Last year, I was laid off, and I suddenly found myself with a lot of free time. I decided to do something I've always wanted to do. I started writing a novel. In the process, I learned a lot about ...

Write your name — over and over. You’ll be surprised what you learn. By Jerrine Tan At the start of my first lesson in Chinese calligraphy, my teacher told me to write my name. After I scrawled it out ...

I used to believe I taught the one genre that artificial intelligence couldn’t touch. For 15 years, I’ve guided college students through the deeply human work of personal narrative, helping them ...

“Think not lightly of good, saying, “It will not come to me.” Drop by drop is the pot filled. Likewise, the wise one, gathering it little by little, Fills oneself with good.” In the beginning of Rick ...

The characters in “Happy All the Time,” Laurie Colwin’s 1978 novel, spend a surprising amount of time being unhappy. “He had never felt so miserable in his life,” Colwin writes of Vincent Cardworthy ...

"What is healing, but a shift in perspective?” — Mark Doty, Heaven’s Coast Transactional writing — or letter writing — gets you beyond what you thought you could not get over. With all the other ways ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I’m a clear communications expert and Plain Language advocate. I work with people all the time who sound completely different when ...

In bold, all-caps letters, the phrase shouts back at me. It’s printed on an otherwise empty page in the book cupped in my hands: “The Friend” by Sigrid Nunez. For a moment, it feels as though the ...

In November 2024, I found myself on the receiving end of a companywide downsizing, or layoffs. The news hit hard at first. Those 15 minutes between getting the message (you know, the ominous one, "Can ...