Writing can be an albatross around the neck. Or it can be an adventure of great expectations leading to profitable ends. For Alex Z. Salinas, writing is a wild roller-coaster ride with its curvy ...

Commentary: Usually, coming up with an opener takes so much effort I take the rest of the day off. But running up against a deadline, I need to plow through.

And getting two on one commentary is almost as good as winning the lotto. OK, that’s hyperbole, but you get the idea. I did a commentary on gun control for the first week of May, which did indeed ...

This is my farewell column for Religion News Service. After nearly 20 years of writing commentary for this extraordinary news service, it is time for a change. First, the practical. Second, the meat.

Re “The Lobotomized Weasel School of Writing,” Commentary, May 20: I vehemently disagree with Crispin Sartwell’s characterization of the five-paragraph essay as “hoo-ha.” While he explains that ...

I’ve been writing poetry for about as long as I can remember; in truth, I can’t even remember how long. My mother died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1996; my father died in 2005 from multiple urinary ...

The most gratifying thing about writing these commentaries is the feedback I get. It doesn’t matter if the feedback is positive, or negative (though I like the positive kind better). Feedback tells me ...