Hillary DePiano's Blog, page 104
August 7, 2010
An update on my writing goals
Sometimes you have a good night and you get a bunch of writing done and you decide that's enough for tonight and go to hang out with your husband… and he's in the middle of taking apart a laptop and the pile of wire and bolts on his lap indicates that he probably doesn't want to hang out with you at the moment. Soooo, you go back upstairs and write a blog post, that's what you do! 
It's been a busy/crazy last few weeks with family stuff bad (health badness for some beloved...
August 5, 2010
Writing a book length work is like playing a very long game of Simon that you have to keep pausing
It's that time again. Time for Hillary to make a really long, convoluted metaphor.
Remember Simon, the Simon Says type memory game with the light up colors from Milton Bradley? Here's a visual aide from our dear friend eBay in the event you don't live in the 80s like I do:
The game worked like this:
Machine flashes: RED
You press: RED
Machine flashes: RED BLUE
You press: RED BLUE
Machine flashes: RED BLUE RED
You press: RED BLUE RED
and so on…
Of course, it got harder and...
August 3, 2010
Review: Wake
Wake by Lisa McMann
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
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July 26, 2010
Editing: Tips for taking apart your book to put it together again, better
To a layman, editing usually means reading something over and catching a few typos. But for more serious writers, be they fiction, educational, technical or non-fiction, know that sometimes editing means taking the whole thing apart, moving things around, hacking parts out entirely and totally rebuilding whole parts.
You can find yourself looking at a part that just doesn't work and, like a mad scientist, cracking your knuckles and claiming, "We can rebuild it!" as lightning...
July 22, 2010
I have written over 100,000 new words this year!
Heck yeah! Now, when you really think about this in theory, 100k words is only like 2 NaNoWriMos and since we are close to 8 months into the year and I could have in theory done 50k every month, it makes me feel like a slacker. But in practice, I've been writing a ton more this year than ever before and I am only under 300 words from on pace with my goals for the year and that is the point of this exercise so yay me! Someday, if all I do is write I'll aim for that 50k a...
July 15, 2010
Mistress Novel's Chapter 7 is bane of my existence. Also pie!
I'm almost at 100,000 words. Fun! Looking forward to that. Potato isn't shooting my novel. He's shooting something else. My novel was a high point of the evening.
So today was really annoying and stressful. Remember that exciting news I promised you? Well it fell through pretty hardcore today. Disappointed but I guess it's for the best that I never official announced it, right? The few friends who I told about it can opt to have the story recapped to them via a series of...
July 6, 2010
My writing totem
When I started my very first book, it was in a white Get Along Gang notebook. I have no remembrance of the Get Along Gang. I never watched a single episode of the show, to my knowledge. Since I hadn't known who the Get Along Gang was (I was going to abbreviate that as GAG but… um, no), I never used the notebook as a kid so when I decided to start my first novel as a teen the notebook was entirely new, clean and empty and I claimed it for my fiction.
The draft of my book that...
July 1, 2010
in which the gods of writing punish me for neglecting my WIP for so long
I am a bad, bad writer.
How bad? The last time I touched my work in progress was May 16th.
That's 47 days! Holy cow is that unacceptable.
I have to confess, I genuinely had no idea it had been that long or I would have forced myself to work on it sooner. One of my big promises to myself this year was never to go more than 2 weeks without touching a WIP and I just totally FAIL-ed out on that one.
So the fact that I have no concept of the passage of time is sort of an issue but l...
June 29, 2010
Even online, LISTEN to yourself! On unintentional jerk behavior
(The following happened a long while ago. I'm only just writing about it now because I wanted to let enough time elapse that the offender wouldn't recognize themselves in this post on the off chance they find it.)
An acquaintance of mine just had a horrible death in the family, a close and only sibling. It was one of those, out of the blue, taken way too soon kind of things that there are really no words for because you just feel so badly for everyone involved.
A day or two...
June 26, 2010
…in which I get really annoyed about the way an envelope was addressed
Guys… I'm really ticked.
Yesterday, we got a letter in the mail. It was hand addressed. The front was addressed to my husband (Mr. HusbandsFirstName HusbandsLastName) and the return address was a male name so I put it on the counter for him without another thought. Hours later, he comes home and opens it.
Inside the envelope was a super girlie invite to a wedding shower. I mean ribbons, glitter, the whole nine yards. The actually invite is not addressed to anyone but we...
