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

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-writers-fuel/id1674424465?i=1000679151313

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:

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

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

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/prologues-and-epilogues/id1674424465?i=1000678351319

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.