Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Avoid asking an engineer or some other non-writer to write a complete first draft of a document. The result will be bad, but the non-writer will love it more than himself. There are few anguishes known to man as that experienced when a manager tells an engineer or some other professional who […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I like to write. I am rarely paid for writing, but that doesn’t stop me. There has been some chatter on the Internet recently about people churning out content for big web sites for zero pay. The post linked here is part of that chatter. Guess what? A lot of people write […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Here are some thoughts from the 1934 classic “Becoming a Writer” by Dorothea Brande. I recently read Ray Bradbury’s book on writing. In it, he referred to a book written by Dorothea Brande in 1934 titled “Becoming a Writer.” I bought a used copy ($5 with shipping) and finished reading it. Here […]

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by Dwayne Phillips After many years, I finally learn what a five-paragraph essay is. Every now and then I learn something that embarrasses me. It is something that I feel like I should have learned a long time ago. Such is the case with the title of this post. I was stumbling around the Internet […]

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by Dwayne Phillips One of the more difficult tasks is reviewing something written by someone else and providing feedback that will help both the writer and the reader. Here are some things I learned from Jerry Weinberg. In 2004, I attended a writing workshop led by author and consultant Jerry Weinberg. A large part of […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Short stories I have written are on sale at Smashwords.com under the name Dwayne Phillips. In 2008 I wrote 53 short stories. It was a great experience. I am now moving these stories to smashwords.com. They are on sale for 99 cents each. I am posting a few each day. See my […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Some notes from Ray Bradbury’s “Zen in the Art of Writing.” For many years I read one book on writing every year. This was something I did in January or so. I would find a book that looked good and read it, marking lots of things in the book with pencil. I […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I add the ZaggMate carrying case with a BlueTooth keyboard. It is great. I like the iPad, but… Of course there is a “but.” I write as much as I read and that makes me different from most people and that is the “but” about the iPad – I can’t write well […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This one has been buzzing around in my head for a few years. What do you call it when you are trying to write and you need to write words? Words on the page – doesn’t work until you run your printer. Words on the screen – that sort of works, but […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Compliant meets the minimum requirements while compelling puts some excitement into a product. Still, I would be satisfied with compliance when it comes to dishwasher delivery and installation. I ran into the phrase that inspired the title of this post one day last week. We were writing a proposal for a contract. […]

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