Last Thursday on Instagram I posted three fish, and the words Aim to be interested, not interesting. The fish are a reference to David Lynch and curiosity. The words started life as one of five First Draft Commandments in Your Creative Writing Toolkit. They’ve now also become the name of the first week of a six-week course I’m piloting at Roehampton University in creative confidence for writing and speaking (if you’re a paid subscriber you’ll receive Week 1 next week). Something quite beautiful happened in the first few minutes and that’s why I want to tell you about them.

After I’d introduced myself, I handed everybody an invisible magic wand and requested they be as selfish as possible. What do you most want from today? What do you most want me to be able to give you? 

One of the answers was about writer’s block: I‘ve got this idea; I’ve wanted to write it for ages; nothing’s happening.

Another was about introductions: I’ve got to go to interviews. I want to make a good impression. How do I do that?

The answer to both these questions was modelled before I even began by one of the people who’d asked. 

As I’d introduced myself and the course, talking about what happy, authentic audience relationships can feel like (the connection between writer/speaker and reader/watcher/listener; how the more we feel it’s a relationship the more it becomes one), I’d noticed such a lovely energy as one particular student sat listening. The clingfilm of nervousness, frozen-over distance when he came into the room had peeled off. Safe in the audience, unselfconsciously enjoying hearing what I was saying, he was himself. And I saw him, and I grew in confidence as he saw me. It was an exchange of energy. It made him better at what he needed to do and me better at what I needed to do.

So I told them what that felt like for me, and for any speaker z- whether the audience ever know the difference they’re making or not. 

Same with interviews, first dates – and blank pages. You don’t have to show up perfect. Perfect was never on the menu.

When we want to make a good impression, we do get creative in one reliable way: anxiety. Mentally detailed stories of what might happen – so clear to us we convince ourselves they’re going to happen or already are happening – in full technicolour: all the reasons we’re unworthy and someone else would be better. 

We can take the fear at face value; misread it as a signal we shouldn’t or don’t deserve to be here. Or we can lean into the curiosity. 

All anyone wants from you – interviewer, date, reader, viewer, listener – is honest attention. We’ve always got two choices: fear curiosity. We can take the fear at face value; misread it as a signal we shouldn’t or don’t deserve to be here. Or we can lean into the curiosity. What about this situation speaks to me. What do I really want? What is it that it speaks to in me? How and to whom do I say so?

When we can bring ourselves to focus on curiosity about what we think and feel, who we are and want to grow to be – we look beyond what do they think of my hair, what if they think I’m stupid, what if they think I’m not good enough and realise the other person isn’t dwelling on any of those things. They’re just trying to find out about us, and our world, same as we’re wondering about theirs. We create the world as we want it to be by believing in it, investing in it, taking the first conversational step towards it. By offering authenticity, we create the circumstances where we get curiosity back. 

That’s what I mean by aiming to be interested, not interesting. You don’t need to impress us; you don’t need to convince us of anything. You need to be present, in all your imperfection and all your curiosity. 

Coffee & Creativity at Olympic Studios, Barnes | 10-11.30am Friday 6 June
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.

Events this week…

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

Our next Writing Workout and Feedback is Tuesday 17 June. But first…

The Writing Room | 11am-1pm Monday 12 May
No expectations, no readings, just an open chat box and ten minutes’ (totally optional) chat together at the end. Free to everyone on my mailing list (if you’re reading this, that’s you!). Click here.

Writing Magic Realism: Magic Realism in Fiction | 1pm-2.30pm Tuesday 13 May
Tour through magic realist texts, and enjoy creative confidence building exercises to master these techniques and concepts, and make them your own. Click here.

Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm Wednesday 14 May
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 | 6-7pm Thursday 15 May
Members only: please check Voxer messages.

Monthly Writing Workout | 6.30-7.30pm Tuesday 27 May 
Grab 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! Click here.

Coming soon…

Coffee & Creativity at Olympic Studios, Barnes | 20-11.30am Friday 6 June
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.

Writing Workout and Feedback | 6-7.30pm Tuesday 17 June
Adding to our programme of regular workouts at the Writers’ Gym, this friendly group workshop is the perfect place to hone your writing – and how to get the best out of feedback. Click here. 

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

It’s rare to meet a freelance writer who’s in it for the pitching. Writing? Sure. Putting yourself on the line to say how great your idea is and why you’re the person out there to write it? Every-muscle-in-the-body-tensingly horrible. 

Except when, occasionally, it isn’t. 

