Dr. Rachel Knightley is a fiction and non-fiction author, presenter, lecturer and writing and confidence coach. Her background in directing and performing for theatre formed her fascination with the power of the stories we tell ourselves to shape our identity. She writes and presents for magazines, YouTube channels and Blu-ray extras, lectures in creative writing and works with private clients online and in southwest London.
Rachel Knightley, Author, Writing and Confidence Coach
Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
I’m Rachel, an author, lecturer, speaker and business and personal coach. I’m also the founder of The Writers’ Gym membership and podcast. After my PhD in Creative Writing I took PGCerts in Teaching Creative Writing (Cambridge) and Business and Personal Coaching (Barefoot Coaching/Chester) to ensure I’m giving the best possible support to my clients, whether they’re building creative confidence for life, work or art. My most recent book is Twisted Branches, a short story cycle following five generations in one family house and how we all, knowingly and unknowingly, mess up and light up each other’s lives! I live with my partner in southwest London and work mainly from home, but also see one-to-one clients at my local club, Olympic Studios, and work with groups at Roehampton University and Riverside Studios.
How has your background in acting and directing influenced your approach to coaching and mentoring aspiring writers?
I grew up in theatre and was a director before I was a coach. I discovered what the best direction did was get to know what was going on in the actor’s head as clearly and specifically as possible. This meant there was a partnership between director and actor: moving together towards agreed, mutually understood objectives/goals. The language of coaching is exactly the same, except it’s for real life. When you gain clarity and confidence on what you want (objectives) and what you fear (obstacles) your action line becomes clearer and you can create the conversations, choices and changes to create the circumstances. It’s all about clarifying objectives and creating a safe yet exhilarating space to take creative risks and move towards the most authentic version of you.
In your work as a business and personal coach, you mention exploring themes of authenticity, identity, and communication. How do you help your clients navigate these themes, particularly in the context of their creative pursuits?
One of the most significant things about a coaching relationship is that balance of safety and curiosity. My job is to create and hold a space of trust and acceptance in which that thinking partnership evolves; where a client can question and discover the thought patterns they have worked and lived by in the past, see where these have served them well in the past, and ask where they want to take these beliefs now. We stop judging and start noticing and listening. Then we make clearer, truer choices for ourselves. It’s about getting into a space where curiosity becomes creativity. What do we want the future to look like? How am I communicating what I want to myself? How am I communicating it to others? Is that how I want to say it now, or is there something else I want to explore? That’s when we apply it to business and personal life, but we can also apply it to thinking that keeps us editing in our heads for years instead of trusting our thoughts to the blank page, and finishing an authentic first draft that can then be meaningfully edited and moved forward.
Making changes towards a clearer goal, a clearer objective, means you spot your limiting beliefs and recognise them as the obstacles they are instead of the facts our fears made them seem. Then we can use the “magic if” (created by the father of naturalistic acting, Konstantin Stanislavski): “if my character, whose motivation I now know, wanted to do X, how might they say or do it? Making it a game, a spirit of play rather than a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer. It allows you to experiment aloud, in a spirit of safety and discovery about who you are and what you want. For me, confidence comes through knowing it’s about the message, not the messenger. Rather than worrying what something says about us, caring about the thing itself keeps you focused and keeps you creating the life and work you want.
When, and why, did you decide to found "The Writers' Gym"?
Between my MA and PhD, I attended a number of writing groups. I found the same thing over and over again: that a lot of the people who came to the sessions had great intentions when they arrived, but were repeatedly doing nothing in between! I realised something was needed and wanted by these writers; that what I needed and wanted myself as a writer developing my craft and confidence was not just access to experience, tips and techniques but to consistency and community, so being a writer wasn’t just something that happened for three hours a week; it was a natural part of every day between. So that’s what I set up: The Writer’s Gym (formerly Green Ink Writers’ Gym, under which I published Your Creative Writing Toolkit in 2020). Since lockdown we’ve moved most of our events online which means the reach of our community has expanded. We now have a weekly programme, with unlimited access for our members to all our writing workouts, socials and events. Members also receive 30% off our six-week writing courses, editorial support and one-to-one coaching whether that’s writing-related or about wider life and work goals. I see over and over again how building creative confidence in one area of life pays off in all the other areas too.
