The Writers’ Gym Podcast

Helen Marshall in conversation with Dr Rachel Knightley

Helen Marshall, multi-award-winning author and academic  Dr Rachel Knightley is joined at the Writers' Gym by World Fantasy and British Fantasy Award winning author, Dr Helen Marshall. Helen is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Queensland. She has won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award for her three collections of short stories. Her debut novel The Migration argued for the need to remain hopeful, even in the worst circumstances. It was one of The Guardian’s top science fiction books of the year. Her second novel The Lady, the Tiger and the Girl who Loved Death was released in 2025. Learn more about Helen Marshall here: https://helen-marshall.com/ [https://helen-marshall.com/] Instagram: @hairside If you enjoyed listening to the Writers' Gym Podcast, head to our website at www.writersgym.com [http://www.writersgym.com/] and follow us on instagram: @jointhewritersgym

Boundaries and Writing

Most of us are looking for more time. But what if instead of looking for more of it, we first look at our beliefs around how we ‘should’ use the time we already have? Dr Rachel Knightley offers thoughts and strategies around time, writing and how we allow ourselves to create the things we want to put in the world.

Ramsey Campbell in conversation with Dr Rachel Knightley

Dr Rachel's Knightley's guest is Ramsey Campbell, defined by The Oxford Companion to English Literature as “Britain’s most respected living horror writer”. The Washington Post sums up his work as “one of the monumental accomplishments of modern popular fiction”. In 2015 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Liverpool John Moores University for outstanding services to literature. His latest novels are Fellstones, The Lonely Lands, The Incubations, An Echo of Children and Ancestral.    His Brichester Mythos trilogy consists of The Searching Dead, Born to the Dark and The Way of the Worm. His most recent collections are Fearful Implications, a two-volume retrospective roundup (Phantasmagorical Stories) and The Village Killings and Other Novellas.    His non-fiction is collected as Ramsey Campbell, Probably and Ramsey Campbell, Certainly. Ramsey’s Rambles collects his video reviews, and Six Stooges and Counting is an appreciation of the Three Stooges. Limericks of the Alarming and Phantasmal is a history of horror fiction in fifty limericks.    https://www.ramseycampbell.com [https://www.ramseycampbell.com/]

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.