I have a piece in one of my favourite magazines this week. That one was easy to pitch. 

Because I love the magazine? No, that’s as likely to make me more self-conscious and self-critical. 

Because of my iron self-confidence? Hahahahahahahahaha! No. 

Because I’m getting used to pitching? Mmm… maybe, a bit, but no, that’s not why.

It’s because I was really ****ing angry.

The Magic Trick, Part 1: Knowing Something Needs to Be Said 

Creative Confidence: Coaching for Writers in the current issue of Writing Magazine is there because of something another writer – one of their regulars – said in print a year or so ago (because – spoiler alert for what reality’s really got up its sleeve for you when you’re pitching – even when it goes well, that can be how long between writing the words and seeing them in print). What I was angry about was that regular columnist stated that writing coaching was ‘mostly teaching’. 

When done badly or carelessly, that may be true. 

But professional coaching isn’t teaching. Teaching is the one-way imparting of knowledge. Coaching is a thinking partnership. As my client, you are the expert on you. I am your brain’s external hard drive, a symathetic provocateur adjusting the level of challenge to what’s right for you and always, always based on your objectives: partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential, as my union, The International Coaching Federation, has it.

The editor of Writing Magazine is, in my e-experience, a very nice person. But even if that weren’t true, my pitch would still have been friendly. It would be on the side of the person I’m writing to. Because anger, when used helpfully, is about achieving the change that’s needed in the world, not simply relieving the emotion of anger. It’s not about you blasting at someone, it’s about you making the change the world deserves; that moves us all in the right direction. 

The Magic Trick, Part 2: Knowing It’s Up to You to Say It

Next time pitching feels too much like putting yourself on the line, make a list of things that annoy you. Or make you feel trapped or misrepresented or unheard. 

If someone were going to pay you to really illustrate one of those, which would you want it to be? 

What would your piece be saying? Who to? What would it be asking? Of whom?

Write it.

For yourself first. 

Then edit and rewrite it, for all of us.

Because your truth (even if it’s in a year or so) has a place in the slightly-better world it’s up to all of us to create.

Coffee & Creativity at Olympic Studios, Barnes | 10-11.30am Friday 6 June
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.

Come and Write This Week

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

Our next Writing Workout and Feedback is Tuesday 17 June. But first…

The Writing Room | 11am-1pm Monday 5 May
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 Magic Realism | 1pm-2.30pm Tuesday 6 May
From literary and genre fiction to poetry, film and TV, magic realism expresses a deeper truth to the everyday. It lets our themes and emotions take physical form, and allows the worlds we live in within our own minds to become real places in the worlds we create. Click here.

Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm Wednesday 7 May
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 | 6-7pm Thursday 8 May
Members only: please check Voxer messages.

Monthly Writing Workout | 6.30-7.30pm Tuesday 27 May 
Grab 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! Click here.

Coffee & Creativity at Olympic Studios, Barnes | 20-11.30am Friday 6 June
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.

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

Half my life ago, aged twenty-one and working backstage at a fringe theatre in London, I decided to “just get over” my phobia about being locked in things. 

I deliberately left my mobile phone (still a relatively new reassurance in 2003) in the theatre upstairs, while I went downstairs to the pub toilets.

I’ll skip over what you’ll already have guessed happened: the screaming; being able to see my own increasingly terrified face in the full-length mirror as I tried to be heard. I’ll also skip over finally being chainsawed out, and the subsequent discovery that the lock had fused in the heat.

None of this is the point. Not anymore, at least.

The point for me today is how I got something far better than what I thought I wanted.

I thought I wanted to “just get over” a fear. Instead, the experience meant I changed strategy. I gave myself the gift of unapologetic communication.

I think communicating my feelings and needs has served me a lot better in my career and personal life than blaming myself for being scared and trying to suppress it would have done.

All my close friends and family, many clients and just about every staff member at anywhere I run workshops – including Write Sip Connect at The Century Club, Coffee & Creativity at Olympic Studios and Fiction and Memoir Writing at Riverside Studios– know I’m scared of locks. Telling everyone I’m scared and knowing someone will come and find me if I’m not back in a few minutes is a calmer, happier reality than ‘just getting over it’. In accepting the reassurance and stories I get in return for sharing this vulnerability, I get connection. 

Sometimes fear is just fear. Sometimes it’s a muse in disguise.

What this experience also means now is that, when published and unpublished, beginner and experienced writers share their fear of feedback with me during our writing workout last week, I absolutely get it. 

Some of them take that fear to mean they’re not ready. 

