This is a blog about writing from the words you can’t get out to the bits you polish and publish.
Welcome to the slush pile of my life…
LitBit: Can fitness trackers mean more sleep, hydration and physical exercise for writers?
Fitbit for Writers Can fitness trackers mean more physical exercise for writers? Can having a little gadget strapped to our wrists really make us take better care of ourselves? I decided to try it out for myself. Writing is a very sedentary act. It involves sitting, often for very long periods of time, while we type until we damage our joints. In fact, one of the most common pieces of writing advice literally is: butt in chair. It’s not a very active pursuit. But as any writer will tell you, though the act of writing may be...
read moreDid you know I offer free visits and video chats for schools doing my plays?
Photo courtesy of Rutgers Prep Are you performing one of my plays? I am happy to offer visits (either in-person or via video chat) to student groups of any age who are currently producing any of my plays free of charge. It’s a great opportunity for the cast and crew to ask questions about the play and their individual roles during the rehearsal process! Because schools so often put on plays where the author is long dead, it’s easy to forget that some of us are alive and well with internet access and would be more than happy to...
read moreWriting: it’s that easy, it’s that hard
Every few months I’ll be reading something and I’ll have this full stop epiphany moment where I’ll say to myself… Somebody just made this up and wrote it down. And I almost feel a bit betrayed for a second and then I immediately think… I could just make up any old random thing and write it down. This happens about an equal number of times if I’m reading something I’m enjoying or something I think is awful. It’s just this record scratch, hold everything kind of moment where I realize that’s...
read moreMy 2019 New Year’s Write-olutions
I am usually an adjustable person when it comes to change but the new WordPress compose window is such a nightmare, I’m actually going to keep this somewhat short literally just so I don’t have to deal with it for more than I have to. I’ve said before that Setting smaller, specific goals with wiggle room is the secret to good writing resolutions. I’ve also always believed that the best goals are the ones that address a problem you are having otherwise what’s the point of changing what’s working? To that...
read more2018 Writing Year in Review
I said going in that it was going to be a hard year because I’d have less writing time than ever before and that turned out to be true in many frustrating ways… BUT it gave me a lot of time to stop and think about how I work and to refine some things and find my groove. That’s why you’ll notice I started getting a lot much more done in the back end of this year than I did in the front, despite not having any more time. Instead of hitting you with a big wall of text, let’s just dive into what this year looked like...
read moreQ4 Autumn 2018: NaNoWriMo Takeover!
This might be the latest in the month I’ve ever gotten one of these updates out but December was a wild month so let’s get right down to it… September 2018 Total Words Written This Month 41,248 New Words Only23,165 Overall After massive writing months in July and August, September was relatively smaller, in part because we went away for a week that month. Vacations in the past ended up being somewhat productive for me because I used to write when my daughter would sleep but now the big one doesn’t nap and the little...
read moreHair of the Dog Post-NaNoWriMo Writing Challenge
You know what the very best cure for a NaNoWriMo hangover is? Hair of the dog! Just keep on writing! But sometimes that’s not always so easy, especially if you’re feeling a bit burned out and missing all the motivation and fun of the big NaNoWriMo event. My Wrimos were lamenting this very thing and wishing they had just a little bit more of a push to help them get to the end of their novels so I decided, if it’s the structure of the challenge people like, instead of just saying “keep writing,” maybe we could all...
read moreThe end of NaNoWriMo and using the magic of the event before it runs out
My fellow Wrimos, November ends very soon. There are mere days left in NaNoWriMo. Some of you are still typing away, frantically trying to reach your writing goals and I am right there with you, trying to get as many words down between now and then to get there (at this exact moment, I am 21,957 away from my target so it’s going to be a busy week!). In the end, it doesn’t really matter how many words you write, what matters is that every word you get done between now and the end of this month is a triumph and one you did not have...
read moreIn your own way, in your own time (NaNoWriMo pep talk)
“They are making me feel bad,” my five-year old said, holding back tears. She glared across the playground where half a dozen kids were scrambling up the brand new climbing rope mountain like monkeys. “They’re making it look like it’s easy but it’s NOT easy because I can’t do it!” And I knew exactly how she felt. My first NaNoWriMo, I was struggling to stay on pace with the daily word count, having never written this much in my life before then, and there were people who had already breezed past...
read moreNaNoWriMo 2018 Bullet Journal Style Word Count Coloring Calendar
You ever see one of those really pretty bullet journal pages and wish you had something like that for tracking progress but have absolutely no artistic ability? I was having that very feeling when I decided to make this cool NaNoWriMo 2018 word count coloring calendar. It’s Frankenstein-ed from several pieces of clip art and a NaNoWriMo word count calendar I made myself and it’s ideal for making a pretty visual chart of your writing progress this month. Printed on square is the number of words you should have by the end of that...
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Hillary DePiano is a playwright, fiction and non-fiction writer who loves writing of all kinds except for writing bios like this.
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