October 2025
The launch of Viktor Wynd’s Dark Fairy Tales took place on the opposite side of London to my home, during a tube strike and (precisely as I was walking across Blackfriars Bridge) a rainstorm. I was entirely soaked when I arrived at St Giles’, but had at least got the chance to photograph a beautiful rainbow over St Paul’s then arrive at an equally beautiful event where there were great friends and excellent cocktails. But what I really want to talk about is the sign above the toilet:
Stories, religious or otherwise, are never just about the people in them. They are always about the reader too: reflections of how we choose to show up in the world and our relationships with others – those we know and those we don’t. Reading creates reflections only we can see, which is why no two people read exactly the same book or even read the same book twice. We’re always different when we come back to that unchanged page.
So, yes, this is a church toilet. Yes, it uses a religious symbol – a story – that isn’t mine. But I was still able to share in the message the story underlines in how I show up through my small actions. And the way it did this is pure Show-Don’t-Tell.
The sign above the toilet didn’t inform me about hygiene. It didn’t instruct me to wash my hands. It showed me what taking these small troubles are part of: something bigger, ideologically and practically. We can behave like the best version of who we are in the tiny things. We can believe in the bigger story we’re part of. We can trust the gestures add up, even when – especially when – their results are invisible to us.
As somebody writing a book, keeping faith in the small, gradual things is more significant to my motivation than ever. Trusting the process, one word at a time, will be the difference between reaching ‘the end’ I want or never finishing; never creating what I want to create. That would be a far sadder sacrifice than committing to the small, helpful things.
Writers’ Gym members’ news
The magnificent Jennifer Steil – Writers’ Gym member, Green Ink Sponsored Writer, dear friend and brilliant author and academic – is published in the New York Times this week, with Dress Rehearsal for a Wedding I’ll Never Attend: Jennifer’s Stage Four ovarian cancer means she won’t get to see her fifteen-year-old daughter grow up, and this is about her daughter’s request to go wedding dress shopping with her while they can.
You can read more about Jennifer at her newsletter, Liminal, and sponsor her by supporting Macmillan Cancer Support for this year’s Green Ink Sponsored Write. The title, chosen by Rhianna Pratchett, is Somewhere That’s Green: Paradises, Utopias and Happy Places. The page will close at the end of the writing day, Saturday 18 October. This is it: https://www.justgiving.com/page/somewhere-thats-green
Further congratulations to Writers’ Gym members Stephanie Bisby who has had a poem accepted for the Fig Tree Coal Mining anthology, and Nicola Todd-Morgan who is welcoming her new book, She Wrote Too, into the world alongside her co-author Caroline Rance. Find Nicola on Substack.
Join me this month:
Coffee & Creativity
Central London private club, Friday 17 October, 10am-11.30am
Whether you want to build creative and professional writing skills, or confidence and clarity to develop the next professional and personal steps in your life, all you need is a notebook and an open mind. Email info@rachelknightley.com for more information
The Writers’ Gym Podcast
Every Monday on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts
Creative confidence workouts for art and life with authors including World Fantasy Award winner Priya Sharma, multiple-BAFTA-winning screenwriter Dan Berlinka and Carnegie winning novelist Anthony McGowan. Listen here
Riverscribes: Fiction and Memoir Writing Tuesdays 11-25 November, 6.30pm
All the inspiration, support and techniques you need to weave initial ideas into fully realised stories. Discount for Writers’ Gym members and everybody welcome, wherever you are in your writing. Book through Riverside Studios here.