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…
Week Daze now available in stage play and streaming format from Stage Partners
In other exciting news, Week Daze (formerly named Weak Days just to make my life as confusing as possible) is now available exclusively from Stage Partners! There are two separate versions of this play. One is a traditional stage play that can be performed socially distanced with the actors six feet apart. The other is a version written specifically for streaming on platforms like Zoom or Google Meet where all of the actors and not in the same location. One of the great things about Stage Partners is that they are all digital and they allow...
read moreNana’s Happy Happy Good News Only Birthday Video Chat now available from YouthPLAYS
I don’t know about you, but it feels like March 222nd over here and I’m kind of stuck in a bog of existential dread with no motivation to do anything. Which is why I didn’t realize I never officially announced that YouthPLAYS has acquired Nana’s Happy Happy Good News Only Birthday Video Chat, a play for virtual performances! (That means you can perform it on platforms like Zoom or Google Meet!) You can read almost the entire play for free on the YouthPLAYS website and also book productions right now so go check it out!...
read moreNaNoWriMo Advanced Word Count Calculator (charts, percentages, stats and more!)
I know that some of you out there are as obsessive as me when it comes to trying to figure out how far along you are in National Novel Writing Month so I decided to share my personal calculator. It’s simple but powerful. This calculator will work in Open Office, Microsoft Excel or Google Drive, depending on what you use. But it works best in Google Drive since that is what I set it up in (there are also some handy little charts in the Google version the other versions won’t get). It is very simple to use. All you do is type in...
read moreThe Myrtle Virtual Talkback
It’s actually a complete coincidence that The Myrtle, my romantic comedy about a tree that comes to life, is coming out on Arbor Day but it’s too perfect so I’m certainly not mad about it! Check it out today in eBook and Paperback wherever such things are sold! The Myrtle is one of the first tales in The Tale of Tales collection and it was the first one that I read and just knew I absolutely had to adapt into a play. In a lot of ways, it really was the start of the whole project and I wouldn’t have written any of the...
read moreGoosed! Virtual Talkback
Whenever I adapt something, people always ask me what it was that I loved about the original that made me adapt it and, 9 times out of 10, I don’t adapt something because I love it but rather because I absolutely hate it and want to fix it. But this was not the case with Goosed!. Photo by Scot Wittman, Rutgers Preparatory School. When I first read The Goose, the fairy tale that Goosed! is adapted from, I absolutely loved it! I loved its complete randomness, its completely disgusting set-up, and the weird sort of heart that lay...
read moreThe Fourth Orange Virtual Talkback
It’s a good Friday! (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself!) Why? Because The Fourth Orange (one act edition) is officially available in paperback and eBook today just about everywhere books are sold. It’s a funny family friendly one act fairy tale with majority female roles and a large ensemble cast so you can get absolutely everyone involved. It’s great for schools, theatre festivals and drama competitions and I can’t wait for you to check it out! To celebrate the release of this play, I want to share some fun behind...
read moreVirtual Scripts, Live Streaming and other Distance Theatre options
So with the theatre industry largely imploding and productions being canceled right and left. It’s incredibly disappointing for all performers and everyone else who works behind the scenes to get a show up. My heart breaks for everyone who was so excited to put on a show and now can’t. As a playwright, I’m just sitting here watching productions being cancelled and feeling pretty helpless. In fact, feeling pretty helpless really sums up this whole weird experience. But I ultimately realized there is at least one thing I could...
read moreOn Writing & COVID (& Camp NaNoWriMo)
About a week ago, you couldn’t go online without someone reminding you that Shakespeare wrote King Lear during quarantine so you have no excuse not to write that novel now! And then somehow we’ve gone full circle from that to people saying that if you ARE being productive and writing right now, you’re a soulless ghoul without empathy for everyone who is suffering. And, wild as a theory as it may be, I feel perhaps there is some middle ground between those two extremes? Maybe writing is hard right now because you’re...
read moreStatus update (and a Kindle Countdown deal)
So, um, how’s everyone holding up out there? Very… interesting times we’re living in, no? Anyone else just, like, completely cracked out on fear and uncertainty right now? My oldest is still in school but they switch to “online learning” (and who the heck knows how THAT’s going to work but it sounds a lot like I just became a home school parent for the foreseeable future) and my husband will start working from home on Tuesday and only go into work as needed. I am the most worried about my parents who are as...
read moreShould you write by hand? Handwriting pros and cons
Writing by hand There’s something about taking a favorite pen and a pretty notebook and just letting the words pour out. It’s an almost magical process where ideas can flow directly through your hand through the satisfying physical sensation of ink on paper. Or so I’ve been told since my joints are so bad I can’t handwrite for more than a few minutes before my fingers cramp up in pain. Writing by hand is not for everyone. But if it’s what works for you, don’t let our gizmo-loving world discourage you from...
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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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