https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/narrators/id1674424465?i=1000677599468
In this episode we look at the role of narrators in fiction and discuss when, how and whether to deploy them. As usual Dr Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen bring examples from their own writing and from the wider worlds of literature and drama.
Rachel would like to point out that it was Arthur Dent’s upper arm that was bruised and not his elbow.
It’s creeping towards the time of year I figure it’s wise to put the calendar at the top of the newsletter. November can feel like a rehearsal for December: getting done all the things we might not get done otherwise, before we have the same but bigger jigsaw to do next month. If you’re looking for permission to show up for your writing (no matter what that is), to take and hold your time, to carve it in digital stone and let life fit around it instead of fitting it around life, here’s that permission:
The Writing Room | 11-1pm Monday 18 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.
The Writers’ Gym Podcast | Wednesday 20 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 20 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
Cocktails & Creativity | 5-6.30pm Thursday 21 November
Grab a drink, pen or keyboard and join us at the virtual pub! Bella is hosting tonight’s chat, writing time and another chat at the end. Free for members: type your discount code where indicated. Click here
Writing Room EXTRA | 11am-1pm Friday 22 November
Members only: please check your Voxer messages for this link.
Your Fear: Your Creative Superpower | 1.30-3pm Saturday 23 November
Turning the things that haunt us into equally haunting, unique stories is a great way of building creative confidence – and of connecting with your audience. Explore the stories you’re already telling yourself, and how they might just show the direct route from fear of the blank page to the curiosity that fills it. In association with Carrion Events and Hell Tor Festival. Click here.
The power of looking for permission never stops amazing me. The double-bluff of catching myself doing something because I think I have to, or not doing something because I think I’m not allowed to. Time is the biggie – isn’t it always? – and, in this case, the things that are “supposed” to be done first and perfectly. First, at least, exists. Perfect has the virtue of being impossible, so we can let perfect merge with not-quite-ready in our minds and never take that step beyond the comfort zone, never let an idea become a reality. Sometimes I notice it on the page. Other times, I’m looking at examples in my own life: when to call a task finished, in favour of more time in my own head or connecting with others. My promise to to November: be present. Even if it means finishing what needs to be finished in favour of what deserves to be started.
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 or visit rachelknightley.com
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reading-for-writers/id1674424465?i=1000676745173
In this episode we look at reading and how it can help to fire creativity and inspire imagination for authors. As usual, Emily and Rachel bring plenty of stories and anecdotes about ways in which books have inspired them. We end with a look at books about writing.
Books mentioned in this podcast include:
Ursula Le Guin: Steering the Craft and Conversations on Writing
Stephen King: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Rachel Knightley: Your Creative Writing Toolkit
Margaret Atwood: Negotiating with the Dead
David Lynch: Catching the Big Fish
John Cleese: Creativity: a short and cheerful guide
Sandra Newman & Howard Mittelmark: How Not to Write a Novel
Every Wednesday in The Writers’ Gym messaging group, we have Wednesday Wishes.
This is not for ‘instant world peace’ or ‘being able to fly’ (though both would be fabulous).
It’s for ‘I wish I knew more about…’ ‘I wish I had clarity on…’ and we work through them together, either in one-to-one chat or in the group.
Last Wednesday, one message read ‘I wish it were a better news day!’
This is what I said:
“Okay, yeah, on that.
I wish I will keep my eyes, ears and self-esteem open for the ways I can make my immediate world better.
I wish I see, hear and appreciate the dangers of thinking bigger/more important people will always make the right decisions.
In my own corner, I wish to utilise Say The Thing for myself and those who benefit from me using my voice for good.”
Later I added:
“Despair is always easier. Reinforced sense of what we CAN do is always more useful.
If you, like me, are finding that hard today, know that the world needs what we can put into it now more than ever. Never stop doing what you can do.”
Two days before Bad News Wednesday, I was at Roehampton University lecturing on Life as a Freelance Writer. Talks like this are an opportunity to share all the things I wish someone had known how to talk to me about, back when the idea of what a writing career might look like was so new. The timing, in retrospect, feels like an important reminder. Like creative writing itself, creating our careers means we need to be able to imagine clearly in order to create specifically. If we’re too polite to fate, expect it to know best, put it ahead of imagination, if we believe more in the past than the future, we don’t create paths that are the result of who we are. And then, whoever has more confidence and potentially less empathy/sanity gets to choose. We’ve seen what that looks like. Let’s not emulate it. Let’s keep showing up with our creativity, with our power.
Below the photos are ways to put yourself in a creative space this week…
The Writing Room | 11-1pm Monday 11 November
FREE for everyone on my mailing list (if you’re reading this, 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’ (totally optional) chat together at the end. Click here.
