How do you write an article, book, short story or poem that’s a pleasure to read? It’s a daunting challenge, and school is generally poor preparation for it. Teachers and professors have to slog ...

Note: In the “Are You Working?” series, a Ph.D. and academic-writing coach answers questions from faculty members and graduate students about scholarly motivation and productivity. This month’s ...

Advice books on academic productivity tell you to establish a writing routine, and stick to it. The experts say it’s a mistake to think you’ll get much accomplished in frenetic bursts. So why are we ...

Daily journal writing has been shown to increase intelligence, reduce stress, and even strengthen immunity. At first though, it felt like unpaid work. How to avoid dead plots Dead plots are actually a ...

Science and science education face significant threats these days, whether in the form of bans on what types of science can be taught in schools, criticism from mainstream politicians who seem to have ...

All advice is suspect. I'm not suggesting you break all the so-called rules of creativity you've collected. Only that every tip can be counteracted with its opposite. And some advice is just plain bad ...

Returning to a focus on speaking offers distinct benefits. It is surprising how quickly we faculty have gone from barely being aware of ChatGPT to the vague perception that it exists somewhere (but ...

In this exclusive interview from the Jaipur Literature Festival 2026, we speak with celebrated author and co-author of two bestsellers — The Leapfrog and The Leak Spark — Mukesh Sud, also known ...

“A writer,” Saul Bellow once observed, “is a reader moved to emulation.” But what if it’s also the other way around? What if, when we think about writing, we are actually teaching ourselves how to ...