Hillary DePiano's Blog, page 5

Writer jealousy and book deal envy

Comparisons and competition Back in school, what were you told every time you took a test? Eyes on your own paper! And yet, as we test the waters of our writing life, we can’t seem to resist taking a peek at what our neighbor is doing. The following is an adapted excerpt from Building a Writing Life: start a writing habit, find time to write, discover your process and commit to your writing dreams available now in paperback and eBook.… Read more

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8 Advantages to Increasing Your Writing Speed

How fast do you write? Do you know your actual your words per minute? It’s worth figuring out for setting deadlines and planning projects. It’s particularly handy for when you see an opportunity you want to submit to because you can figure out whether you can realistically finish something on time for it or not. The following is an adapted excerpt from Building a Writing Life: start a writing habit, find time to write, discover your process and commit to your writing dreams available now in p...

What does Butt in Chair mean?

What does Butt in chair mean? A bit of writing advice you’ll see a lot is, “Butt in chair!” But what the heck does that mean? I can do a heck of a lot of things with my butt in a chair that have nothing whatsoever to do with writing! I also do a fair amount of writing without my butt in any kind of chair at all between dictation and my standing desk. The following is an adapted excerpt from Building a Writing Life: start a writing habit, find time to write, discover your process and commit to...

Make Writing a Priority

Once you’ve given yourself permission to write, you’ll realize that’s not enough. Because it’s one thing to say, “Yes, I will write!” and another to do it. You’ve already got a whole life crammed into 24 hours a day, and there are zillions of things vying for your attention. Writing has a lot of competition. The following is an adapted excerpt from Building a Writing Life: start a writing habit, find time to write, discover your process and commit to your writing dreams available now in paper...

“It’s not as good as in my head!”

“It sounds amazing in my head but when I write it down, it’s terrible!” Does this sound familiar? You’ve got this fantastic scene in mind, the whole thing is just RIGHT THERE fully formed in your head, and all you need to do is write it down! You rush to your preferred writing implement, start to write and… things don’t go quite how you pictured. You expected your beautiful gazelle of an idea to leap directly from your imagination.… Read more

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Writer’s block? Can’t start? Skip the beginning!

It starts somehow Sometimes you sit down, butt in chair, just like you’re supposed it and… you’ve got nothing. Or you’ve got something, but it’s stuck in your head, and you can’t seem to get any of the words down the page. And all the while, the blank page just sits there still so empty, mocking you. The following is an adapted excerpt from Building a Writing Life: start a writing habit, find time to write, discover your process and commit to your writing dreams available now in paperback and...

Do you consider yourself a writer?

The following is an adapted excerpt from Building a Writing Life: start a writing habit, find time to write, discover your process and commit to your writing dreams available now in paperback and eBook. Amazon * B&N * Google * More Do you consider yourself a writer? Do you feel comfortable calling yourself one now? One of the most common mental hang-ups I’ve seen in beginning writers is this reluctance to call themselves a writer… “yet.” There’s always some arbitrary benchmark they’ve set up...

Why start a writing habit?

Start a writing habit Why start a writing habit? What’s the advantage of writing regularly rather than just when you feel like it? There are several big reasons. The following is an adapted excerpt from Building a Writing Life: start a writing habit, find time to write, discover your process and commit to your writing dreams available now in paperback and eBook. Amazon * B&N * Google * More Build up your writing muscles The runner jogs every day to prepare for the big marathon, and daily trai...

To the surprise of literally none of you…

I’m participating in NaNoWriMo this year! NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month and it’s a fun and frantic challenge to write at least 50,000 words in the month of November with the aim of completing the first draft of a whole book by the end of the month. If you hit the target, you’ll get fabulous prizes including a winner certificate, a paperback copy of your printed book and, of course, bragging rights.… Read more

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NaNoWriMo 2019 Bullet Journal Style Word Count Coloring Calendar

Download PDF You ever see one of those really pretty bullet journal pages and wish you had something like that for tracking your NaNoWriMo progress but have absolutely no artistic ability? I was having that very feeling when I decided to make this cool NaNoWriMo 2019 word count coloring calendar. It’s Frankenstein-ed from several pieces of clip art and a NaNoWriMo word count calendar I made myself and it’s ideal for making a pretty visual chart of your writing progress this month.… Read more...