Hillary DePiano's Blog, page 100

I do not think your novel is about what you think it is about

Inigo Montoya sits across from you at the coffee shop. He's your novel critique partner. You've already given him your notes on his latest work. He wasn't exactly pleased with your line edits. He actually said, "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my darlings. Prepare to die!" but you talked him out of the whole killing you thing and he's ready to give you notes on your latest work in progress.

"So? What did you think?" you ask, the anticipation killing you. "I know it's not perfect. Just tell me what is wrong with it!"

"Let me 'splain." He pauses, looks over his many notes and shakes his head. "No, there is too much. Let me sum up. Tell me what your book is about."

"Well, it's about this explosion and this girl and…"

"You keep saying that. I do not think your novel is about what you think it is about."

"What do you mean?"

"Every time we talk about dis book, you talk about dis explosion when most of the book is about this girl and her mother and thees stuff about class and wealth. This explosion… it is like the sixth finger on the hand of the man who killed my father."

"Wait, but how can I be wrong about what my books is about? I'm the one writing it!" Inigo just shrugs. You start to think about it. You realize he is probably right. The explosion feels less and less important to the story the more you work on it. Those were the parts that felt the most awkward, the most forced, even as you were writing them. Maybe subconsciously your book has been about something else all along and you only hung onto the explosion because it was what originally inspired the whole project.

"I have to thank you," you say at last. "You've been an amazing help. You're such an insightful critique partner, I'm amazed I found so many problems in your book."

Inigo nodded. "As a writer, you are wonderful."

"Thank you; I've worked hard to become so."

"I admit it, you are better than I am."

"Then why are you smiling?"

"Because I know something you don't know." Inigo rises, taking your notes and his hand written draft.

"And what is that?"

"I am not left-handed." He starts to walk towards the door.

"Wait a minute. Are you saying that you wrote that whole draft with your left hand when you are really right handed? But that doesn't even…" But his ride, the large man in the holocaust cloak, is waiting outside and, as you watch them wheel away in their wheelbarrow, all you can do is weakly call, "Have fun storming the castle!" after them.

You look back down at your draft, seeing it in a whole new light.

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NaNoWriMo Halfway Point Check-up: What if the middle of 50,000 words isn't the middle of your novel?

Today is November 15. You know what that means? It means you should be halfway done with your NaNoWriMo novel right now. In other words, if you're trying to hit a word count of 50,000 you should be at 25,000 by the end of today.

Take a look at your current word count. Are you on pace? If not, you should really push yourself to get caught up today.

Maybe you're ludicrously ahead. But sometimes, even if you're ahead on word count, you may still be behind on the story itself. As we've discussed a few times on this blog, most novels are longer than 50,000 words. So, even if you are at 25,000 words today, you may not be at the middle of your novel.

Not to keep obsessively beating the same drum, but you will get a lot more out of NaNoWriMo if you focus on finishing your novel, not just the challenge. Writing 50,000 words of a novel is great, but finishing the first draft of an entire novel is even better and that's what you really want to push yourself towards this month. So, if you've found yourself at the halfway point of the month and you've realized that you're not at the halfway point of your novel, now is the perfect time to readjust your goals so that you can really truly finish the whole thing.

If you're anything like me, you probably find it really hard to estimate how many words a given story is going to take. But, since we've already gotten some of our novel done, let's take this opportunity to compare what we've written with our outlines. How many words did it take to get you to this point in your outline? Can you figure out percentage-wise approximately how many words it should take you to get all the way to the end?

If you didn't outline, and you're going by the seat of your pants, that's okay too. You can't evaluate your story as technically as those that outlined did but you can still get some idea of how close to the middle you are. You've read a lot of books and you have a sense of what their flow is like. Does it feel like you're close to the middle or is your story still really only just getting started? Will you need to write twice as much as what you've written already to finish it? Three times as much? Only you know the answer.

Whether you're going by the numbers are going by your gut, today's the perfect day to get a sense of what you need to do to complete your goals by the months end. You may find that you need to increase your word count goal, which means increasing the number of words per day you write. While this may seem scary, you've got plenty of time and adjusting your goals early makes it that much easier to reach them.

And if reevaluating your NaNoWriMo novel has made you realize that you are incredibly behind either on word count or on the story itself or both, that's okay too. Think about how long those first 15 days felt. You've got a whole other 15 left to go, and the closer you get to the end of NaNoWriMo the closer you get to the end of your novel. The closer you get the end of your novel, the more exciting your story gets which makes it that much easier to write. So no matter how far behind you are, the going gets easier from here on out. Even if you are behind.

Behind or ahead, we all have 15 days of novel writing madness under our belts at this point. How's it going for you so far?

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Social Media Sellers Q&A Panel Discussion tackles misconceptions about running an online business

[image error]Because I'm massively uncreative, the title of this article is exactly the same as my tweet about this same topic. Judge me if you will.