But that suggests there’s such a thing as ‘ready’.

We don’t fear things that don’t matter to us. 

When we listen to what we fear – in my case, being unheard, or unable to connect – which ironically is exactly what my new way of dealing with the fear meant I get more of – we can also hear what we want.

In art and in life.

Good writing isn’t perfect. It’s honest. 

It comes from writers who aren’t keeping their readers at arm’s length by telling them what to think, the way I wanted to tell my brain to ‘just get over it’. They’re not suppressing. They’re connecting. They’re trusting the reader and building a connection as a result.

Coffee & Creativity at Olympic Studios, Barnes | 10-11.30am Friday 2 May 
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.

Come and Write This Week

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

Our next Writing Workout and Feedback is Tuesday 17 June. But first…

Writers’ Gym Mini-Episodes: Every Monday, Every Podcast Platform
Between series, we’re sharing weekly mini-episodes on writing and creative confidence building. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. Click here.

The Writing Room | 11am-1pm Monday 28 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.

Fiction and Memoir Writing | Riverside Studios 7-8.30pm Monday 28 April
All the inspiration, support and techniques you need to weave initial ideas into fully realised stories. Dr Rachel’s prose-writing sessions are suitable for anyone over the age of 18. 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.

Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm Wednesday 30 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 | 6-7pm Thursday 1 May
Members only: please check Voxer messages.

Coffee & Creativity at Olympic Studios, Barnes | 10-11.30am Friday 2 May 
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.

Write, Sip, Connect at the Century Club | 7-8.30pm Friday 2 May 
Join us for an evening workshop with cocktails, where creativity meets confidence in a unique blend of writing exercises, discussion, and networking. Whether you’re an experienced writer, just starting out, or simply curious about the craft, this event is designed to boost your word count, confidence, and connections—all in a relaxed and welcoming space. Click here.

Writing Magic Realism | 1pm-2.30pm Tuesday 6 May
From literary and genre fiction to poetry, film and TV, magic realism expresses a deeper truth to the everyday. It lets our themes and emotions take physical form, and allows the worlds we live in within our own minds to become real places in the worlds we create. Click here.

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

In the time between Writers’ Gym podcast series, I’m releasing mini-episodes on aspects of writing and creative confidence that come up for members and clients. 

No names, of course, but each one results in someone who isn’t the person (or usually people) who inspired it saying, ‘I felt you were talking directly to me’.

Here’s why.

In a week that reminds us how much fear there is around who we are and who we have the right to be, I was asked at my Riverscribes Fiction and Memoir workshop why I thought imagination belonged on the ‘artist palette’ of a memoir writer as much as a writer of fiction. After all, memoir is things that happened to us. What’s imagination got to do with it?

It’s not the first time I’ve been asked, but I try to treat it like it is. 

Every writer has a unique paint palette of memory, imagination, observations and questions about the world and our place in it. 

Each is unique to that writer, therefore each combination we mix from them even more so.

Yet, when literal paint is being brought on a palette to a blank canvas, no painter stops themselves mixing their colours with ‘I can’t possibly use that shade, my mum/friend/grandparent/teacher would be angry’ or ‘X would see this colour differently’ or ‘I don’t have the right to use this one’. 

Empathy creates people we’ve never met and whose lives may look very unlike our own saying ‘I felt like you knew what it was like to be me’.

Last week, I talked about why we write and why we read: not objective truth, but subjective truth. To feel what it’s like to be another person. To see each other in the dark. Because here’s the thing about true storytelling: we’re being vulnerable with our own truth. Putting the reader in the sensory details and the physical and emotional internal reality in our head. Imagination creates empathy. Empathy creates people we’ve never met and whose lives may look very unlike our own saying ‘I felt like you knew what it was like to be me’. Whether that’s fiction or memoir, it takes vulnerability. Vulnerability is strength. It can be hard to prioritise vulnerability over defence mechanisms. It can be hard to reveal the complexity, the messiness of who we truly are. Because the world hasn’t always told us that’s okay, let alone healthy and positive.

It is healthy and positive. Not just for discovering who characters are on the page. For giving ourselves permission to show up off the page.

We’re not so different, any of us, ever. So let’s all do what we can to have each other’s backs on all our paths to becoming our true, full, complex and multitudinous, selves.

Writing Magic Realism with Dr Rachel Knightley and Alex Davis Events starts Tuesday 6 May

Come and Write This Week

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

Writers’ Gym Mini-Episodes: Every Monday, Every Podcast Platform
Between series, we’re sharing weekly mini-episodes on writing and creative confidence building. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. Click here.

