Hillary DePiano's Blog, page 117

Halfway down with NaNoWriMo as I pass 25,000 words

Today's potato is indicative of the fact that I am so overtired that I have gone mad. I don't even have the energy to comment on the progress so far.

The potato looks really weird out of his chair. I feel like he's naked.

I need to go to sleep now, kthanxbye!

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NaNoWriMo Status: sick, tired but past 21k, people!

I would like the record to show that I could have hit 25,000 tonight if I hadn't been so frakin' sick and having to run to the bathroom every five minutes. Ugh. Sick me no likey.

So, yeah, remember how everyone was all "OMG, you're so far ahead" last week? Well at the start of today I was a few hundred words *behind* where I should have been. So the lesson is, don't count your words before they are hatched or something.

I'm a little annoyed that I squandered my lead already, I was hoping it...

3 (Terrible) NaNoWriMo Limericks (Let's hear yours!)

Now, for your enjoyment, here are three (terrible) NaNoWriMo limericks.

An aspiring writer albino
Decided to try NaNoWriMo
The fellow got a bit crazed
A whole book in 30 days?
Now he lives on the streets as white wine-o

One otherwise common November
A respectable writer church member
Falls behind on word count
Too behind to surmount
Goes to write-in with plans to dismember

Two rivals both signed up for NaNo
"Let's settle this mano-a-mano!"
When one finished early
The other turned surly
Like life written...

NaNoWriMo update: I can see 18,000 and it looks so awesome!

So when we last left our hero (who is me, in this instance) I was at just under 15,000 words and discouraged as heck. The problem at hand was that I had veered very far from my outline and felt like I was wasting my time doing work I was only going to have to cut out later.

So I went out with my husband and we talked out the plot for a very long while and figured out where I went wrong so I could fix it. This involves back tracking a smidge and rewriting a scene so that it happens differently ...

Hillary's Weekly Blog Digest for 2009-11-07

Hillary's Weekly Blog Digest for 2009-10-31 http://bit.ly/28bVx5
#5 productive writing things to do while waiting for National Novel Writing Month (#NaNoWri.. http://bit.ly/4miqOp
#NaNoWriMo Advanced Word Count Calculator [updated for 2009:] #nanowrimo http://bit.ly/10dRTi
#An update on my NaNoWriMo novel http://bit.ly/1ctYvA
#What is a NaNoWriMo word war (and how do you have one)? http://bit.ly/4YMsy

How can you tell if your Spinnerella is authentic and not a reproduction? Can any She-Ra collectors help out?

A reader of The She-Ra Collector's Inventory emailed me today for some help. Here is her email:

Hi I was wondering if you could give me some info to help me authenticate a Spinnerella doll I have bought from ebay. I want to make sure it is the genuine article as I have paid a lot of money for it. . . It is a loose doll with a reproduction outfit. The paint on it all looks very similar to the one in your book but I have noticed it has two holes in the back of the torso. Is it meant to have...

5 Tips for using Twitter during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)

Twitter can be a real distraction and you can find yourself wasting a lot of time browsing tweets when you could be writing. But before you get ready to cut Twitter out of your life for a full month, let's go over some of the ways that Twitter can be a helpful tool during this month long contest.

Even NaNoWriMo cheerleaders get the blues: a pathetic, discouraging day of writing

What a cheery post title, eh? I promise its not as bad as it sounds.

So I made a point to get ahead with my word count because I knew I wasn't going to be able to write on Tues or Wed of this week and set the goal for myself to hit 15,000 when I returned on Thursday.

See, when I sit down to write, I am usually always writing a second draft. I write my first drafts in my head while I go about my life so that when I'm actually in front of the computer, I'm just typing out thoughts I've already ...

What is a NaNoWriMo word war (and how do you have one)?

A Word War is a time honored NaNoWriMo tradition but, if this your first NaNo, you may not be familiar with the term.

Simply put, a word war is a challenge to push yourself to write more words. You can do this yourself, with a group (such as at a write-in, on Twitter or the NaNo forums) or with a single buddy.

I highly recommend word wars as they are a great way to force yourself to keep going when you really want to quit and the competition can make you really push yourself.

There are no...

An update on my NaNoWriMo novel

I've been suspiciously quiet about how this year's National Novel Writing Month effort because, well, I've been I've been writing just about every second I'm not working.

So let's let numbers do the talking, shall we.

The little guy is not so much reflective of the fact that I want to shoot my novel but rather of the fact that my characters keep shooting each other. It also shows that I have been writing "under the gun" as it were, trying to get as far ahead as possible.

I had no idea I was a...