Remember this thing? The thing where eBay let me into this elite group of social media conscious sellers because I was cool or something?

Well, the first Q&A panel discussion just posted here: Q&A with eBay Social Media Sellers on eBay Ink

Please feel free to click through to learn my thoughts and the thoughts of my fellow online business owners on running an online business and learning from your mistakes.

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A dozen days into November

Well, hello, my dearies! I expected November to be busy, it's always busy, but the last few days have been more so than usual for whatever reason and it is only now that I crawl out from my hole and emerge to let you know that not only are there many more week of winter but I'm pretty sure my shadow is having much more fun than I am. Good for her, I say!

Let's do this as a list, shall we?

Hands? Feel amazingly much better! Almost weirdly so since nothing changed except that I stopped going to the gym (on medical leave, it's not like I just stopped going). This saddens me somewhat as I really enjoy the gym and miss all my friends there and was rather hoping the gym wasn't a factor. The fact that they started to get better almost immediately after I stopped going was something of a smoking gun that the gym was making it worse. This information is not ideal but I have my MRI later today and maybe we'll finally find out what is wrong. (Fact that they hurt from June to now and only stop hurting literally days before the MRI? Just freakin' typical.)
Typing? I can type now and have been doing it in small doses to try to get used to it again. I'm mostly still using the dictation program because I don't want to push my luck but the nice thing is that I don't *have* to use it which gives me more flexibility. But, boy, I'm out of practice. Accuracy and speed of typing have both taken a serious hit with lack of use.
NaNoWriMo? They'll be more on this later, especially since I never even told you what I am working on (though if you've hung out with me at an in-person NaNo event, you already know) but it's going reasonably well. I'm actually 1k behind for today but I should be able to catch up before I leave for the MRI and then get ahead this evening. My hope is to hit the 25k mark by the end of Saturday, well in advance of the Monday deadline. 
Editing of Mistress Novel? Its been at a standstill because of the hands thing but once I am caught up with everything else going on and now that I can type again, I'm going to get back to that with a vengeance very soon!
MRI? Was totally zen about it until yesterday when my dad basically told me that it would be the most horrible experience of my entire life as he's had two of them. Am now sort of kinda freaking out a bit about it.
Rest of life? Going well! Very busy! Doors opening, closing and doing that round and round thing that some of them do on the big office buildings. I'm sorry to be vague but I hate to talk about stuff before it's official but let's just say that life is good and has the potential to be better (which I suppose could apply all the time!).

Anyway, just a little update-ish post from the trenches so you know I'm not dead. How is everyone else's November going?

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The Offsite Recap for November 8, 2010

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The Curse of NaNoWriMo Week Two: Common problems and their solutions

We're entering the second week of NaNoWriMo and you've probably heard the warnings already. NaNoWriMo week two is shrouded in infamy. It's not really the second week's fault, it has more to do with where you are in your story at this point in the month but it can still give you problems even if your story is meticulously mapped out. If you're way ahead in your word count, you may have hit the week two blues last week or, if you're behind, you may not hit them till the week following. rest assured, you will hit them. it's just a matter of when.

If you've never done NaNoWriMo before, you may be wondering what the big deal is. Distilled down, there are three big problems you'll find in week two.

Your train of thought has been derailed

You were having lots of fun writing your exciting chase scene for the whole first week but it's only now occurred to you that you don't know who's chasing them and why. You were being crafty and subtle with your cryptic hints last week but now you realize you should probably figure out what you were hinting at. Don't think you're immune to this just because you outlined your story ahead of time, week two is also the time when you may find yourself straying the worst off outline or most seriously doubting your plot.

Week two is when you first step back and suspect your plot is nonexistent or just plain terrible.

Solution? Don't sweat the plot stuff. Like Dory in Finding Nemo, just keep swimming or, in this case, writing even if what you're writing doesn't make any sense. Believe it or not, the plot issues almost always work themselves out if you just keep at it. Even if they don't, fixing plot issues is what revisions are for. You can fix it later. Just focus on getting the draft done right now. There will always be things to fix. your focus now is just getting the first draft finished.

You're starting to suspect your book is too long or too short

Week two is also scary because it's your first real taste of just how long 50,000 words is. It's usually week two when you realize the 50,000 words will only take you halfway through your story or that you've run out of plot before you've even hit 25,000 words. Week two is the first time you really start to think about the length of your story as a whole and realizing how that applies to the 50,000 word marker can be distressing realization.

Solution? Adjust your story accordingly. If your story is too short, start thinking on either how to lengthen it or of a second story you could write a complete out the 50,000 words. If your story is too long, that's actually good problem to have. 50,000 words is actually a pretty short novel, most novels published today are much longer than that. If your novel is shaping up to be over 50,000 words, you're probably in good shape especially if your aim is to eventually be published.

