Hillary DePiano's Blog, page 19

Writing by hand the new fashioned way: stylus, touchscreen, and thou

Because of the newborn baby in my life, I’ve been looking for unconventional ways to get work done when I’m one-handed because I’m nursing, holding the baby or whatever. One of these experiments is the return of voice-to-text dictation which long time readers will remember as the way I got through all the horrible joint problems of a few years ago when I couldn’t type. But while dictation is great, I don’t always have my microphone or normal computer handy and sometimes the baby is too noisy...

February 2017: Breakdowns, Boxes and a Baby

I haven’t talked about this online for a variety of reasons but you should know that all this time I’ve been blogging about this insanely stressful series of months I’ve been having, there’s been an additional complication on top of everything else making it all that much harder. Namely, that while I was packing up our house of 11 years, trying to buy a new house that kept falling through and coming together again, getting no sleep while battling toddler moving angst, taking action and deali...

Coming Soon: The (Completely Inaccurate) Legend of the Mummy Witch House

The best scary stories are the ones that are at least partly true… (This isn’t one of those stories.) Coming Spring 2017 I’ve got a brand new short comedy to share with you this spring in a super spooky collection from one of your favorite play publishers. Wacky and weird, it’s a fast paced adventure with the obscure horrors we’ve lost to history and a ton of silly fun for middle schools and up.… Read more

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January 2017: Moving Right Along

Welcome to another exciting update in which stuff is going on!

Apparently we just blew through a whole month without my noticing which would worry me more if I wasn’t knee deep in the hoopla as those kids from Starship say (and by kids, I mean, probably senior citizens by now). But as the month is really and truly over now, it’s time once again to look at the past month of Hillary Writes All The Things and see how the words went.

Here’s what January 2017 looked like in writing…

Total Words W...

December 2016: Tale of Tales / 4th Orange status report & update on personal chaos

This is the latest I’ve ever posted one of these monthly updates because life is still a hurricane here in Duckburg but I wanted to pop out of the duck blur for a minute and give you my numbers for December.

Here’s what December2016looked like in writing…

Total Words Written This Month
43,268 words

Average Words Per Day
1,396 words

Monthly Goal
I did not set a goal for this month. Between holiday rush and everything else going on, I wanted as much pressure off my life as possible.

YearlyGoal
43...

Want to do your own monthly writing recaps in 2017? Free graphics for you to use!

Series Title Image

Regular readers know I do a monthly debrief of how my writing is going and have found it incredibly helpful in auditing my writing work and keeping me on track. I also make a silly little graphic for each month to serve as a title image for easy sharing on social media and beyond. This year, I made all of my monthly graphics using the free site PhotoFunia. While you’re welcome to head over there and customize your own, I’m also including the full set that I made here to sav...

How did 2016 stack up compared to past writing years?

I’ve been setting a writing goal for the year and keeping track of exactly how much I write every day and on what project for six years now. While I’ve changed exactly what I’ve tracked and how I’ve tracked it over the years, the basic day by day data is all still there so I decided to do a little retro-fitting so I could see how the things I track now compare with past years. Before we dive into this, keep in mind that I have limited and sporadic writing time.… Read more

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Setting smaller, specific goals with wiggle room is the secret to good writing resolutions

It’s a brand new year which means it’s the traditional time of setting new goals and resolutions for the year ahead. For us writers, that can mean setting deadlines or striving for new writing habits in the coming year. I think taking a few minutes to write down concrete goals is a great way to keep you focused on what’s important to you as you move into the next few months.

“But, Hillary, statistics show that New Year’s Resolutions don’t work!” you protest. “People just abandon them after a...

Amazon Kindle owner? Here’s which of my books you can read for free right now

It’s the holiday season, which means many people unwrapped a brand new eReader in the last few days. If one of those gifts was an Amazon Kindle, Fire or a new phone or tablet compatible with the free Kindle App (which is just about all of them), this is your guide to all the eBooks I have available on Amazon and how to read mostly all of them for free. Kindle Unlimited Eligible If you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited, you can read many of my books for free right now and I’ll still be paid for...

Hillary Writes All the Things 2016: my year in writing debriefed

2016 was a crap sandwich for just about everyone and I’m no exception. It was a crazy stressful year full of unexpected changes and pressures and so much of the future is still uncertain. But while 2016 felt like a big fat fail as I was living it, it actually turned out to be a pretty darn good year for writing, oddly enough. Let’s take a closer look.

(Keep in mind that my Writing Year starts in December, ends in November.)

Here’s the numbers for 2016…

Goal for the Year
500,000 words

Total Wor...