If you're a YA writer having trouble breaking in, you might be better off getting started with writing YA plays first. I've been meaning to write a post about this for ages but then this question came in from the mailbag which gave me the perfect opportunity to...
Kanban for writers: organize book releases, revisions & more with project management boards
Kanban for Writers My writing life is a many headed beast. I write fiction, non-fiction, freelance articles, stage plays and more under a variety of pen names. I'm always looking for better ways to prioritize and manage all these different project so I'm not running...
Camp NaNoWriMo July 2018 debrief
I went into Camp NaNoWriMo's July session with low expectations. My only word count goal was to try to hit 50,000 words as that would make it my highest word count month for this laid back, low goal year and be good practice for NaNoWriMo proper. As for what I was...
A Writer’s Guide to Resistance: how to keep writing in a world gone mad
No, it's not just you. It is really freaking hard to write right now. The world has gone mad, everything is terrible and all that continuous fear and rage and stress makes it really hard to focus on anything, much less fiction. Creatives, like writers, are...
New Hosting!
If you noticed the site being a bit wonky and a lot, um, down the last week, that's because I finally switched web hosts, a thing I have been meaning to do for over a decade. I had been with GoDaddy in one form or another since 2005 and while there were things I liked...
What I’m writing for Camp NaNoWriMo’s 2018 July Session
You know what the problem is with becoming organized and efficient? I really miss being able to write about whatever random thing I felt like it. Sure, I wasn't getting anything accomplished that way and I wasn't moving towards my goals effectively in a big picture...
Q2 Spring 2018: Planting the seeds for future growth
Spring took its sweet time getting here but when it finally did battle its way past all the snow it was nice... for the few days it was here before giving way to the sweltering hot summer-like temperatures... before it went back to a little chilly and now it's hot...
Q1 2018: Winter Writing Wrap-up
This year, I decided to start doing my writing debriefs quarterly. Partly because I just don't have time anymore to take the incoherent screeds from my private writing journal and make them pretty enough to post every month, partly because it better reflects the...
I’m in the market for a new desk lamp. Preferable one that doesn’t randomly burst into flame.
I've been using the same desk lamp since middle school. It's the world's most generic black desk lamp with little cubbies on the bottom for paper clips and mouse skulls or whatever people keep in there. I've used it this long because it's perfectly serviceable apart...
Lit on Fire, a comic anthology of school reading list parodies, available now from YouthPLAYS
Remember all those annoying books they made you read in high school? Well, they're getting the roast they deserve in this new collection from YouthPLAYS called Lit on Fire! Full of funny shorts for classrooms, competitions and forensics, the plays can also be...
Workshops, Talks and Classroom Visits
Book yours today
Secure Performance Rights
For your theatre or school
Contact Hillary
hillary@hillarydepiano.com











Hillary DePiano is a playwright, fiction and non-fiction writer who loves writing of all kinds except for writing bios like this.