The Writing Room | 11am-1pm Monday 21 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.

Writing Workout and Feedback Workshop | 6-7.30pm Tuesday 22 April
Adding to our programme of regular workouts at the Writers’ Gym, this friendly group workshop is the perfect place to hone your writing – and how to get the best out of feedback. Click here.

Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm Wednesday 23 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 24 April
Members only: please check Voxer messages.

Writing Magic Realism | 1pm-2.30pm Tuesday 6 May
From literary and genre fiction to poetry, film and TV, magic realism expresses a deeper truth to the everyday. It lets our themes and emotions take physical form, and allows the worlds we live in within our own minds to become real places in the worlds we create. Click here.

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

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

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/why-normal-jobs-need-not-apply-kim-newman/id1674424465?i=1000702436268

Multi-award-winning author, journalist, film critic and fiction writer Kim Newman joins Dr Rachel Knightley at the Writers’ Gym for the final episode in our current series. Kim and Rachel talk about what a healthy and happy writing life can look like, the important relationship between freedom and structure, and how memory and imagination combine to build on our interests as authors into new works within the genres we love.  

For a writing workout based on Kim’s interview with Rachel, scroll down or visit WritersGym.com to download every Writing Workout in the series.

Find out more about Gabrielle at https://johnnyalucard.com/biography/

Join our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com or get in touch at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com

Kim Newman’s Recipe For a Healthy Writing Life

Learn how to pace yourself.

 Learn how to meet deadlines.

learn how to get stuff done.

Get stuff out of your head onto the page.

You have to engage people these days on the first page, that is absolutely true. But that’s not the same as starting with a plane crash. But you have to have something there.

And work on the prose. I know it can be kind of tedious, but look at the shape of sentences. Don’t repeat words too often.

Think hard about stuff like character names. It’s difficult. Most people in their life have like one or two children they have to name. Authors have to name thousands of people over a career. So give some thought to that.

If you’re writing historical fiction, learn what names were actually invented recently and you’ll look an idiot if you put them in your medieval character called Vanessa or Pamela. Don’t!

But also work out what names were popular in the 1940s if you’re writing then. That’s relatively easy to find out because now there are lists of what names were popular. But also think about your character’s parents and whether they would pick a popular name. Maybe they wouldn’t if they’re strange or unconventional people or if they’re in one of those families that likes to pass down embarrassing names to their children. think about where your characters come from, what shapes them before you get to the story, the adventure they’re involved in.

Remember that other people have different obsessions to you or different habits to you. It’s not so common now, but you used to be able to tell if an author was a smoker by the fact that all their characters puffed all the time. And I know that there are probably things that… In fact, as a non-driver, I know that I very rarely describe driving. But sometimes you sort of have to and I suspect there are howlers in that because it’s not an experience I have.

That’s the other thing, entertain yourself. If you don’t do that nobody else is going to enjoy it either.

 

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/confidence-magic-and-terry-pratchett-gabrielle-kent/id1674424465?i=1000701509550

Gabrielle Kent talks to Dr Rachel Knightley about the magic of the stories we inherit as well as those we create. Afull-time children’s author who began her career as a graphic artist for video games and lecturer in games development. Gabrielle’s work includes Alfie Bloom – a series about a boy who inherits a castle and a whole load of magical problems, Knights and Bikes – a series based on the video game of the same name, and the Rani Reports series, featuring a girl who wants to be an investigative journalist and her adventures with her rambunctious Mauritian nani. As a lifelong Discworld fan, she was overjoyed to recently collaborate with Rhianna Pratchett and Paul Kidby on Tiffany Aching’s Guide to being a Witch. She has just signed five books across two different series with a major publisher and is counting down the seconds until she can talk about them. She lives in the North East of England with her husband, daughter and agoraphobic cat.

For a writing workout based on Gabrielle’s interview with Rachel, scroll down or visit WritersGym.com to download every Writing Workout in the series.

Find out more about Gabrielle at https://gabriellekent.com

Join our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com or get in touch at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com

Writing Workout based on Gabrielle’s interview

Warm-up: Recycling first drafts

“If you tear it up, you can never do anything with it.” Gabrielle Kent

Instead of deleting ideas, making a ‘recycling’ folder. Maybe on your computer, maybe physical pieces of paper, maybe both. Treat everything that goes in it as a writing prompt for something new.

