Writing your obituary While you're preserving your life story, do your family and friends a favor: Write down a short version, 800 words or fewer, that can serve as an obituary when you die.

But even with “If You Love It, Let It Kill You,” she feels she’s moved past her and Ewell’s overlapping story, and made it fully her own. “This is my life and my material,” she said.

I took my first creative writing class while I was stationed at Fort Belvoir, an Army installation in Virginia. I had just come home, partially blind, from a deployment to Afghanistan.

Ms. O’Rourke is the executive editor of The Yale Review and a professor of creative writing at Yale University. July 18, 2025 When I first told ChatGPT who I was, it sent a gushing reply: “Oh ...