Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips The humble journal plays an important role in The Hunger Games trilogy. It can plan an important role in anyone’s life. I just finished reading “The Hunger Games” trilogy by Suzanne Collins. I did so to try to come closer to the young adult crowd that bought these books, made them best […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Some people in my life have been very discouraging. Some people in my life have been very encouraging. It is not difficult for me to choose which type of person I want to be. I can remember it like it happened yesterday. I was a graduate student working on my PhD. My […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Contemplative writing is a valuable practice. It is far more valuable and far less used than shallow meetings. In my 28 years working for the government, I attended countless meetings where much of nothing was discussed. I avoided far more if these meetings than I attended. Meetings are a characteristic of government […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We are afraid of some things. Often, however, the heart of the fear is not the stated fear. Finding the source of fear can help us cope with it. Am I afraid of heights? No, but I am afraid of falling off a tall building. Many of us have fears. There is […]

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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 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 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 Some tips from William Zinsser that have helped me as a writer. These tips come from his book, “Writing About Your Life.” Here are some tips from William Zinsser about writing. They come from: Writing About Your Life Marlowe and Company, 1979, ISBN 1-56924-468-5 These tips are for writing memoirs, but I […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This iPad continues to improve. Is it Apple or everyone else? I am still using the iPad version 1. This thing continues to improve. For example, I am writing this blog post from the iPad. When it was new (how long ago was that?), I couldn’t write blog posts from the iPad. […]

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