Hillary DePiano's Blog, page 10

The 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...

In your own way, in your own time (NaNoWriMo pep talk)

Scary Rope Mountain of DOOM

“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 peo...

NaNoWriMo 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.… Read more

The post NaNoWriMo 2018 Bulle...

NaNoWriMo and writing when the world is on fire

What a month, huh? Trying to think about writing with current events being what they are feels exactly like this GIF.

And, at times like this, it’s hard not to wonder what the point even is? When the world is a screaming vortex of bad and even tomorrow doesn’t feel like a guarantee, you start to wonder why are you doing something as frivolous as writing? On those days when it feels like everyone is ambivalent to your whole existence, how can you make yourself believe they would care about w...

Do I need an eBay store to be a eBay Trading Assistant or Selling Assistant?

An eBay store is an optional upgrade for your selling account. With different levels at a variety of price points, upgrading to a store provides a few extra selling tools and benefits. Is a store essential for a Trading Assistant or Selling Assistant business? Not at all. You can easily run a Trading Assistant or Selling Assistant business from a standard selling account and avoid having to pay the monthly fee for a store. But there are some advantages to having an eBay store that could prove...

Finely Aged Whine (Seller Stories): Drunk Buffalo Style

As many of you know, when I’m not running an e-commerce business and yelling about selling here as The Whine Seller, I write fiction and plays. In one of my recent plays, The Green Bird, there is a funny exchange where a father stops his son from rushing headlong into danger by saying, “I still think we need a way past that snake lady before we charge in drunk buffalo style.”

After we’d seen the show live a couple of times, my husband was telling me that was his favorite line and he was alway...

Forget your novel! How to Prep Your LIFE For NaNoWriMo.

How do you prepare for a big undertaking like NaNoWriMo? You can just stumble into your novel-writing journey headfirst drunk buffalo style and hope it all works out. But you’ll have your best shot at success if you do a little preparation before the month begins. But I’m not talking about your novel itself, though your certainly welcome to prep that if your plotter heart desires. What I’m talking about is the kind of prep work even the most devout pantser can get on board with: preparing you...

New Name! (Same as the Old Name)

If you’ve been a reader of mine for any length of time, you know I have a bit of a branding problem when it comes to my writing. Namely that some people (likely you) know Hillary DePiano as the name of the e-commerce blogger and seller who blogs here at The Whine Seller and others only know her as a NaNoWriMo leader and playwright who specializes in obscure fairy tales and modernized commedia dell’arte. I’m both of those, of course, and while I’ve tried for years to make both of those two ver...

Writing to Keywords: Do I really have to bother thinking about SEO as I blog?

This blog ranks surprisingly well in search results which is particularly nice because I’m almost never paying much attention to SEO at all let alone writing to keywords. I know, I know, but while I think about that kind of thing when marketing a book or advertising my eBay items, I started this blog as an informal little thing just to get my thoughts out and it’s kind of hard to get out of that habit. I write what I feel like writing and I don’t give a lot of thought to how it’s going to pla...

Turning what I wanted to write into what I needed to write

The 2016 election threw us all for a loop that we’re still dealing with. Shortly after the election, I saw a tweet to the effect that you’ll probably be able to tell exactly where writers were in their manuscripts when the election happened and I thought this was interesting because this absolutely happened to me during the writing of The Fourth Orange. Though it’s one of the most recent Tale of Tales plays I released, The Fourth Orange was actually the very first play I started in this whole...