Sponsor the writers for Macmillan Cancer Support at https://www.justgiving.com/page/greeninksponsoredwrite2023

1) Hello! Tell us a bit about yourself, writing, and/or life outside writing?

Hello! My name is Isabella Barbieri and I am a British-Italian writer. I have been currently studying a Creative Writing MA at the University of Roehampton, which is where I met Rachel. I mainly enjoy writing low fantasy and comedic short stories and I am currently working on a novel. Outside of writing I try to read as much as I can, mainly fantasy or mythological retellings. I also spend a lot of time listening to anything that has been narrated by Stephen Fry. 

2) Are you a ‘deadlines person’? Is that part of the attraction or the challenge?

Yes! I am very much a deadlines person, especially close ones. When I have too much time, I find myself in my head a lot more, worrying about the quality of my writing. When there is a shorter deadline, the thought of this overrides my usual and impressively persistent anxiety and allows me to focus solely on the task at hand! This aspect of the sponsored write is very exciting to me and will be a great challenge! – I am really looking forward to it! 

3) Many involved have personal connections with Macmillan Cancer Support. Do you want to share any experience of the charity’s work?

I have never personally worked with Macmillan Cancer Support before but I know of all the great work they do and am in awe of it. Cancer is something that touches the lives of so many people and I am incredibly grateful to be part of the Macmillan Sponsored Write and to be supporting such a great cause and charity. 

4) What do you make of Paul Tremblay’s theme for this year, A Well of Strength/The Strength of Will?

I really love Paul Tremblay’s chosen theme, as there is so much creative freedom and the theme can be interpreted in so many different ways. Sometimes having the strength to do something small compared to other, more stereotypical forms of strength can take just as much will power, so for me this theme has given me the opportunity to really explore the many ways strength and strength of will can be embodied.

5) Absolutely anything else you’d like to share! 🙂

I am really looking forward to the Macmillan Sponsored Write and I am really grateful to be a part of it. I want to say a big thank you to Rachel for inviting me to join and for organising such a great event in aid of Macmillan, and to all the people who have donated so far! 🙂 

Vanessa Thompsett

1) Hello! Tell us about yourself, your writing and how you discovered the Sponsored Write?

Hello! I’m a writer and tutor living in Oxford. I write mainly prose, mostly short stories, and I’m working on the second draft of my first fantasy novel. I’d heard of the Sponsored Write and thought it sounded lovely, then Rachel kindly invited me to this year’s!

2) Are you a “deadlines person” outside the Sponsored Write? Is the time-limit part of the challenge or the attraction?

Both attraction and challenge! I’ve done a few rounds of NYC Midnight before and it can be a lot of fun to ride that adrenaline rush for a couple of days.

3) Many involved have personal connections with Macmillan Cancer Support. Do you want to share any experience of the charity’s work?

I’ve called MCS a few times in the past couple of years, and they’ve always been kind and helpful. It’s great to know you can phone up and ask the ‘stupid/silly’ question, or voice the fear, or just think out loud.

4) What do you make of Paul Tremblay’s theme for this year, A Well of Strength/The Strength of Will?

I’m mainly hoping I do it justice! It’s puttering away in the back of mind, ready to be thought about properly in October. I’m looking forward to seeing how we all interpret it.

5) Absolutely anything else you’d like to share! 🙂

I’ll be writing while pet-sitting for some friends, so if a plump little tabby or particularly endearing black dog ends up featuring in my story, that’ll be why…

Aliya Whiteley

Hello! I write a lot of sci-fi, fantasy, horror and generally weird fiction, and a bit of non-fiction, and I really love stories that surprise the reader, and do unexpected things. I’m hoping to manage to do that during this sponsored write. I came across the sponsored write through Rachel’s social media, and I thought it was a brilliant idea – a way to try to help a charity that’s important to me, so I was very keen when a chance came to take part. I’m really looking forward to the writing day.

I can write to a deadline, and I can also procrastinate with the best of them! I think, once the clock starts ticking, it’ll motivate me to get as much down on paper as I can. I still write longhand for a first draft, so I’ll have to factor in time to type that up, or maybe try writing straight to screen for it, which will be interesting, and outside of my comfort zone! I wonder what I’ll end up with…

Paul Tremblay’s theme for this year, A Well of Strength, The Strength of Will is a great starting point. I am having a lot of thoughts about the prompt, and ideas are sparking, but I’m trying not to overthink it before we even get there! I’d like to leave something up to the moment. A bit of unpredictability usually gets the best results for me.

Katharine Orton

1) Hello! Tell us a bit about yourself, writing, and/or life outside writing?

Hi. I’m Katharine and I’m an author. I’ve written three books for children (Nevertell, Glassheart and Mountainfell) and have a couple of other projects in the works at the moment too. I live in Bristol with my husband, son and two young rescue cats, Stevie and Snorlax. Snorlax is a big, gentle giant, and Stevie likes to hunt our toes.

2) Many involved have personal connections with Macmillan Cancer Support. Do you want to share any experience of the charity’s work?

Macmillan go above and beyond to provide emotional support to people with cancer, as well as to their friends and families. But perhaps what’s under sung about them is that they also provide clear and relevant information. When you or someone you care about gets cancer it can be a baffling time, and sometimes you just want to know stuff but might feel scared or stupid asking. As someone who feels overwhelmed if I don’t know all the facts, or feel like I can’t ask, this is so reassuring.

