Doors close Sunday, September 27 at 11:59 pm ET
Missed enrollment? get on the wait list! support@territrespicio.com
What if your love of reading could unlock your best writing?
Maybe you’re a writer who feels stuck, uninspired, circling the page without momentum.
Or maybe you’re a reader who’s secretly wondered if you could write a book of your own… then talked yourself out of it.
Maybe you’re a little bit of both.
Here’s the truth: reading makes you a better writer. And writing makes you a better reader. They’re not opposites. They’re a cycle. One feeds the other.
From The New Rules Studio comes our popular reading and writing program.
Introducing
Must Read
A Gateless Writing Program that Starts with a Great Book
Read. Write. Repeat.
Register Now!
Starts Monday, September 28 @ 12:00 pm ET
Four Mondays · 90 minutes each · all sessions recorded
$279 (reg. $500) · Studio members $179
What It Is
Must Read is a four-week, Gateless-powered program where we take one extraordinary book and read it not just for “what happens,” but for how it’s written — plot, character, structure, syntax, metaphor, and all the layers that make it sing.
And then? You apply that craft directly to your own work. In the same session.
How each session works
First half — we study the book.
What the writer is doing, how she’s doing it, and why it lands. Craft-centered discussion only: no tearing books apart, no hot takes, no takedowns. We look at what works.
Second half — we turn to the page.
You take that exact craft and put it to work in your own writing, live, with Gateless prompts and Gateless-style feedback that highlights resonance and strength.
You’ll leave not only reading differently, but writing differently.
“Must Read has, from the moment we started, affected my writing, the way I think about writing, how I look at writing. It affects how I read a goddamn newspaper article! Every act of writing is an act of bravery, and taking the time to see that makes us braver and makes us better. I just want to be in this class every week for the rest of my life.”
— Vicki Gohl, Must Read participant and Studio member
In case you missed it, check out the info session here:
Your Instructor
I. Murphy Lewis
This season of Must Read is led by I. Murphy Lewis — certified Gateless Writing teacher, Gateless Academy graduate, New Rules Studio instructor, and author of Why Ostriches Don’t Fly and Other Tales from the African Bush (1997) and Across the Divide to the Divine: An African Initiation (2024). She holds a PhD in Mythology and Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute.
She has also written extensively about her own years in Africa.
Which means that when we open this particular book, you’re reading it with someone who has written her own version of that terrain — who knows, from the inside, what it takes to put a place on the page and what it costs to tell the truth about how a place changed you.
What We’re Reading
Out of Africa by Karen Blixen
Out of Africa (1937) is a memoir by the Danish writer Karen Blixen, published under her pen name, Isak Dinesen. It recounts eighteen years on a four-thousand-acre coffee plantation in the hills near Nairobi — her ventures on safari, the people who shaped her, and a world she was watching disappear as she wrote it.
Available on Amazon — just $0.99 on Kindle — or wherever books are sold.
Why this book
We’re not studying Out of Africa just for the story. We’re studying it for two things every writer needs, in every genre: a sense of place and a sense of perspective.
Blixen puts you somewhere so completely you can feel the altitude. That’s the first thing. The second is harder and rarer: over the course of years, you watch her seeing change. The person narrating the last page is not the person who narrated the first. Her perspective evolves with her experience on the page, where you can study exactly how it was done.
Whether you’re working on a novel, an essay, a Substack, or a memoir of your own, you are trying to make a reader feel where they are and follow how someone changed. This book does both.
A note on the book: Out of Africa is a memoir of colonial East Africa written by a European woman in 1937, and it carries the assumptions of its world. We read it as a craft object — with clear eyes about what it is and close attention to what it does. That’s precisely what the Gateless container is built for. We’re not here to rank the author or relitigate her life or discuss the politics of right and wrong. We’re here to see how the prose works, and to take what’s useful into our own.
And if you’ve never heard of it? Good. Most of the people who did this program last time hadn’t heard of the book we chose either — and it didn’t change a thing. They didn’t come back for the title. They came back for the room.
Book clubs are broken.
That’s my experience, anyway. I’ve left many a book club meeting with less energy than I came in with.
Why? There’s not typically any directive other than: let’s talk about the book — without any other container or goal. These free-for-all discussions tend to spiral into criticism, hot takes, side tangents, idiosyncratic rants, and general takedowns of the author or the work (or both).
