Last time, I talked about choosing books based entirely on whether I find the prose laminated (it pushes me out) or permeable (it lets me sink in).

What causes a piece of writing to be laminated—that is, it may have a beautiful sheen, but it keeps me on the outside?

This week, I explain what laminated writing is. Listen in to learn how to avoid the readings that will inscribe bad habits in your own writing, and find the readings that will spur your best work.

Ask any writer how to improve, and they’ll probably say one thing: Read. Abundantly, widely, constantly.

But what are you reading? How do you choose the work that’s worth apprenticing yourself to, both because it’s a worthy teacher and because it’s specifically inspiring to you at this moment in your writing life?

My method is to separate the laminated from the permeable. What does that mean? Listen in this week to learn how to find the readings that will best spur your writing.

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*This podcast is a supplement to The Craft Lab for Writers newsletter. Get full access and subscribe at craftlabwriters.substack.com.Want small-group guided writing, accountability, and inspiration for your long-term writing goals? Join The Lab now.

How do we make ourselves want to write our work?

In Part 1 of this podcast, I discussed the problem of getting stuck partway through a project—especially a project that we want to finish. We think it’s worthy, but something internal is getting in the way.

How to get past that block?

This week, I’m giving some examples that show how we you can re-invigorate your passion for our own work.

*White Lotus Spoilers ahead* Mike White loves a Chekhov’s gun. (The storytelling principle that says: If you put a gun on the mantle in Act I, it has to fire by Act III.)

He's given us Chekhov’s blender and at least three handguns.

But the best of them all is Chekhov’s knife, from Season 1. It’s also the most instructive.

How do we make ourselves want to write our work?

The question may sound silly. Of course we want to write our work. All we want is the time to write our work!

But there often comes a point when you get stuck. The ending won’t come right; or we’ve had a gust of energy for the start of a story, and then it ebbs; or we’re adding words, but listlessly, with a nagging sense that what we’re doing now is not up to the snuff of the earlier part of the work.

Personally, I have a folder I call “stubs”: stories, novels, and essays that all got stuck somewhere around halfway. My commitment to them didn’t run out, but my energy or ability to write them forward did.

So how do you get un-stuck?

There’s the partly-right way, and then there’s the right way.

More in the episode.

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*This podcast is a supplement to The Craft Lab for Writers newsletter. Get full access and subscribe at craftlabwriters.substack.com.

Looking for a small-group guided writing, accountability, and inspiration group for your longer project? Join The Lab now. New cohorts start the first week of every month.

How do you keep going as a writer? Part 1 covered my first-order answer: you re-inspire yourself, day after day. You find the fire for the work that is totally divorced from the current age, the current literary or publishing landscape, the current zeitgeist. From there, I promised more about the concrete craft advice in Alice McDermott's "What About the Baby?" *This podcast is a supplement to The Craft Lab for Writers newsletter. Get full access at craftlabwriters.substack.com/

How do you keep going as a writer? When I was starting out, keeping-going was the easy part. It’s harder now. And yet when I turn to the page, I find myself writing with as much joy as ever, and with a good deal more appreciation.

It didn’t come easily. There were years when the discouragement was just too big. Which brings me to What About the Baby, Alice McDermott’s craft book *This podcast is a supplement to craftlabwriters.substack.com. Get full access and subscribe at the link.