The Writers’ Gym Podcast

Stealthwriting

What’s the difference between procrastination and a gentle ‘landing pattern’ on your way down to where the words are? If your bookshelves are noticeably neater when a deadline’s looming, it’s possible your rituals are becoming an end in themselves (procrastination) rather than a landing pattern: moving you towards your inner world. One of the best things to get the joy back? Stealthwriting. Dr Rachel Knightley — with a little help from the incomparable David Lynch reminding us to ‘go where the fish are’ — gets us back in touch with the importance of building space and time where the ideas can discover us.

Perfect Was Never On the Menu: Two Creative Writing Exercises

If you’re listening to a podcast about writing, there’s a good chance you’ve experienced how a book you love has added to your life: how valuable that relationship with the words of a stranger, that tour of a world created by a mind other than your own, can be. Yet when it’s time to pay it forward, we can be blocked by questions like ‘What if it’s too weird?’ or ‘What if it’s too boring?’ In this episode, Rachel Knightley invites you to play Excuses Bingo, an original and favourite Writers’ Gym exercise, so you can move through fear and aim to be interested instead of interesting. The result? Paying it forward as a writer to your own readers.
 

Think On The Page

“But don’t you HAVE to wait for inspiration?”
Every writing voice is unique — but how we stand in our way can be a lot less so. Inspired (see what we did there?) by a question Dr Rachel Knightley was asked in two workshops and one pub in the same week, this episode at the Writers’ Gym explores how to blend inspiration and perspiration to build healthy writing habits. We go back to Rachel’s key image of the writer’s artist palette: how our unique imagination, memory, observations and questions blend to even more unique results, when we create for ourselves (and with a little help from our writing workouts) the permission to use them.
 
Join our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com or get in touch at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com
 

Why Normal Jobs Need Not Apply - Kim Newman

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.

Confidence, Magic and Terry Pratchett – Gabrielle Kent joins the Writers' Gym

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.

Embracing the Strange – Aliya Whiteley joins the Writers' Gym

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.”
 
Think about an experience doing something you love. Describe the sensations in your body, physical and emotional. Show us what you feel and discover.
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
 
 
“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.”
 
“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?

Eyebrows and Imagination – Rosie Garland joins the Writers' Gym

Award-winning poet, long and short fiction author, performer and vocalist with the March Violets, Rosie Garland talks to Dr Rachel Knightley about curiosity, creative confidence – and taking on the world eyebrows first! She is the author of The Palace of Curiosities (which won the Mslexia Novel Competition and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize), Vixen and The Night Brother, which was described by The Times as “a delight…with shades of Angela Carter.” Her new novel, The Fates (Quercus) is a retelling of the Greek myth of the Fates. Her latest poetry collection, What Girls do in the Dark (Nine Arches Press), was shortlisted for the 2021 Polari Prize. Val McDermid has named her one of the most compelling LGBT+ writers in the UK today. In 2018-2019 she was inaugural Writer-in-Residence at The John Rylands Library, Manchester, and in 2023 was made a Fellow of The Royal Society of Literature.
 
 
For a writing workout based on Rosie’s interview with Rachel, scroll down or visit WritersGym.com to download every Writing Workout in the series.
 
Find out more about Rosie at http://www.rosiegarland.com
 
Join our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com or get in touch at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com
 
 
Writing Workout based on Rosie’s interview
 
Warm-up: Rachel’s ‘Excuses Bingo’ Grid
 
Make a massive noughts and crosses board on your page. Each square just needs to be to be big enough to write a sentence in. Throw all of the phrases that come up: ‘What if it’s too boring?’ ‘What if it’s too weird?’ ‘I’m not that kind of writer.” ‘X is better than me.’ Whatever your brain might throw at you.
 
Go through them all, and use ‘What if’ to find the positive opposite (spoiler alert: it’s going to be true!). For example, ‘What if it's too weird?’ might have as its positive opposite ‘What if this is the book that saved somebody's life?’
 