Riverscribes | 7-8.30pm Monday 11 November
A lively and supportive creative writing forum right by the river at Hammersmith’s wonderful arts venue Riverside Studios. This week we’re exploring character and point of view. Book here.
Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm Wednesday 13 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 Writers’ Gym members: type your discount code where indicated. Book here.
The Writers’ Gym Podcast | Wednesday 13 November
The current series of The Writers’ Gym, where I’m joined by Emily Inkpen and Chris Gregory, airs a new episode every Wednesday. Type The Writers’ Gym into any platform, including Spotify and Apple Podcasts, to join the conversation.
Writing Room EXTRA | 11am-1pm Friday 15 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
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/viewpoint-and-perspective/id1674424465?i=1000675851156
In this episode we explore viewpoint and perspective in fiction. Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen discuss the different types of perspective and the ways in which a writers’ instinct might dictate the best approach to telling their particular story.
In the discussion Rachel references “Point of View: the thing that makes all other things more doable” which you can find on YouTube here:
I wish every writer who first comes to me with the words “I’m not a real writer…” could hear all the other writers who first came to me with the words “I’m not a real writer”.
Or, “I’ll write when I’m less busy.”
InkCouragement: Dr Rachel Knightley at the Writers’ Gym is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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Or, “I’ll write when I feel confident enough.”
Or, “I’ll write when I’m sure the idea is perfect.”
The thing about imposter syndrome – an easy shorthand for the feeling we don’t have a right to show up for what we would, actually, love to do or be – is it’s how our minds overpower curiosity.
Tuning into our curiosity, or not tuning into it, is the biggest difference between writing authentically and not writing at all. We cannot write the final draft before we’ve dared to write the first one. Inspiration is a great feeling but nine times out of ten it comes through writing, rather than being a necessary precursor to it. It’s habits, not inspiration, we can rely on. We can all break the inspiration addiction. And we all do it easiest by showing up one step at a time.
That’s why there’s a Writers’ Gym.
If you, or someone you know, is currently a member of the “I’m not a real writer” brigade, any of the options below are a great way to realise we all are. The only qualification is showing up to the page, and doing your thinking there. That’s where the curiosity is, it’s also where the fun is.
The Writing Room | 11-1pm Monday 4 November
FREE for everyone on my mailing list (if you’re reading this, 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’ (totally optional) chat together at the end. Click here.
The Writers’ Gym Podcast | Wednesday 6 November
The current series of The Writers’ Gym, where I’m joined by Emily Inkpen and Chris Gregory, airs a new episode every Wednesday. Find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other podcast platform.
Writing Room EXTRA | 11am-1pm Friday 8 November
Members only: please check your Voxer messages for this link.
Coffee & Creativity | 3-4.30pm Friday 8 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 Writers’ Gym members: type your discount code where indicated. 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 creative workouts:
Email thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com or
download a brochure at writersgym.com
For personal training and creative confidence coaching for life, work and art,
email info@rachelknightley.com
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
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/principles-of-scriptwriting/id1674424465?i=1000674954318
In this episode Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen talk about scriptwriting and offer advice to writers wishing to get started in writing for stage, screen or audio drama.
This week at the Writers’ Gym
Want to grab a workout or personal training session for your word-count this week? Join me at the Writers’ Gym…
The Writing Room | 11-1pm Monday 28 October
FREE for everyone on my mailing list (if you’re reading this, 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’ (totally optional) chat together at the end. Click here.
Riverscribes: Creative Writing | 7-8.30pm Tuesday 29 October
A lively and supportive creative writing forum where you are invited to share, discuss and develop your work. Whether you come for one session or every session, you’re guaranteed to build your knowledge, deepen your confidence and increase your enjoyment in your creative writing. Click here
Coffee & Creativity | 1-2:30pm Wednesday 30 October
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. Run this week by Bella, as I’ll be away on Wednesday. Free for Writers’ Gym members: type your discount code where indicated. Click here
Cocktails & Creativity | 5-6.30pm Thursday 31 October
Grab a drink – a pen, a keyboard or blank page and join us at the virtual pub! Hosted by Writers’ Gym staff member, Isabella Barbieri. We chat for fifteen minutes, work on our own projects and then chat again, whether that be about writing, art or life. Free for Writers’ Gym members: type your discount code where indicated. Click here
Friday Writing Workout | 12-1pm Friday 1 November
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 code to activate your discount. Forgotten/lost your code? No problem: just email info@rachelknightley.com or ask Rachel or Bella in the Voxer app.
Download a brochure at writersgym.com or email thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/pace-and-structure/id1674424465?i=1000674090603
In this episode Rachel Knightley and Emily Inkpen discuss pace and structure in fiction. They ask whether pace comes from structure or can be added at the editing stage and ponder examples of well structured stories on page and screen. Join us next week for the third episode of season three in which we’ll be talking about scriptwriting.