In this case, you don't need to adjust your story, just your expectations. Their focus should be to finish the story no matter what the word count. If week two makes you realize that your story is really 100,000 words, start pushing yourself even harder to that you'll finish the book in November, not just the challenge.

What was I thinking? I don't have time to do this!

Week two is also the time when real life starts to intrude again. Maybe you let your responsibilities slide in the first week to be able to get more writing done and now those responsibilities are coming back with a vengeance. Maybe you picked up some bad habits in week one, like staying up all night or drinking too much coffee, and now you're paying the price. Maybe you're starting to regret taking on this challenge in the first place.

Solution? Everyone who has ever done this challenge feels this way when they hit Week Two. Everyone who has ever started to write a novel outside of the NaNoWriMo world feels this way when they hit this part of their story. Focus on the fact that you're in good company. Hundreds of writers have felt this exact same way and managed to push through and finish their books and so can you. We all have moments when we feel like we're the worst writer ever.

The only thing that separates working writers from wanna be's is that they didn't stop when the going got tough.

Besides, pushing through not only gets you further in your novel, it also gets you past Week Two which is exactly where you want to be. As you approach the climax of your story, probably right around the middle of Week Three, your plot will really start cooking and everything will get much easier and more fun again.

What problems do you find yourself hitting in Week Two? Have you figured out how to work through them?

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Wait, so how are you going to do NaNoWriMo if you can't use your hands? Writing the handsfree novel.

I'm not running for anything, but I'd appreciate your vote anyway…

So, I submitted one of my comics from The Whine Seller to So Much Pun! a site that celebrates cheesy puns. I think we can all agree that this is, indeed, a cheesy pun.

I've never done this before but it would be a total thrill for me if this got enough votes to get to the homepage so, if you have a second and a Chezburger network account, I'd appreciate it if you could give it a rating of a few hamburgers.

Just click on the image above to get to the rating page.

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How to donate to NaNoWriMo or Script Frenzy using eBay Giving Works

If you read my e-commerce blog, the post below is adapted from this article: Using eBay Giving Works to give more to Haiti earthquake victims than you can afford by yourself

Whether you finished all 100 pages of your Screnzy script or 50,000 words of your National Novel Writing Month novel, you have to admit how much fun and productivity their parent company, The Office of Letters and Light, brought to your month. As a non-profit, they need all the money they can get to be able to keep on running these great events so, if you haven't already, please consider giving them a donation or at least purchasing something from their store.

But if you don't have enough ready cash to make a donation or you wish you could give more than you gave, consider using eBay Giving Works to give more than you normally could.

eBay Giving works is a service by which eBay sellers can opt to make a percentage of their sale go directly to the non-profit of their choice. The advantage to this is that it gives you a way to give more to The Office of Letters and Light than may be financially possible for you right now.

How do we get started? Go to The Office of Letters and Light page on eBay Giving Works here: http://donations.ebay.com/charity/charity.jsp?NP_ID=17129

(If my link above doesn't work, go to http://donations.eBay.com and search for The Office of Letters and Light in the Non-Profit search box. If you are having trouble finding them, their ID number is 17129 so you may have more luck searching for that. Or include keywords and mission statements in your search and search for NaNoWriMo.)

On that page, you'll see three tabs, Buy, Sell and Donate. Donate just allows you to make a straight donation. It's buy and sell we are really interested in.

Under the Buy tab, you'll notice some items listed. These are items that have a percentage of their sale price going to The Office of Letters and Light. Along side of each listing, in the Donation % column, you can see what percentage of the final sale price is set to go to the non-profit. Purchase any of the items on that page and the designated percentage goes directly to The Office of Letters and Light. It's a great way to make a donation if it was something you were going to purchase anyway.

But what if you have something to sell? Older items you don't want anymore or something you were going to donate anyway? Why not list them here with a percentage (hopefully 100%) going to The Office of Letters and Light?

Every year, I auction off several copies of whatever my newest book is with 100% donation to The Office of Letters and Light on eBay through Giving Works. It's just my little way of trying to give back to these great events. It also lets me raise more money for them than I can do by myself. So if, say, my books cost $5 each, I realize I can only afford to donate $50. So I use that $50 to get copies of my book to sell. I then I sell 10 books at $10 each, I raise $100 for The Office of Letters and Light. Without Giving Works, I would have been able to only give half as much as I did.

Even if you don't have books to sell, mostly everyone has the ability to create something. A craft, a service or just an item you no longer want, anything can be auctioned off with the proceeds going to the non-profit.

