Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips I look at a couple of methods of storing information to be used in fiction writing: mediawiki software and good old HTML. Writing a large piece of fiction, like a novel, can be messy. How do you keep track of characters, places, dates, and all that stuff? The answer for many writers […]

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by Dwayne Phillips It is often better to replace a piece of troubled writing than to fix or revise it. Once again, I was talking to a person who had written a large item. The item wasn’t good. It had little focus, and most people walked away from it wondering, “what was that about?” The […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The rich-poor gap widens in the area of travel. Seeing other places and other people is a big experience that the rich enjoy and the poor lack. I live in Fairfax County, Virginia. This is one of the richest counties in America. I noticed recently that the kids in high school and […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Lacking something means that you have learned to live without it. That knowledge is a resource. I know many people who lack many things. Their resources are inadequate to do some things. Observing some of these people has helped me realize: Inadequate resources is a resource. Here are some examples. A person […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I learn that I need to learn more words. Over the holiday season I spent time with relatives in Louisiana. One evening, some of the relatives were playing a word game: Bananagrams. It seems this is a famous game, especially on Facebook or something. I had never played the game and wasn’t […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Thank you Kodak for making the simple, affordable cameras that allowed America’s working class to capture the last half of the 20th century for their grandchildren. My Aunt Mabel died about a week before Christmas 2011. She was 85 and died from the affects of a major stroke. We attended her funeral […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Football players are not weapons. Please stop being so lazy as to call them such. The National Football League playoffs are in full stride. I like to watch, but I hate to listen to the ladies and gentlemen who talk during the games and on the sports shows during the week. One […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Smashwords, and other ePublishing outlets, have become the place to go. My income from Smashwords short stories is in the same order of magnitude as engineering management books from traditional publishers. In early 2011, I put a few dozen short stories on Smashwords. I wrote those stories in 2008. I have written […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I finally realize why I can’t watch the news on television: the information flow is relatively slow. I haven’t watched news on television in years. I stay abreast of the issues of the day via reading from the Internet. I scan probably a dozen major news sites as well as about a […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I receive a Fiskars tool for cutting open those annoying plastic packages. I often find that the best Christmas gifts of my life are (1) unexpected and (2) inexpensive. Such happened this year. The photo here shows such a gift from this year. It is a cutting tools from Fiskars. It cuts […]

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