Rachel Knightley talks to British Fantasy, Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy Award winner Priya Sharma

Priya Sharma's fiction has appeared in  Interzone, Black Static, Nightmare, Weird Tales, and Tor.com (now Reactormag.com). She's been anthologised in many Best of series by editors such as Ellen Datlow and Paula Guran.   Priya is the recipient of several British Fantasy Awards and Shirley Jackson Awards, and a World Fantasy Award. She is a Locus Award and a Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire finalist. Her work has been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Czech, and Polish.   She lives in the UK where she works as a medical doctor. More information can be found at www.priyasharmafiction.wordpress.com    In this episode, Priya and Rachel discuss the variety of writerly relationships between life as inspiration and how who we are fuels what we create, though the origins remain our own.   Join the Writers’ Gym for more writing and creative confidence workouts at www.writersgym.com or sign up to our mailing list at drrachelknightley.substack.com   Get in touch with us at [email protected]   Writers’ Gym Workout:   Priya: I get a real kick out of walking around a gallery because there's always a story there that I want to take away. Look as well as read. And photojournalism, another example of great storytelling… Because they spend as much time not just looking for that moment, for that story, but actually doing what a brilliant writer would do. They're looking at visuals, they're thinking about construction, framing, all of those things.”   Warm-up:   Close your eyes and picture a gallery, or a museum, or a monument, or a picture that means something to you. Notice what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, the story you’re telling yourself already. Transcribe that, just thinking on the page.   Exercise 1: Re-read your warm-up piece. What character could you give those thoughts to? Or are the thoughts already about another character you could write? “Sometimes just going back to why you fell in love with writing… for me, that's reading a book t or rereading something by a writer that I love and just getting in touch with what made me think I wanted to pick up a book and just remembering what it is about what you do that you love.” Exercise 2 Book an hour – or a day – or ten minutes – out of your work and life. Gift that time to rereading a book you love, just as you’d gift it to someone you were meeting for coffee. Allow yourself to meet those words again for the first time.

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