Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips An age-old method of writing long pieces comes from writing short pieces without a plan or outline. The “outline” comes later. I recently stumbled across a description of writers as Story Quilters. This is not a method of planning or outlining a large piece before writing anything. This is not a method […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes you just lower your head against a wall and push as hard as you can. Let’s begin this little blog post by noting that I attended LSU—not MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford or any of those places known for producing really smart people. At LSU, we may not be able to spell […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There are techniques, tools, methodologies, etc. that won’t work—until they do. They shouldn’t work—until they do. What is happening here? Many years ago, we were sitting in a conference room watching a presentation video on a television. The television has a cathode ray tube with a curved glass cover (I wrote that […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Some endeavors are so complicated that headaches are expected. Most endeavors, however, have headaches that are caused by the people involved and are unnecessary. Some endeavors are complicated. That is their nature. Concentration, lots of it, sometimes brings me a headache. I have worked in complicated endeavors and endured the natural and […]

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by Dwayne Phillips In our personal lives, we often take all the risk without asking others to share it. The basic, but rarely asked, question is, “What does each person have to lose?” I am sitting here sipping coffee pondering what to do. Someone is asking me to wait, and wait, and wait. Perhaps they […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we simply have to lower expectations when it comes to what other people will do. Too bad. We can do better. It happened again the other day at work. I needed signatures on paper, or at least the digital equivalent of them. It was all set. Go to this building on […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I don’t want to jump into the next book-writing project at home. Or do I? I just finished a writing project at home. Done, wrapped up, self-published on the places where my friends and relatives can by it for 99¢. Sigh. I don’t want to jump into the first thing that pops […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Lots of things to do. Which do I do first? Perhaps I go with the worst first. When my sons were little, they had tactics about the order in which they ate their food at dinner. One tactic was “worst first” in which they ate their least favorite food first so that […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A recent major survey shows that managers and the managed disagree on what work is and isn’t. Microsoft recently surveyed 20,000 persons across 11 countries about work. The result: 87% of the managed felt they worked as, or more, efficiently from home 80% of managers felt that at-home workers weren’t working Here […]

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by Dwayne Phillips As a writer and just about anyone else, we must be flexible in a rigid manner. The same is true for almost every adjective and its antonym. A writer must be flexible. Except when the writer must be rigid. Except when exceptions arise. The same goes for just about any adjective and […]

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