Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Some various thoughts on Apple, writing, the TSA, the Talent Economy, and National Novel Writing Month. sundry: (adjective) assorted: consisting of a haphazard assortment of different kinds. wordnetweb.princeton.edu My mind is racing with a number of different things. I couldn’t decide what to write in the regular Thursday blog posting. Then one […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A procedure for writing a novel from Jack Woodford. Here is a procedure for writing a novel. Ouch, that probably hurts for a lot of people. “Procedure for creating the great American novel? Where is the art?” Well, from an engineer and an organized person, some sort of procedure is comforting. Take […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Buy books? Sure, buy lots of the ones I have written. Read books? Go to the library. It works quite well, and you have already paid your part of the cost. I read yet another blog post the other day about how awful it is that Americans don’t buy and read books. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I continue to work with graduate students on their writing. I am working with engineering, computer science, and IT students. They continue to teach me. This week’s learning concerns the variety of nouns and verbs. In novels and other fiction, the writer uses a variety of nouns. It would be boring to […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I work with grad students who are writing their dissertations. Often the simplest advice and exercise is the most effective. Here is one of those exercises. I work with graduate students in engineering and computer science at George Mason University. Most of the students are working on their dissertation proposals or dissertations. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips After several years of drafting, waiting, drafting, revising, waiting, adding, waiting, revising … you know, the usual stuff … I finished (for now) a small book on experiential learning. The book is about a hundred pages long and is titled “Some Notes on Experiential Learning.” It includes: Some theory Tips for the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes I am stuck for a word while writing. Experience has taught me to put “thing” in the blank and move on. The right word will come later. There we were, writing a proposal. Three of us were gathered around the keyboard, one typing the words, the other two contributing the words. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Here is another new tag for blog posts: NFB BSHB This is short for Not Fact-Based, But Strongly Held Belief. I pronounce this as iNfab BeeSHeb. There are many things that I believe strongly. I either don’t have or don’t want to take the time to find facts that back those beliefs.  But […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This introduces a new Tag and Category for my blog posts: Yot Dow This is short for “YOur Tax DOllars at Waste.” This is sort of a silly take off on the old your tax dollars at work. It is a shame. The old statement your tax dollars at work used to […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A list of activities that are a lot of work. On a recent visit with family in Louisiana, a group of us discussed: decorating cakes for weddings sewing and making clothes cooking for 50 people and a few more things like these The consensus was these are a lot of work. To […]

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