Non-members are always welcome – you can book events individually – and each week starts with a free event for everyone on my mailing list: The Writing Room. Every Monday morning, my whole writing and coaching community mailing list is invited to our free silent writing session with an open chat box for conversation or coaching questions. We unmute ten minutes before the end for a chat with our creative community.
What kind of audience do you target your business towards?
Creative confidence and authentic communication are the world’s most transferable life skills: there’s literally no career and no day of our lives they’re not central to everything we do. Whether you’re exploring creative writing for the first time, always loved it but find it’s slid away, or whether writing is already your career but you’re looking to expand your skills, confidence and community, The Writers’ Gym is a natural home for you. If you’re looking to find out where your skills and passions can fit into the circumstances of your work and life, head over to the coaching page.
I work mainly with adults but also coach communication and performance skills for teenagers and children, mainly through the LAMDA Exams syllabuses. As with adult coaching, LAMDA sessions are. all about creating an atmosphere where the client feels safe to experiment and discover.
What are your current goals for your business?
I’m really enjoying seeing our membership grow and how this allows us to extend our content. My podcast is now produced by Alternative Stories, and I’m co-presenting with global top 3% audio writer and British Science Fiction Award nominee Emily Inkpen. I’m also working alongside two assistants who are supporting me on the membership platform, and we’ll be expanding the platform and we will be adding downloadable courses in book and video form over the next few weeks too. Keep an eye on the website and subscribe to the Writers’ Gym podcast on all major platforms (new episodes of the current series are dropping every Wednesday).
Who inspires you to be the best that you can be?
David Bowie is looking at me from the opposite wall in poster form as I talk to you. Bowie never allowed himself to be pigeonholed or limited by what had gone before. He never allowed ‘what if it’s not what people expect?’ or ‘what will people think of me?’ to stand in the way of saying and doing what he wanted to bring into the world through his writing and performing and interviews. He never let fear of change be more important than opportunity and possibility. Essentially, he is my business and personal role model. On his final album, Blackstar, there’s a line: ‘If I never see the English evergreens I’m running to, it’s nothing to me.’ He talked about how this expressed it’s not about achieving the perfect thing in your head; it’s about keeping on showing up and moving forward with your voice, your writing, your ideas. We may never reach the version of ourselves or our work we aspire to but it’s the journey that counts. It’s being open to discoveries – and letting go of control enough to make them – that brings our true selves and our best work into the world.
Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
I was in my twenties and teaching my first drama club in a primary school. I’d just finished my MA, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do or what the future might look like. As I stood at the side of the hall feeling more like one of those identical, poker-faced children in the audience than one of those adult creatures at the side that I thought I was supposed to feel like, I was terrified. Then, as the head teacher introduced me and I started to walk to the middle of the stage, a thought arrived in my head.
Just because this is what it feels like in here, doesn’t mean it’s the way they see it out there.
Yes, I felt like a fake, not a proper adult, not a proper actor/director. But to those children, I was a potentially friendly person who was going to do something potentially fun with them. So which truth was I going to make the ‘real’ one?
I looked every one of those blank faces in the eye and asked, with a smile that came fro my thoughts and feelings about what I knew we were going to do and the discoveries I knew we were going to make, ‘Who knows what drama is?’
Every hand went up, every face lit up with life.
Since that time, the question I have offered myself in those scary, impostor-syndrome-filled moments is, ‘What if everyone out there is as scared or insecure as I am?’ And here’s the secret: they are. Everyone in that audience, that readership. We don’t need to fear them. It’s about not justifying our presence to the audience. It’s about welcoming the audience to our space.
Book a discovery call or read more about Rachel.
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