The Writers’ Gym Podcast

What it Is vs What it Means

If you’re getting distracted or put off from writing, it might just be you’re spending more time in the ‘what-does-this-say-about-me’ fog than in the idea at its centre: to write your story, and to discover what that story is by writing it. Dr Rachel Knightley demonstrates how our energy, focus and time can be sucked away into that fog, or channeled into creativity. 

I Should be Doing Something Else

Dr Rachel Knightley draws an the Excuses Bingo card she and members of the Writers’ Gym created in a recent workshop, and works through how each of these ‘reasons’ not to write might just contain a reminder of why we really want to write in the first place.

Doug Naylor: Sin Bin Island, Red Dwarf and remembering Rob Grant

Dr Rachel Knightley is joined at the Writers' Gym by Emmy award winning script-writer, novelist and director Doug Naylor. He co-created the long running hugely successful sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf, has written or co-written every episode across thirteen series and has directed over twenty episodes. Doug also co-founded Grant Naylor Productions in 1991 which made series IV to X of Red Dwarf. Doug has also written three best selling novels, and a few non-best selling ones too. He co-wrote a number one single which shall remain nameless, but has the words Song and Chicken in the title. Doug also co-created the Carlton TV series The 10 Percenters, for which his script Table 11 won a British Comedy award. Formerly he was Head writer and Script editor on the original run of the hugely popular satirical puppet show Spitting Image and he has also written a number of award winning radio shows. His alma mater was Liverpool University where he claims he was thrown out, at the end of his second year, for drinking too slowly. In September 2025, Doug’s children’s novel Sin Bin Island was published by David Fickling Books and he is currently working on the second in the series.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Naylor
 
https://www.pbjmanagement.co.uk/artists/doug-naylor

Lee Murray in conversation with Dr Rachel Knightley

Dr Rachel Knightley is joined at the Writers' Gym by Lee Murray ONZM (Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit) . Lee is a writer, editor, poet and screenwriter from Aotearoa New Zealand, a Shirley Jackson Award and five-time Bram Stoker Award® winner. A USA Today bestselling author with more than forty titles to her credit, including novels, collections, anthologies, nonfiction, poetry, and several books for children, Lee holds a New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction, and is an Honorary Literary Fellow of the New Zealand Society of Authors. Among her recent works are feature film Grafted (directed by Sasha Rainbow), horror anthology This Way Lies Madness (Flame Tree Press) co-edited with Dave Jeffery, and prose-poetry collection, NZSA Cuba Press Prize-winner Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud (The Cuba Press). 
 
Read more at https://www.leemurray.info/

'Just' do it?

What do the words we really hate, really want to tell us? Dr Rachel Knightley takes the word that annoys her the most and spends time listening to what it might have wanted to tell her – and what listening to it might mean for her confidence and creativity.

Lavie Tidhar in conversation with Dr Rachel Knightley

Multi-award-winning novelist Lavie Tidhar is Dr Rachel Knightley's guest on the Writers' Gym Podcast. Lavie’s work encompasses literary fiction (Maror, Adama, Golgotha and Six Lives), cross-genre classics such as Jerwood Prize winner A Man Lies Dreaming and World Fantasy Award winner Osama, and genre works like the Campbell and Neukom winner Central Station. His work has been translated into multiple languages. He lives in London.
 
https://lavietidhar.wordpress.com
https://www.instagram.com/lavietidhar/?hl=en
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavie_Tidhar

Project or Palette Cleanser?

One thing at a time, or freedom to flip between? What system of working really summons your creativity and what gets in the way? Dr Rachel Knightley wants to hear from you.

Sarah Bax Horton in conversation with Dr Rachel Knightley

Dr Rachel Knightley is joined by her client, award-winning true crime writer and researcher, Sarah Bax Horton. Sarah is currently appearing in Lucy Worsley’s Victorian Murder Club on BBC2. The three-part miniseries is based on the subject of her second book Arm of Eve: Investigating the Thames Torso Murders (The History Press), for which she won the RBAM (Ripperology Books And More) Book of the Year 2024. Fascinated by genealogy, her discovery of a Whitechapel police ancestor inspired her identification of Jack the Ripper in One-Armed Jack: Uncovering the Real Jack the Ripper (Michael O’Mara Books).
https://www.andrewlownie.co.uk/authors/sarah-bax-horton
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/bbc-lucy-worsley-victorian-murder-club-thames-torso-mystery-solved-b1264955.html
https://www.instagram.com/sarahbaxhorton/?hl=en
 

Unblocking

Unblock your writing and your right to write: Dr Rachel Knightley identifies and debunks the myth that's most got in her way as a writer, and how believing in ourselves, not our monsters, is the purpose of the stories we tell ourselves.

Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes joins Dr Rachel Knightley at The Writers' Gym

Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes joins Dr Rachel Knightley on the Writers' Gym Podcast, discussing how we turn interests and passions into writing careers. Xavi is Reader in English Literature and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University and a founding member of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies. His publications include the monographs Contemporary Body Horror (CUP, 2024), Horror Film and Affect (Routledge, 2016) and Body Gothic (UWP, 2014) and the edited collections Twenty-First-Century Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion (with Maisha Wester, EUP, 2019) and Horror: A Literary History (British Library, 2016). Xavier is co-president of the International Gothic Association and a founding member of the Horror Studies special interest group hosted by the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies.
 
https://www.waterstones.com/author/xavier-aldana-reyes/784113
 
https://www.routledge.com/authors/i14274-xavier-aldana-reyes