Exercise 1: The Craft of Gentleness
 
“I strive to do is show myself the gentleness that I show to other writers. I mean one thing I absolutely love and which feeds and nourishes me is being a mentor for other writers. I come to mentoring with an attitude of acceptance and warm encouragement and cheerleading and something I try to do for myself. It’s sometimes a struggle because of that classic one of like the hardest, the person who's hardest in the world is you on yourself.” Rosie Garland
 
Listening
Choose to listen to when the voices of self-criticism come:
 
If there is a fear, what would it be? If the thing it’s criticising represents a step forward, what if that voice needs your reassurance instead of obeying it?
 
Choosing
 
Now you know it isn’t a fact, put the what the voice on your Excuses Bingo grid. Note the time reference (you might just find it flies past the window the same time tomorrow!).
 
Exercise 2: The Art of Randomness
 
“Go and pick up three random books, four if you're feeling particularly adventurous. They could be recipe books, How to Fix Your Chainsaw or the novels of Jane Austen. Take the three books, open them up at a random page. Pick a random line: close your eyes, stick a finger in and basically with all three books pick out about between three and five random phrases, write them down and then use them as springboards for writing anything and try to get all five in.”
Rosie Garland
 
 
Cool-down Exercise: Be Surprised
“The thing about giving yourself permission to, you know, throw it all away when you've done it. was literally just, was exercising the writing muscles. Again, one of the reasons I do writing in the morning, apart from the fact I'm a morning person and I know not everyone else is, is it is like going to the gym. A… writer's gym? I see what I did there. Who would have thought?” Rosie Garland
 
If there was one new creative habit you could bring into this week, what would it be?

JD Barker's Writing Life

This week at the Writers’ Gym, Dr Rachel Knightley is joined by New York Times and international bestselling thriller writer JD Barker. His work has been broadly described as suspense thrillers, often incorporating elements of horror, crime, mystery, science fiction and the supernatural. He is a frequent collaborator with James Patterson. JD shares the creative exercises and habits that support his writing life and how valuing every contact he made in his early career meant building the creative career he has today.
 
For a writing workout based on JD’s interview with Rachel, scroll down or visit WritersGym.com to download every Writing Workout in the series.
 
Find out more about JD at https://jdbarker.com
 
Join our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com or get in touch at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com
 
 
Writing Workout based on JD’s interview
 
Warm-up: Creative Stretch
 
“I turn off the Internet when I first start and I don't turn it on until I get my daily word count done… which I'm usually done with by about ten, ten thirty. Then I flip that switch on the internet all the emails start coming in So basically the business side of this that I have to deal with…until three o'clock in the afternoon That's what my quitting bell rings.” JD Barker
 
Take a pen and treat it like a magic wand.
 
Design your ideal writing day. Try writing it in third person, the writer experiencing his/her/their ideal writing day.
 
Tip: If the answer is ‘I don’t know’, dare yourself to fill the line anyway. Then maybe the next. Give it a few minutes – because the flow takes turning the tap on.
 
 
Main Exercise:
 
“Whenever I write, I listen to a thunderstorm soundtrack on noise cancelling headphones. And not only does it drown out everything going on around me, but it's a Pavlov's dog kind of thing. As soon as I hear that noise, my mind immediately snaps into writer mode.” JD Barker
 
- If I could give my focus one gift, what would it be?
 
- If I could give myself one piece of advice about my writing life, what would I offer myself?
 
Read the answers back to yourself. How will you use your personal training tips from you to you this week?
 
Cool-down Exercise:
 
“Years back it was paper notes, know, I scribble it down and put it down somewhere. I learned very early on, like when you wake up at three o'clock in the morning and you get an idea for your book, you'll tell yourself you're going to remember it in the morning and you never remember it in the morning. So I've always written it down.” JD Barker
 
Where in your house could you put a notebook and pen, or post-it notes, where you don’t have them already? What else would make the distance from brain to world a little less far?

