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Game Talk - Rachel Knightley

  • Mar 12
  • 8 min read

The first time I'd ever caught wind of Rachel was back when Black Shuck Books were about to release Great British Horror 5: Midsummer Eve, given that we'd both contributed stories to the book. What became apparent to me in the wake of that meeting was her dedication to helping others cultivate a level of game.



1. For those who don't know, who are you?


Hello! I’m Rachel, author of two short story collections, two non-fiction books and a bunch more stories and features in various anthologies and magazines (you can find me in the current issue of Psychologies magazine). I’m also the founder and presenter of the Writers’ Gym Podcast and membership. The Writers’ Gym is the thing I wish I’d had when I was starting out: wherever you’re at or want to be in your writing life, it’s a space that consistently supports and gently challenges published and unpublished writers (and writers-to-be) to build creative confidence, beat the inspiration addiction (more on that in a minute!) and find their unique voice through their own curiosity.

2. Game talk – how do you organise and manage your game? How has it evolved?


I’m a big fan of the jigsaw career: working out what pieces work where, so as a freelancer you’re enjoying not having all your eggs in one basket and can create a routine that works for you. I see 1:1 clients mainly in the afternoons and evenings so mornings are for writing whether that’s projects with deadlines or time to play. It’s really important to me to always remind myself this is a playroom, not an exam room: we write best that way. Helping other writers out of their own way – discovering the limiting beliefs and defence mechanisms that are often keeping us ‘safe’ in the status quo of not having made the career jump or finished the book we’d really love – is a big part of it.


In terms of how the work life I have now evolved, it really started during a writing course I’d booked myself on, a couple of years before I was accepted for my creative writing PhD (but nearly ten years before I discovered the vocabulary of coaching and the power it would have over my ability to show up for myself as a writer) that I felt a significant penny drop: every week, I and the other writing students around me invested significant time and money, made detailed notes, received feedback, took reading recommendations and left at the end feeling inspired about being writers.


Then, we returned the following week, with the same great intentions but not having done much writing – sometimes any writing – in between.

We’d all, at some level, say we hadn’t ‘found time.’

It had nothing to do with ability, education, personality, it was across every conceivable board. So if it wasn’t about the writing, I wondered, what was it about the writer? What did the writer need? Since then, it’s all been about creating the circumstances where I and others can recognise the inspiration addiction and its temptations, and instead empower ourselves with regular, small habits and an ever-present source of support and community wherever you are in the world or your writing life.

3. Talk us through one of your biggest achievements in your game – give us the story behind it. How did it play out?


That would have to be creating the Writers’ Gym. Today it’s a writing coaching platform and podcast, but it began in 2013 at a café table in Waterstones Piccadilly. Here I offered my first ‘writing workouts’. Each session began with a warm-up. Like the physical gym, what we did in that warm-up wasn’t meant for an audience. It was about getting brain and body working together. It was just for us.


I followed the warm-up with a discussion about how we let ourselves Think on the Page (we have that slogan on our notebooks now!) rather than getting stuck in our own heads. Then I led exercises and discussion mixing what I had prepared with the needs and interests that emerged, ending with a creative closing exercise and conversation about the week (or month) ahead: identifying habits or exercises we’d enjoyed, what had captured our curiosity, and how each writer would take forward what they’d discovered between now and next workout.


One of the people who came to these workouts was Graham. He spent a lot of time trying to make the reader laugh, seeking an audience for his drafts too soon when he didn’t really know what the pieces were yet himself. He felt his writing was shallow and didn’t spend time with his characters. He alternated between considering self-publishing immediately and giving up writing entirely. By separating Thinking on the Page from the later editing and rewriting stages, seeing his ideas develop gradually over a series of drafts, Graham was able to move away from his self-consciousness about an audience who didn’t exist yet to genuinely enjoy engaging in the writing process. He told me he was writing more between sessions now, without feeling blocked by worry it wouldn’t be ‘good enough’. He had beaten the inspiration addiction.


For Zoë, the transformation went beyond the page. Zoë worked in the music industry and, like Sandy, had a reputation for saying yes to any and all overtime. When she started at the Writers’ Gym, I never saw her without cold symptoms, visibly tired and run-down, telling us she hoped things would be different when next month’s rota came out. The approach of the Writers’ Gym – creating not only our ideas for writing but time to write – meant Zoë stopped hoping and started specifically envisaging what she wanted her time to look like. She grew better at communicating her wishes, rather than waiting for others to guess and provide. Her work schedule and family relationships grew less strained, she grew less tired – and more able to enjoy both work and writing. ‘I’m so glad I found the Creative Writer in myself,’ she said. ‘It’s not just on the page, it’s everything. Everything is better now I can see myself that way.’