Exercise 1:  Future Editor

“Terry Pratchett always said writer’s block doesn’t exist and I realized after a while what he meant by that. There were times where I’d get stuck and things weren’t happening. I didn’t really have the inspiration, I’d just go away and I’d take ages before I went back to something. And then I realized what you do, you just don’t stop writing. You trust yourself as a future editor.”

Future you, who’s finished your current work in progress, comes to visit you.

They tell you the book is finished, and it’s gone exactly where you wanted it to go when it was finished.

Now all you have to do is have the fun, and enjoy the journey.

Return to your work-in-progress.

Cool-down Exercise: Rachel’s Perfectionism/Procrastination Coin

Draw a circle on a piece of paper.

Write PERFECTIONISM in the middle.

Turn it over. Write PROCRASTINATION in the middle.

Keep it where you can see it, and spin it, when you’re tempted to stop trusting Future You by trying to make it perfect, or by stopping moving it forward.

 

From where I’m sitting, I can see on my shelf one of the most beautiful books Penguin has ever published. It’s Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch, and it’s how I met Gabrielle Kent, my guest on the Writers’ Gym podcast this week. I met Gabrielle through her co-writer and best friend, Rhianna Pratchett, at the launch of this wonderful thing – which stays true to the spirit and voice of Discworld while also stepping into its next generation with embracing own-voice writing for the female characters.

During launch week I also heard Gabrielle speak with Rhianna in their event at the British Library, and identified with so much of what had been important to her in emerging in life and art: making your name your own; the power of the stories we grow up with and the stories we choose to explore and choose to create, in forming our authentic identity.

(And, obviously, being a Discworld fan: appreciating here is a system of philosophy, psychology, values and ethics we love as much as we love the humour and the adventure that carries this.)

But what I find most touching of all is our conversation about our perception (and sometimes lack of perception) of success.

I’ve mentioned very lightly in the last few paragraphs ‘event at the British Library’, ‘Penguin’ and ‘Discworld’ without even starting on Gabrielle’s impressive CV of games-writing, children’s writing and academia. From where I’m standing, I see success everywhere. But, like most people I know well enough to have these conversations, it doesn’t always feel like that from the inside.

Gabrielle is an absolute delight to talk to, and I know this is an episode you’ll really enjoy. But I hope, alongside that enjoyment, you’ll enjoy giving yourself this reminder that perception of success isn’t something that just happens once you reach a certain level of… anything. It’s how we feel about ourselves today, because on the other side of the next fence we’ll still be who we are today. We’ll still have the comparison fairies buzzing around our heads, speaking in the voices of what we think other people are thinking. But self-perception is not reality and appreciating the richness of what is already here, our right to create as only we can, is where the real magic is.

Listen to The Writers’ Gym wherever you get your podcasts:

Waiting for the confidence to take your writing off the pedestal and into the gym? Stop waiting for inspiration and start stretching the muscles that make inspiration a habit.

Come and Write This Week

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

The Writing Room | 11am-1pm Monday 31 March
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.

Fiction and Memoir Writing | Riverside Studios | 7pm-8.30pm Monday 31 March
All the inspiration, support and techniques you need to weave initial ideas into fully realised stories. Dr Rachel’s prose-writing sessions are suitable for anyone over the age of 18. 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.

Monthly Writing Workout | 6-7pm Tuesday 1 April
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.

Coffee & Creativity | 1-2.30pm Wednesday 2 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 3 April
Members only: please check Voxer messages.

Coffee & Creativity at Olympic Studios, Barnes | 10-11.30am Friday 4 April
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.

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

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/embracing-the-strange-aliya-whiteley-joins-the-writers-gym/id1674424465?i=1000700541716

Dr Rachel Knightley speaks to her Great British Horror 5 co-contributor, award-winning author of ovels, short stories and articles (“Usually strange ones”) Aliya Whiteley. is the author of seven books of speculative fiction, including the Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlisted Skyward Inn and The Loosening Skin, and also The Beauty, which was shortlisted for both a Shirley Jackson award and the Otherwise Award. A tenth anniversary edition of The Beauty was published in 2024. She has written over one hundred published short stories that have appeared in magazines such as F&SF, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Strange Horizons, The Dark, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Guardian, as well as in anthologies such as Unsung Stories’ 2084 and Lonely Planet’s Better than Fiction. Her non-fiction includes The Secret Life of Fungi, a look at how fungi are a permanent presence in her life. She also writes a regular non-fiction column on sci fi and fantasy matters for Interzone magazine.