3) What do you make of Paul Tremblay’s theme for this year, A Well of Strength/The Strength of Will?

It’s a theme that gives a lot of room for creativity! I think this year’s anthology is going to be the best yet 🙂

https://rachel3t472.substack.com/p/the-horror-muse-and-the-freelance?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2#details

https://rachel3t472.substack.com/p/writing-lives

Performance provides us with ‘factory conditions’ to understand our own reality.

Internationally best-selling author, artist, journalist and speaker John-Paul Flintoff trained in improvisation with Keith Johnstone. He designs today’s word-count workout alongside Rachel Knightley as they discuss the benefits of stagecraft on communication, and how performance provides ‘factory conditions’ for understanding your own character motivation offstage as much as on it.

John-Paul’s books include the internationally bestselling How to Change the World, and A Modest Book on How to Make an Adequate Speech.  John-Paul will also be joining the Writer’s Gym’s Green Ink Sponsored Write for Macmillan Cancer Support on 14 October 2023. To receive your world-exclusive anthology of new writing 48 hours after the event ends, click here.

https://rachel3t472.substack.com/p/connection-through-imperfection?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2#details

I first read this on the wall of the @whitehartclinic, just after lockdown. 

It was the first appointment of the next stage of my physical recovery and was exactly what I needed to see and hear, which I suppose is why my mind let me see and hear it when I did.

Today I filmed this brook on an impromptu walk through central Barnes to pick up a prescription and walk home again. My partner came with me for moral support and exercise. While I would have just walked home the short way and gone back to work, he suggested the long way home. Neither of us would have had this wonderful break in the day without the other. And neither of us would have had the opportunity if I hadn’t made the leaps of faith to fully invest in my writing and coaching back then, when I read that quote on that wall.

I’m so grateful to the me who saw and read that writing on the wall, for keeping faith with the physical and mental health habits that allow me to see how much power I have over my day, my time, my choices. To put the ‘creative’ in ‘writer’: creating the life and art you want. 

That’s how and why I’m writing more, and the reason I’m launching The Creative Writer: to creating the art, work and life we want. 

Applications open until 28 June: click the bio for more information on my books, this course and other events, or DM a question right here ✍️

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Performance provides us with ‘factory conditions’ to understand our own reality – with John-Paul Flintoff

https://open.substack.com/pub/rachel3t472/p/connection-through-imperfection?r=nvknj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

“What’s the writing advice that really pisses you off?” was my favourite question to ask award-winning author and editor Dan Coxon. Originally we were speaking of the module I’m convening at Roehampton University, The Business of Writing. But it’s a phrase so much part of every freelance wordsmith’s life and career and such an important reminder in itself that I knew it had to be part of this month’s word-count workout at the Writers’ Gym:

https://rachel3t472.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=substack_profile

I am standing in a wood, at the edge of a pool. I drop a pebble into the water, watch the rings dissipate. When they do, I drop the next pebble. Like anywhere I go in my head, I’m more aware of the place than I am of me. It’s the pebbles, not myself, I’m here for. I don’t drop the next pebble until those rings have faded to stillness. Then, in goes the next.

I’ve been using this pool for as long as I can remember. Rather than race through your lines (if you’re acting) or information (if you’re giving a speech or being interviewed) or offering all the multiple directions a conversation could go (if you’re interviewing someone else), drop one thing into the silence, let the rings dissipate around that. The space between is where the thinking happens.  

This wasn’t necessarily how I experienced my earliest performances (say, The Wicked Fairy, aged 6, at primary school), It was how I was thinking by the end of Youth Theatre (Hilda, the Ugly Duckling’s sister, aged 18) but the most important place I used this wasn’t on a stage. It was beside one. The place the penny (not just the pebble) dropped about how communication and performance fit together was the first time I knew I needed to play myself.

That place was one of the first primary schools where I ran drama clubs. I was standing at the side of the hall, listening to the head teacher introduce me. I’d recently left university and, if I’m honest, felt closer to being one of those identically uniformed and identically poker-faced, cross-legged children staring up from the floor, than to being one the smattering of adults seated around the edges of the (suddenly enormous) room. What was going on in my head went along the lines of “Oh God, what if no one wants to do drama club? What if they don’t like me? What if they realise I shouldn’t be here?” and all the other things impostor syndrome screams so eloquently as we stand at the edges of our comfort zone. Then it was time to start walking. It was also the moment I thought, “What if… I get to choose who I am and what this is?”

Read the rest here: https://rachel3t472.substack.com/p/playing-yourself

I often joke (the way you do about things that aren’t jokes at all but absolutely true) the two belief systems I grew up within were Judaism and, ever so slightly beneath that, Star Trek. 

I say two; really, I experienced them as a continuum. Not because Star Trek’s creator Gene Roddenberry was Jewish, or even because the symbolism of the Vulcan salute Leonard Nimoy created for his character, Mr Spock, was drawn from having seen the shape of the Hebrew letter shin formed with the hand as part of an orthodox service when he was a child. It was because Star Trek – while not literally, presently real – was about potential. Here was an imagined version of humanity in which we had survived the worst things about ourselves. We had become a force in the universe not for self-destruction but for exploration, outward and inward. We were motivated not by personal gain but by personal betterment, connection, and curiosity. That was the agenda from which we boldly went where we hadn’t been before. It was not a statement of who we were, but who we had it in us to be… Read the full article for free on my Substack