Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips A problem with fact checking is that people write so poorly these days we cannot find the facts in seemingly factual statements. Fact checking and the absence or removal of fact checking has been in the news recently. Some society media outlets have removed fact checking and such for something else called […]

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by Dwayne Phillips We can’t have both facts and adjectives. Can we? Facts are facts. It is 27° F outside. Adjectives are, well sort of fuzzy. It is cold outside. (Cold to whom? Cold compared to what?) “The fact is, they were aggressive.” Oops. “Aggressive” is an adjective. “The fact is, he is tall.” Well, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips An age-old method of writing long pieces comes from writing short pieces without a plan or outline. The “outline” comes later. I recently stumbled across a description of writers as Story Quilters. This is not a method of planning or outlining a large piece before writing anything. This is not a method […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Non-fiction books should be useful and recommendable. It is easy to lose sight of these qualities. A book by Rob Fitzpatrick is full of these qualities. I recently finished reading a book of simple fundamentals for writing non-fiction. “Write Useful Books. A modern approach to designing and refining recommendable nonfiction,” Rob Fitzpatrick, […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Was my book or speech or seminar replaced by Wikipedia and ChatGPT? Time for me to learn. Was my book replaced by Wikipedia, i.e., each section of my book can be read or the reader can just go read a few Wikipedia pages? Is my book redundant to Wikipedia? The same can […]

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by Dwayne Phillips An old adage that still applies today as long as we apply it wisely. Some wise and famous person stated the title of this post long ago, I think. Still, it bears repeating in one variation or another. I am here to tell you something. What I have to say is important. […]

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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 Sometimes, the one thing needed for a person to do something new and frightening is simply permission. Here is how to write a book: Simple? Yes. Works? Absolutely, I have done this about a dozen times. You start. When you reach the end, you stop. But what about…? Yes, we can ask […]

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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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by Dwayne Phillips It is easy to use vocabulary that is popular at this moment. It is a bit more difficult to explain the situation in plain English. That exercise, however, is often well worth the effort. Here is some popular vocabulary in the endeavor of software development: It’s nice to toss out one or […]

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