There are a lot of movies about writing and even more when you consider movies that have writers as characters. Here’s my initial list:
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Follow Us on Twitter
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Last month I wrote about the importance of embracing social media. Regardless how you may feel about it, social media is an increasingly important business enabler that should be part of our overall business strategy. In general, social media can be used as a means to connect with people and […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. You don’t need to spend much time in a call center before realizing agents enjoy sharing stories about their callers. This can be good: establishing community, providing a safe outlet, and building a collective understanding. (Conversely, venting about callers should be discouraged.) After such stories are shared, someone often says, […]
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Writer’s Critique Group Forming
Earlier this year, my buddy and I started attending a writers’ critique group. It has been beneficial to us, offering encouragement, affirmation, and correction. Unfortunately, it takes us an hour to get there—and even longer when the weather is bad. Though we will remain connected with that group, we are also starting our own writers’ […]
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Watch Out For That
I heard an author mention her memoir—weighing in at 103,000 words—was too long and she needed to shorten it. The first thing she did was the search for all occurrences of the word “that.” By removing their unnecessary appearances in her manuscript she cut a thousand words—or about one percent—from her book. Although she still […]
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Is Gamification a Trend or a Fad?
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD I was quite skeptical about “gamification,” the use of game concepts to motivate desirable behavior among customers (or employees). I reasoned that while expecting customers to “play games” might result in a short-term increase in brand involvement or purchases, I doubted if it was sustainable. However, I am rethinking my […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD I needed to order some ink cartridges for my printer, the kind I can only buy from the vendor. I called and told the agent I wanted to order two black ink cartridges. Not surprisingly she suggested I buy a package that included two color cartridges. “No thank you, just […]
I’ve heard that having a published book is more highly respected than having a Ph.D. I’m not sure if this came from research, the author’s opinion, or merely emerged as a clever quip. But, it does give me pause. In completing a PhD there is (usually) a dissertation to produce. A dissertation is the length […]
All too often I see people who seem to think “creative writing” is embellishing their words using bold, underline, and italics—for various combinations thereof. They also like to further emphasize words by TYPING IN UPPER CASE. Then there is abusive punctuation, such as using ellipses…needlessly…avoiding the chore of completing sentences or thoughts. Or how about […]
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Do You “Like” Social Media?
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Whenever the phrase social media is uttered, people have one of three responses: “I love it,” “I’m sick of it,” or “I don’t have time for it.” Much has been said about social media, and that’s bound to continue, most likely with increasing frequency. Social media is not going away […]