Glad you came.

Just like every other gym, people come here to build up their fitness. At the Author Gym, it is your writing muscles that will be given a workout, growing your writing’s flexibility, strength, vision and stamina. Join us for an intense workout where you sweat words. Not so many it will be excruciatingly painful, but enough to set up a scene, arouse a reader's curiosity and, of course, to give your writing muscles plenty to do. Don’t be put off. It will be just a few words at a time.

Find your preferred notetaking material and take it everywhere to record interesting bits and pieces for later reference. This will be your “Field Notes”. If you are already a writer, you probably already work with a preferred setup. You don’t even need a lycra training outfit. Well, you can get one if you wish.

The Field Notes themselves will take many forms: words, images, video and sound clips, hyperlinks. Up to you in how to record your thoughts and ideas. Use all your senses. Keep these notes safe. They are valuable. You will add to them frequently.

To give your readers vivid images in their minds, take your Field Notes to the locations given. Record how your senses and imagination react on site. From now on, look for what may be missed if you casually walked by, look beyond the obvious. More than a casual glance is needed for a proper workout.

You will be focussing on different elements of writing, often outside the box you normally work in. If that is the case, look on it as a challenge. Have a bundle of fun as you develop your muscles.

Do not delete or throw out any Field Notes or other work you produce. They may give inspiration to parts of your future novels.

Your readers will shiver, smile, weep or be manipulated by your words in any way you want. They should be in the moment you create. Help them experience each scene. Make them want more.

Each session explores a different theme. Maybe you will create something during the exercises that you decide to develop into a novel. We certainly hope so. How good would that be?!

Times shown are sort of a flexi-minimal guide. Feel free to write for longer (awesome) or shorter as you and your schedule allow (also awesome)

Each session will consist of:

• An introduction to the theme for the day, where you will use your Field Notes to record all manner of scenery and characters.

• A warmup, where you use your Field Notes to prepare for the session. This helps lock your mind on the exercise theme. Each time you visit the Author Gym, you will flex your writing muscles with new challenges. A period of writing, where you will write for a solid chunk of time using the ideas you generated in the warmup.

• A cool down where you look back over your work and think about what you produced. It is an opportunity, as a reader of your own work, to enjoy what you wrote.

That’s about it, really. Just like any other gym session. Here the training is for building muscles ready for writing your best seller novel.

You will lose any fear you may have of the blank page. Kick writers block to the gutter.

Join us at the first exercise bench with “Café”