This week marks the final episode in the current series of the Writers’ Gym podcast –and the first time in several years my knee injury flared up to the extent that I couldn’t walk for a day.

I’m absolutely fine now. Without the need for trigger warnings, I’ll only go as far as saying my patella is back on its tracking as magically as (though with much less drama than) it left. By the time I was running Coffee & Creativity at Olympic Studios on Friday morning (above), even I wouldn’t have known anything had been wrong the previous day.

Without being able to put any weight on my right leg whatsoever, I did have the sense to put myself on the sofa next to one of the beautiful, beloved and too-long-unpurchased spiral notebooks I panic/grief-bought from WHSmith last weekend. Writing was anaesthetic. It took me out of my body and into my head. I let myself write without knowing where it was going, something I don’t always make time for in my week let alone my day. In other words, I let myself play my objective.

After all, writing is my why. It’s why I earn money and why I make time. I want to write. I want to be the writer I am. Yet so often I play the obstacle – “but there’s so much else I should be doing” – rather than the objective.

All of which is why the timing of Kim Newman’s interview on the Writers’ Gym podcast means so much to me.

Kim plays his objective.

When I direct beginner actors in improvisations, and when I was a beginner actor, one of the most common exercises has always been going for a walk. We ‘magic if’ ourselves into the given circumstances of a place we know, with an objective of somewhere we’re trying to get to. When the director tells beginner actors they’re late, and it’s started to rain, there’s often one who stops in their tracks. They hold out their palm skyward, and peer up into (presumably) the very drops they want to avoid.

We wouldn’t do that in the street, yet in our own minds we’ll so often play the obstacle – literal or metaphorical rain – over the objective of where they want to get to, as unsoaked as possible.

Talking to Kim, I hear what it’s like for a writer to truly know only they can do the writing they can do. Of course, we all know it logically. Yet so many of us notice too late when our energies get diverted from artist to critic: questioning whether our idea is “good” rather than finishing it and making it better, or analysing whether the reason we didn’t write today was a “real excuse” or not. Peering up into the rain, rather than walking with strengthened focus towards where we want to go.

There was a time I would have texted and doomscrolled all day on that sofa. I would have flexed my knee endlessly to check if it still hurt. I would have punished myself in all the ways I could; played the obstacles for all they were worth.

This time, I wrote.

I’m not saying it’s why my knee fixed itself faster than I expected. I hope I don’t get to prove to myself I’ve learnt my lesson when injuries or illnesses are worse. But I do want to promise myself I’ll do what Kim does: allow myself to prioritise being the writer I am. Playing my objective. Because it isn’t up to the given circumstances to resolve themselves. It’s up to me to do what I can, within them.

Come and Write This Week

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

On this week’s episode of The Writers’ Gym podcast:

The Writing Room | 11am-1pm Monday 7 April
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 9 April
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 10 April
Members only: please check Voxer messages.

The Writers’ Gym is part of Rachel Knightley Coaching: creative confidence for life, work and art. www.rachelknightley.com

You don’t have to be a member to join a Writers’ Gym session: visit here. But if you’d like to access our weekly programme for free, and receive 30% off all our other events, ask about membership at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com