Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Wait. Stop. Someone grab that person. That person is about to fall into the pit of endless details. Oh no. It’s too late! I know it’s about to happen. I should be able to do something to stop it. Oh no. It happened too fast. There is nothing I can do. The […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Do you have a great idea for a story? If you can write one sentence, there you go. “I have a great idea of a story,” said a a person who has a writer as a friend. The person continues with, “I will tell you the idea, you write the story, and […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes a solution is bad in the long term, but it is exactly what is needed in the short term. Sitting here in the coffee shop (no names, but their logo is green), I managed to drop a speck on butter on the lens of my reading glasses. I grab the paper […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We have to read the fine print to understand our agreements. Why, however, is there fine print? I was reading through a contract document recently. I missed several things, just a couple of words buried in a 100-page document. I guess we call those things “the fine print.” Gotta’ read the fine […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Instead of wiggling around so we can call our efforts “AI,” let’s focus on useful and helpful software. Over a decade ago (yes, that long), I was working with a graduate student on their writing. They had difficulty describing their research to others. Their work was wonderful. They had developed a concept […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I can introduce problems by asking others to consider a specific example. Often, a general example works better. Years ago, author and consultant Jerry Weinberg was leading a session on how to lead sessions. Jerry began with, “feel the sand between your toes on the exotic beach with the surf gently sounding […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This is a practice I recommend for non-fiction writing—especially writing where the writer is attempting to teach good practices. I have written books and dozens of articles and other things recommending good practices. If you want to accomplish such and such, do this and that and the other thing. And then I […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Thoughts on writing and publishing a non-fiction book. This book strongly recommends having a plan for the business and a plan for the book’s content. I recently finished “Hungry Authors” by Liz Morrow and Ariel Curry, Rowan and Littlefield, 2024. I like the book. It focuses on knowing why you are writing […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Maybe one day I will know what “any good at it” means when applied to writing. I heard the title used as a line in a movie recently. Yet another young, earnest person was confessing to an acquaintance about how they spent their idle time. They wrote. They were trying to write […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We can have too many people in the room to discuss something. We can also become locked in an inner circle where no one else understands what we are doing. There should be a balance. There are too many people in the room: Twenty people (pick a number) is too many. There […]

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