To sell an item, go to that Sell tab. Once there, there is a explanation of how it works from the seller's point of view and then a big button to Sell Now. Once in the eBay listing page, where you see the Giving Works option (designated by a little blue and yellow ribbon, under where you set the price), you will need to select The Office of Letters and Light as well as the percentage that you want to donate. Other than that, you will set it up just like any other eBay listing.

If The Office of Letters and Light isn't showing as an option, just click the "Or, select another nonprofit you love" link and locate it again. (For future listings, you can do this at any time from the normal listing window instead of having to go to the Giving Works launch page first.)

It will look a bit like this:

Have any questions? Let me know below and I'll try to walk you through any issues.



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What I'm not writing for NaNoWriMo

I realize I never talked about what I was going write for NaNoWriMo on this blog. Pretty funny, when you consider how much talking about NaNoWriMo I've been doing.

First let's talk about the projects I'm in the middle of:

Editing: one nonfiction book, three plays, and Mistress Novel
Works in progress: Wife Novel, Mistress Novel 2 (over 50% completed), five e-books, and the four blogs I write for weekly

Now, of course, this doesn't include the other secret projects I have in the pipeline. But I think everything above is the stuff I'm really working on a daily basis. You already know how I feel about the fact that I didn't get a chance to finish editing Mistress Novel before NaNoWriMo and just about everything on the list above was something I thought I'd have done by this point in the year which makes me shake my fist at the sky and curse my stupid hands. You may question the wisdom of me starting a new project at all, but I swear I have a good reason for it that will cover in a future post.

Every time NaNoWriMo rolls around, I like to use it to write one of those ideas that's been kicking around in my head for a while. I see no reason to wait to write the ideas in my head and NaNoWriMo seems to be the best way to bang out first draft. So, every year, I usually just pick out one of the ideas in the "I've been meaning to write that" file and write that for NaNoWriMo.

So, in this post I wanted to highlight a few of the novels I thought about writing for NaNoWriMo this year until I came upon the idea that I'm actually going to use.

Mind you, these will all get better nicknames once they become an official work in progress.

The Post-Apocalyptic Romance Book. I don't read romance. I don't like romance. But my mother is absolutely obsessed with romance and has read hundreds of romance books. She loves to recap the books to me after she's read them and listening to plot after plot inadvertently gave me an idea for a story that I fear is romance. Of course, it's Hillary Romance, which means it's mostly science fiction and weird stuff, but it's still Romance. I took the trouble of actually writing up an outline for this book and thought about writing it for NaNoWriMo, but it's a much newer idea than some of my others and so I decided it had to wait
The Library Book. This book started out as sort of a dystopian future commentary on paper books versus e-books and I have a horrible feeling it is also becoming a romance. I should probably stop talking to my mother. I outlined about half of this book, but I really don't have the whole thing planned out yet so this one was never really a serious contender for NaNoWriMo.
The Based on Shakespeare Book. Two years ago I told everyone I was going to cheat at NaNoWriMo by basing my novel off of a Shakespeare play. I never actually got to do that. But I have a very good idea for a novel that is a modern retelling of a Shakespeare play. I keep putting off writing it though because it seems like the sort of idea that would be easy so I started saving it for a year when I really have no plan for NaNoWriMo. Up until a few weeks ago, it was almost this year's project.
The Family Storytelling Project. I've talked about this project on the blog before and I really was tempted to do it for NaNoWriMo this year. In the end, however, I decided that it just wasn't in the spirit of National Novel Writing Month to do something that was mostly nonfiction. But man, it would've been nice to get this project done, but I have a feeling it's something I really can't rush if it's going to come out the way I want it to.
I have to really exciting short stories that I am dying to write. I was tempted to back to back them and write them both for NaNoWriMo but, again, I feel it isn't in the spirit of the contest.
M5. When I was in sixth grade, I wrote a short story for class. It was terrible. It was so terrible, in fact that it has been haunting me since then because I am 100% convinced I could do it better now as an adult this time as a novel instead of a short story. If you were in my sixth grade class, the code name M5 probably makes perfect sense to you but, if not, that's probably for the best as I've really overhauled the entire thing so that it's almost unrecognizable. But this is a middle grade novel that is sort of a total re-imagining of the short story that I wrote when I was in sixth grade. I keep putting off writing this story even though it's one of my oldest ideas, because I really need to do a bunch of research on animal behavior, and I keep hoping I can pick my friend Katie's brain to get that information without actually having to go to a library. I understand this is a new form of laziness.

As of a few weeks ago, I was all set to proceed with the Shakespeare book, when I got a shiny new idea. I normally don't let new ideas seduce me away from my master plan. But this idea came with a very convincing argument why it should be the next one I work on. So, even though all of the books listed above were things I've been planning to work on for a really long time, the brand-new idea is the one I'm writing for NaNoWriMo this year.

But, you ask, what are you actually writing for NaNoWriMo? Well, you'll just have to stay tuned…

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