I found this in myself too. The more I allowed curiosity to be the driver of my writing, the less I worried about ‘right’ answers on the page, the more I grew able to listen to my instincts and wishes in life off the page as well.


4. You enjoy not having all your eggs in one basket where it comes to time with clients and getting some writing done. What about the stories you write: are you more varied in your narratives, or are there particular themes you would say are a hallmark of your work?

The fundamental egg in each of the baskets – or should that be the nucleus of all the eggs? – is identity, and how we accidentally rein it in with the stories we tell ourselves.


Long before I was a coach and truly saw in action every day how the stories we tell ourselves become true – and how what-iffing from the point of view of what we want instead of what we fear changes things – my writing was already about how perception drives reality.


Beyond Glass and Twisted Branches, my two collections from Black Shuck Books, are certainly about the horrors of identity and the stories we tell ourselves. Twisted Branches is a short story cycle – five generations of one family home and how they knowingly and unknowingly mess up and light up each others’ lives – and a perception hall of mirrors. It centres on a familial love triangle where the main character misunderstands the intentions of the protégé she sees as her antagonist. All the horrors that occur can be traced back to misunderstood intentions. In Beyond Glass is full of literal and non-literal ghosts, and (like Twisted Branches) horrors that could have been prevented by telling a different story. Even the love story’s happy ending doesn’t look like one to someone feeling too guilty to enjoy the possibility in front of them… but I want to be spoiler free so that’s as close as I’ll come to what happens. But the happy endings I believe in are when we notice the story we’re telling ourselves, and begin operating from a place of choice instead of haunting ourselves.


5. It's great if things go according to plan. Tell us about when it didn't; how did you handle it? What were/are those challenges?


It was 2012. I was standing next to the policeman who was asking me to forward the antisemitic, violent emails I’d received from the woman I had thought was my partner’s ex (she didn’t see it that way) to the police computer. The police computer kept automatically sending them back and refusing delivery because the content of emails was so racist and violent. The comedy and tragedy, and how close these things always are, struck me, but what struck me more was here were two women who loved the same person, and who represented pure evil to each other. She represented pure evil to me because she was a physically violent antisemite (he’d arrived at my place with a huge gash in the forehead where she’d thrown something at him, saying “she was angry, so she hit me” as if this were absolutely normal and reasonable). I represented pure evil to her because I was Jewish and with the man she considered hers. And vile as this whole thing was to go through, my writer brain was going “there’s something here”. That idea of two people representing pure evil to each other. It doesn’t mean I equate our positions morally – I absolutely don’t! – but I saw the story. It gave me greater insight into characterisation as a writer and was one of the things that led me to realise the importance of the writer being free to access all of what’s in their mind – not feeling they have to separate life and writing either side of a thick wall and then wonder why we feel blocked, but to feel safe to let all the ingredients inform our stories.


6. Give a pep-talk to someone on game in your field.


Recently, I was on a coaching call with a writer struggling to ‘find time’ to write. I’d met Sandy the previous year, on the creative writing MA course where I lectured in London, and where she’d achieved a distinction shortly before contacting me for coaching. Sandy had a demanding job in the health sector, always said yes to overtime, and felt anxious about not looking at her phone and the possibility of not being there if a friend needed her. She wasn’t making the progress she’d hoped with her book.


It took a while to reach any of this information, because while Sandy would share ideas for her story and the world it took place in, she – very politely – shut down if our conversation moved towards the thoughts and emotions she had about her writing. I mentioned I’d noticed this, and asked her about it. This is what she said:


‘But you’re my writing coach. This isn’t therapy; I feel like it’s not your job to listen to my feelings and how they affect me. To hear me talk about how my thoughts and emotions affect why I’m not writing.’


I replied, ‘Sandy, that is literally my job’.

In fact, it was the best definition of my job I’ve ever heard.

We write when we stop waiting to feel like writing – or feel like a writer. Better mental health, as well as stronger creative confidence, is a side-effect of our showing up for our own writing. The prompts, creative exercises and mindset development from a workout at the Writers’ Gym meant people who would never have described themselves as ‘creative’ were able to consider situations in terms of what they wanted to create, rather than reactively or from a place of fear. They found abundance instead of scarcity when they were able to see themselves as creative writers.

7. Promo for website / links:


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@drrachelknightley, @jointhewritersgym, @rachelknightleycoaching


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