Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Writing, like most endeavors and systems, has a hierarchy. There is a trade-off between resources spent and quality. I have a writing hierarchy. It has something to do with a trade-off of time and quality. My hierarchy is basically: jot on a napkin note in my journal my daybook blog posts paid […]

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by Dwayne Phillips One method of writing that has worked for me is to sketch a picture or diagram and then describe it. I have used this method of writing for years. I needed the assistance of others to understand that this is what I was doing. Here is the method: sketch a picture or […]

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by Dwayne Phillips One way to write is to first write a list of questions, set the questions some place you can see them, and answer all the questions. I continue to work with college students on their writing, and they continue to teach me. A recent assignment the students were working involved answering a […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I have unlimited authority over very few matters. Recognizing all those items for which my authority is quite limited makes my life easier. A few years ago in a prior universe, I had some authority over matters at work. I played a role in some relatively important decisions. I soon recognized that […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The perfect time to write is one of the less expected. I write a lot, everyday, day after day. I am writing now. There are times when people like me don’t feel like writing. Those are the perfect times to write. Here is why. I write a lot because I like to […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I relearn that with hands on the keys, I can shut my eyes and still write. Several years ago, I was trying to write in the evening after a long day at work of reading and reading and reading and a little writing. My eyes hurt. I had to shut them. So […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I still learn new things. I still want to learn new things. I recently learned how to make the em dash and en dash characters in OS X with keyboard shortcuts. I no longer have to go to the “insert symbols” function to insert these special characters. One of the disappointing results […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A review of the writing rule about writing small numbers. Sometimes you just feel the need to write a blog post about something in writing that everyone is supposed to know. Then you read a stack of papers and see that almost no one knows it. So here goes: Write small numbers […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The more things change, well, you know, they don’t change. The world is now ruled by hashtags. There are no more standard categories for anything. Everyone makes their own category when they want. This was all described several years ago in Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger. Since nothing has a category, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips There is something about attempting to write a longer piece that makes writing a sentence much more difficult. I’ll start with something that is probably obvious to everyone else in the world: Writing doesn’t scale. Explanation: People who can write a two-page piece, flop when they attempt to write a 20-page piece. […]

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