Returning to Being a Writer – Prano Bailey-Bond joins the Writers' Gym

Today’s episode and writing workout feature the art and life of Prano Bailey-Bond. Prano is an award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter who grew up on a diet of Twin Peaks in the depths of a strange Welsh community. Her work invokes imaginative worlds, fusing a dark vocabulary with eerie allure, revealing how beauty resides in strange places. Prano shares with Dr Rachel Knightley her early influences, creative fuel and sources of confidence and how directing her debut feature was when she reengaged with being a writer.
 
For a writing workout based on Prano’s interview with Rachel, scroll down or visit WritersGym.com to download every Writing Workout in the series.
 
Find out more about Prano at https://www.pranobaileybond.com/about
 
Join our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com or get in touch at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com
 
 
Writing Workout based on Prano’s interview
 
Warm-up: The Drive
 
“It was a filmmaker who said… some filmmakers are driven by wanting to tell the world something that they think, and some are driven by wanting to understand something that they don't understand. And I think I'm probably the latter.” Prano Bailey-Bond
 
Take a blank sheet of paper and choose one of these questions:
 
What do I want to say?
 
What do I want to ask?
 
Tip: If the answer is ‘I don’t know’, dare yourself to fill the line anyway. Then maybe the next. Give it a few minutes – because the flow takes turning the tap on.
 
 
Main Exercise:
 
Read your answer back to yourself. What visual images come up? Or what conversations between characters in your life?
 
Draw one of the images.
 
Write one of the conversations (the actual dialogue – what the characters say to each other/how they argue with each other!).

Adrian Tchaikovsky talks Writing Health (and Insects)

Episode 2: Adrian Tchaikovsky
 
Today at the Writers’ Gym, Dr Rachel Knightley is joined by multi-award-winning science fiction and fantasy author Adrian Tchaikovsky. Find out how early experience running Tabletop roleplaying games combine with Adrian’s childhood inspiration (mainly insectoid) and adult inspiration (including coffee) to create his career as an author and what a healthy, happy writing life means to him.
 
Adrian Tchaikovsky is a British science-fiction and fantasy writer known for a wide-variety of work including the Children of Time, Final Architecture, Dogs of War, Tyrant Philosophers and Shadows of the Apt series, as well as standalone books such as Elder Race, Doors of Eden, Spiderlight and many others. Children of Time and its series has won the Arthur C Clarke and BSFA awards, and his other works  have won the British Fantasy, British Science Fiction and Sidewise Awards.
 
For a writing workout based on Adrian’s interview with Rachel, scroll down or visit WritersGym.com to download every Writing Workout in the series.
 
Find out more about Adrian at https://adriantchaikovsky.com
See him on tour: https://adriantchaikovsky.com/events.html
 
Join our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com or get in touch at thewritersgym@rachelknightley.com
 
 
Writing Workout based on Adrian’s interview
 
Warm-up: Map of Me (or, in honour of Adrian, Spider of Me)
1. Write your name in the middle of a page. Circle it, andgive that circle as many legs as you like. At the end of each leg, write something you love. An interest, an activity, a band, a caffeinated beverage, anything. Spend 1-2 minutes filling the page. There’s no such thing as ‘random’ or ‘irrelevant’ or ‘wrong’. Just go for it.
 
2. Circle three things. Don’t think about why you’re picking them, just circle.
 
3. Select one of those three. Decide that whatever you write with that prompt, for fifteen minutes, is (the first draft of) something your dream publisher wants to publish.
 
4. Write exactly what comes to you, letting yourself have fun. Be curious. Remember there are no wrong answers. Write for fifteen minutes and see where you go.
 
Main exercise:
The First-Person Monty Python Helmet
Step into a character who loves one of those now. Consider what they see, hear, touch, taste and smell. What do they think in their minds, and feel in their bodies, as a response to their emotions?