For a writing workout based on Aliya’s interview with Rachel, scroll down or visit WritersGym.com to download every Writing Workout in the series.

Find out more about Aliya at https://aliyawhiteley.uk/about/

Join our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com or get in touch at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com

Writing Workout based on Aliya’s interview

Warm-up: The Enormous Importance of Weird

Write down a list of your five weirdest interests or experiences.

Pick the one you’re least likely to write about.

Write about it for five minutes. Just for you.

Exercise 1: Fiction, Memoir and Truth

“I’m not an expert on fungi at all, but I wanted to write something about my fascination with them. and I tried, I did like a huge amount of research and was trying to put across things in a very dry academic kind of way… so instead I wrote this very short, personal book about how I just found fun everywhere throughout my life.”

1. Think about an experience doing something you love. Describe the sensations in your body, physical and emotional. Show us what you feel and discover.
2. Write another version, in third person. Change the character’s gender, or location, or even their activity. Keep the emotional truth but change the literal truth.

Exercise 2: Remembering to Play

1. “I’m a big believer in all sorts of exercises and routines that you put around writing, it’s a bit like scaffolding. It kind of takes the pressure off what it is you’re trying to build. Something like working on 381, where every section of that book is 381 words long. That moves a lot of pressure of what’s happening in the novel because you’ve applied sort of weird constraints to it.”

1. “Or exercises like, okay, so I have to put these five particular objects that I’ve just made up on the spot. They have to appear in this next short story somewhere. And then the narrative or the characters or all the other things that you would choose to worry about aren’t there any longer because you’re thinking about these five objects.”

Cool-down: Voices on the Bus

Choose one of Aliya’s favourites:

“All the voices that are in your head and you’re all on the bus together. And the writer self is the one driving the bus. One of your passengers is shouting, but passengers are allowed to shout every now and again on my buses. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean catastrophe ahead. t’s a whole range of emotions and thoughts and processes and some, there are the ones that, you know, they’re trying to warn you all the time, but you know, they’re not driving the bus.” Aliya Whiteley

Who are the passengers on your bus?

What is each of them interested in?

Who’s really enthusiastic?

Who panics easily?

What does each one love?

What does each one want?

 

The thing is, when it goes well it feels like ‘cheating’.

It feels like it’s coming through you, instead of from you. Your hand creates the letters but the words are from somewhere else, each other’s rather than yours; you’re discovering the road ahead rather than paving it yourself.

Or that’s what we tell ourselves.

Because hard work should feel like hard work, right?

Or, if not, shouldn’t we be able to feel like this all the time?

I wrote last week about how believing writing is all inspiration is like believing love is all romance. I’m not denying for a nanosecond that it’s usually the most fun bit. But it’s the work the inspiration, um, inspires us to do all the time, in a million big and little ways – the motivation, the perspiration, from the inspiration – that makes the difference.

Because that’s really the thing. It’s not cheating. It’s not coming through you instead of from you. You aren’t possessed by the muse. You are doing the writing.

Why am I telling you this now? Because I tell myself every day. Because every day when it goes smoothly and freely, and every day when every step comes through effort and force, there’s a reason to get at myself:

“But it shouldn’t be this easy, should it?”

“But it shouldn’t be this hard, should it?”

Easier to compare myself with (my imagined view of) others and their successes, paint myself pictures of how much easier it is for (my fictional versions of) other people – that accept the limit of my control over my own emotional and intellectual weather patterns.

Every day, every page, I have the same choice:

Anxiety, or creativity? I don’t get to choose which of them I hear, but I do get to choose which of them I listen to.

Both are making up stories, but creativity acknowledges the process; recognises how real, how tangible its effects can be – even though the stories are made up.

That’s why I remind myself what my first love, Sir Paul, tells us in the picture at the top. I remind myself that the best work starts as play.

If you want to train your creative confidence muscles, beat the inspiration addiction and build a healthy writing life, grab any workout at the Writers’ Gym:

The Writing Room | 11am-1pm Monday 24 March
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 26 March
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.

Cocktails & Creativity at the Century Club | 7-8.30pm Wednesday 26 March
Join us for an evening workshop with cocktails, where creativity meets confidence in a unique blend of writing exercises, discussion, and networking. Whether you’re an experienced writer, just starting out, or simply curious about the craft, this event is designed to boost your word count, confidence, and connections—all in a relaxed and welcoming space. Click here.

Writing Room EXTRA | 3-5pm Thursday 27 March
Members only: please check Voxer messages.

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

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

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