Hillary DePiano's Blog, page 43

Who says my writing year can’t end with NaNoWriMo?

I’ve had a couple of writing epiphanies recentlyand they’ve completely change how I approach the keyboard each day. For the first time in maybe ever I’m starting to really feel like I know what I’m doing. I think I’ve stumbled upon “my process” and have a plan going forward instead of just flailing around like I always used to. I’m really excited about a bunch of things I’ve got in the pipeline and I’ve high hopes for 2015. I’ll digest those revelations and how they pertain to craft later but...

From the Mailbag: What’s the relationship between King Silvio and Pantalone in The Love of Three Oranges?

Hello, I am directing your wonderful play, The Love of Three Oranges. We have just begun rehearsals and are enjoying the process greatly. I want to ask you about the relationship between Pantalone and the King. What character in our world would you liken Pantalone too? How would you describe their relationship?Thank you very much.

I’m not hip enough to give you a reference that your students would relate to. The most modern thing I can think of is The Simpsons’ Smithers and Mr. Burns without t...

The Love of Three Oranges: Original Recipe and new Citrus Blast (which is what I’m mentally calling the one-act version)

Aw, just look at them. They look so cute together. I had the two of them sitting on my desk and I just had to snap a picture.

It’s crazy. The one-act version went from “Eh, I’ll try it.” to published in less than a year. It was December of last year that I told Playscripts I’d consider doing a one-act version and here we are a year later and the one-act version isn’t just published, it’s already racked up a production history. In this industry where everything moves at a glacial pace, it’s ama...

On the unlikely hero of the author blog: the personal post

The road of life isn’t paved perfectly.

I am a human being. Flawed. Flailing. Far from polished.

For the longest time, I’ve been trying to limit the number of personal posts I put on this blog. Things like word count updates, posts where I ramble about my various works in progress, or those posts where I talk about the baby or who knows what else that has nothing to do with writing. In other words, the posts where I let the cracks show and reveal I’m human.

Though I find that sometimes I just ne...

My newest holiday play, New Year’s Thieve, is FREE for Thanksgiving Weekend!

Getting something for nothing is always worth being thankful for! From today until December 1st, you can get New Year’s Thieve completely for free as part of a special promotion with Amazon. The eBook version from Amazon can be read on any Kindle or Amazon Fire tablet and also any phone, tablet or computerthat has any of the free Kindle apps. In other words, you can literally read it on whatever you’ve got so, please, head over and download a copy.

I’m giving everyone this holiday gift for two...

NaNoWriMo Week 4: “I’m sick of sittin’ ’round here trying to write this book.” -Bruce Springsteen

“Stop looking at the mountain of wordsyou’veyet to write. You climb even the steepest path one step at a time and that’s how you’re going to reach your goal: word byword.”-Hillary DePiano

That quote above is from a pep talk I did for Camp NaNoWriMo (whole thing is here if you’re interested) and I want to follow it up with another little gem…

“Words with typos are still worms.” -Hillary DePiano

Words. Worms. Same difference. [Source]

That little bon mot was the result of my typing too fast during...

TL; DR: I won NaNoWriMo & passed 400,000 words for 2014!

My posting schedule is kind of shot to hell this month partly because of NaNoWriMo and partly because there is just so much going on between a dozen productions of The Love of Three Oranges and the two (um, three now, more on that on The Whine Seller tomorrow) new books out this autumn. The real reason I changed the schedule in the first place was because I couldn’t keep up with my old posting volume on The Whine Seller and it seemed stupid to only share two posts a week on social media days...

Did anyone notice my cameo in Writer’s Digest’s NaNoWriMo issue?

One thing we’ve just got to discuss before NaNoWriMo ends is the fact that Writer’s Digest actually did a whole issue devoted to NaNoWriMo. It was even the cover story! The whole issue was packed with tips about writing a novel in a month and support for the event. But, wait…

…what’s that? Up there by the little pull quote on NaNoWriMo ED Grant Faulkner’s article?

Huh. Would you look at that!

While it seems kind of mysterious to me why they chopped my quote in half with a random pull quote from...

Great news! Now you CAN record your production of The Love of Three Oranges or Polar Twilight!

Schools and other armature groups, I’ve got some great news for you! So many of you want to film your stage production of The Love of Three Oranges or Polar Twilight just to have an archival copy for your cast and crew. You would never do anythingillegal like sell copies of it or anything, you just want the students in the production to be able to enjoy the performance after the fact. It seems like such an innocent request and yet it’s been near impossible to do without putting your school at...

The Love of Three Oranges becomes a panto at the Piccolo Theatre

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this production as its run continues but I had to just jump in quickly now and let you know about the production of The Love of Three Oranges happening at the Piccolo Theatre in Evanston, IL running from November 14-December 20th. The Piccolo is actually well known for doing commedia dell’arte but here’s the twist: they’re not performing Three Oranges as a commedia play at all!

They’ve actually adapted my adaption (which, as you may recall, is already an ad...