realise Your Writing Resolutions and Your Creative Writing Toolkit, and to access a vibrant, supportive creative community to build your writing life and grow your creative confidence, request a membership brochure at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com View our calendar here.

July: With the cast of my first audio drama, Winter Spring, for Alternative Stories at Orpheus Studio, London

August: The Writers’ Gym’s first hybrid writing retreat, at the Groucho Club in London

September: Winter Spring by Rachel Knightley is released by Alternative Stories

October: One of my LAMDA students, Ram, wrote a poem to say thank you after his distinction I n an exam he once thought he would never be able to take. Fantasycon: part of the Dealing with Impostor Syndrome panel and chairing the All About Agents panel at FantasyCon, Chester. Writers and cats taking part in my annual Green Ink Sponsored Write for Macmillan Cancer Support

November: Life as a Freelance Writer at Roehampton University

December: Coffee and Creativity, now online every week and in-person every month

For personal training and creative confidence for life, work and art, email info@rachelknightley.com or visit rachelknightley.com

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/memory-and-flashback/id1674424465?i=1000679961138

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.

Join a workshop here.

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:

If you’re not working to UK time, find your timezone here.

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