Reading isn’t meant to drain you. It’s meant to fuel you — your ideas, your insights, your work.
Must Read isn’t a book club. It’s a container for sharpening craft through reading and writing.
Why it’s different
Most reading programs are either a free-for-all or a stringent teacher/student setup.
This isn’t that.
We use The Gateless Method — a powerful framework for writing that quiets the critic so you can focus on craft, and which we use in The New Rules Studio for generating new work.
That means we adhere to a set of rules that create the container: no judgment, criticism, or comparison. We stay on the page. We focus on what’s working.
By applying this method to reading, you’ll savor the literature, study craft, and apply it immediately within the safe and sturdy Gateless container.
This is for you if…
✨ You want to read more, but haven’t found the time
✨ You love reading and have always wanted to write
✨ You feel like you have to choose between reading and writing — and love the idea of doing both together
✨ You’re working on a book, a project, or simply want to write more
✨ You’re hungry for a positive vibe, and not a bunch of arrogant show-offs
✨ You’ve bailed on standard book clubs and would love something more satisfying to sink your teeth into
We promise…
❌ No prerequisites (you don’t have to have written before)
❌ No judgment or criticism
❌ No attitude
✅ Just great writing, great reading, and a community that helps you see both in a whole new way.
The Details
- Four (4) live sessions, 90 minutes each, all recorded
- When: Mondays at 12:00 pm ET, starting September 28
- Led by: I. Murphy Lewis, certified Gateless Writing and Studio instructor
- Price: $279 (valued at $500) · Studio members: $179
- Non-members: includes a voucher for one free month of Studio ($197 value)
- Enrollment closes: Sunday, September 27 at 11:59 pm ET
REGISTER NOW — $279 ($500 value)
We begin Monday, September 28 @ 12:00 pm ET
Already a Studio member? You pay $179. That’s $100 off.
Not a member yet? You pay $279 — and we’ll hand you a voucher for a free month of The New Rules Studio, our live, drop-in writing membership (reg. $197/month). Use it whenever you like.
If Must Read gets your writing moving, we want you to have somewhere to keep going after this program ends!
FAQs
Yes! This program will be held over Zoom, and you will have access to replays.
No, it doesn’t — but Studio members pay $179 instead of $279. And if you’re not yet a Studio member, you’ll get a voucher to try Studio free for a month.
Yes — any edition works. It’s $0.99 on Kindle, though several of our writers prefer a hard copy so they can mark it up.
Definitely not. When you enroll, you’ll receive a syllabus outlining what we’ll discuss each week and what pages we’ll cover. You’re welcome to read ahead, of course — but we won’t do any spoilers, and we ask you to do the same.
You’re in good company. Most people who took this last time had never heard of the book we chose, and it turned out not to matter — what they were coming for was the craft, the prompts, and the room. You don’t have to love a book to learn an enormous amount from how it was built.
Yes! When you enroll you’ll have access to a program page where the replays are posted.
Totally fine! There are no prerequisites for this program. It’s not “beginner” or “advanced” — we don’t do hierarchy like that here. Whether you’ve been writing for years or not at all doesn’t matter. The beauty of the Gateless container is that there’s no competition or better-than behavior. We all enter the same space on the same page.
You’ll be doing real-time writing during the sessions, and you may have an opportunity to share what you’ve written, but that’s not a guarantee. The method we use does involve listening to a few people read, with the goal of further practicing the Gateless Method and absorbing craft.
You certainly don’t have to! But in order to get the full experience (and what you’re paying for), we encourage you to try the exercises with us, even if you don’t plan to do anything with what comes out. Part of the enriching nature of this experience is feeding that cycle between reading and writing. And you’re never pressured to share what you’ve written with us or anyone.
About Terri
Founder, The New Rules Studio
Terri Trespicio is the author of Unfollow Your Passion: How to Create a Life that Matters to You (Atria 2021). Her TEDx talk, “Stop Searching for Your Passion,” has been viewed more than 8 million times. She’s the founder of The New Rules Studio, a live, virtual, critic-free Gateless writing program for people who have something to say and aren’t sure where to start. Her work has been featured in Cup of Jo, HuffPost Personal, Marie Claire, Business Insider, The Today Show, and more. She’s also co-hosts Generation Artax — a Gen X-themed podcast for the ages (the awkward ages). She lives in NYC. More at territrespicio.com.