Hillary DePiano's Blog, page 51

Camp NaNoWriMo: A writing challenge as difficult (or not) as you need it to be

At this point in the year, us NaNoWriMo alumni are all in very different places in our writing life. Some of you are undertakingmy Editing Challengeand working towards getting that novel you wrote during NaNoWriMo ready for the world. Others are still finishing their NaNo novel or have already moved on to something else. No matter where you are in your writing life, I want to make sure you’re aware thatCamp NaNoWriMostarts on April 1st.

I know many of you are a little foggy on what the deal i...

SYHS Theatre Group’s production of The Love of Three Oranges

I just found out at this production of The Love of Three Oranges happening in Santa Ynez, California this weekend and I just had to share their poster with you because, well, look at it…

Do you not love Ace the royal cat in the bottom right corner? I died of laughter, I tell you. Died.

Ace never gets any respect and it was nice to see him featured like the key player he is.

Anyway, if you want to check out the production, you can get the info directly from the school’s website here. There was al...

The Love of Three Oranges Trailer from Longwood University Theatre Department

I mentioned the Longwood University production of The Love of Three Oranges here and here but when Brian pointed me to the trailer they made for their production, it was just too awesome not to share!

(If the embed doesn’t work, here’s the direct link: Longwood University Theatre Department- The Love of Three Oranges Trailer – YouTube)

I love how you can tell exactly what parts are going on even though some of the clips are short and then whole thing is adorable! A heartfelt congratulations on...

Turns out the finishing touch this novel needs is for me to rewrite the entire thing from scratch

frustration (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

For most of my life, I worked on the project affectionately known as Wife Novel. I have rewritten it close to two dozen times completely from scratch and it still isn’t something I’d like to show anyone yet. But I bring it up because, I was determined to finish Wife Novel before I was allowed to work on anything else which is why, for the majority of my life, I had almost nothing writing-wise to show for it. I literally wouldn’t let myself commit serio...

Meanwhile, on my other blogs…

Don’t read all the sites I blog for? Here’s a peek at what you’ve been missing:

Apparently I don’t deserve to take breaks after all
After writing this post, I decided that I needed to have “You deserve to take breaks!” written somewhere prominent where I would see it every day. I have a dry erase board above my computer (which is pink and has Miss Piggy on it because that’s how I roll). I would write it on there! […]

How being a good student may have ruined me for real life
I had an epiphany abou...

Download My Yearly Writing and Editing Word Count Goal Spreadsheet

I completely changed how I keep track of my writing goals this year to something that very specifically fit my needs this year and you can read about that here and here. But before that I had a more general system for keeping track of my writing, editing and various projects that I’ve been using for many years that served me very well. My NaNoWriMo area took an interest in my spreadsheet (and by took an interest I mean they made fun of me for having a writing spreadsheet that Fran said “looks...

Win DRM free copies of my eBooks in honor of Read an eBook Week 2014

March 2nd through March 8th is Read an eBook Week 2014. In honor of this, I’m having a giveaway.I’ll be choosing several winners (the exact number depends on how many people enter but I can promise it will be at least two) so you’ve got a good chance of going home with the prize.

What are the prizes, you ask? Your choice of a DRM free copy of any of the books listed below in the eBook format of your choice:

Click any book to read more about it.

Of course, you can also grab free eBook previews of...

You have no power over me.

Something just happened to the little one and I that was wrong and ridiculous and made me so angry I was shaking. The one thing that I kept focusing on afterwards as I stayed cool and upbeat for my daughter was my inner mantraof “I am SO blogging about this!” And I was going to sit down and share this story with all of you so you’d be angry with me and you’d say things like, “That’s so messed up! I would have punched that woman!” and it would all be very cathartic and help me get it out of my...

I’m already a quarter of the way through my writing goal for the entire year

To recap, this year I completely changed my yearly writing goal up making it harder (as only certain writing counted) and adding percentage based benchmarks to dictate what I had to work on. While there are a variety of smaller goals within this number, I set a goal for the year of 200,000 words. This was double last year’s goal but less than I used to set pre-motherhood. I honestly thought it was going to be a stretch to hit this goal because I’d imposed so many restrictions on my writing th...

Carlo Gozzi’s The Love of Three Oranges was not an opera, nor was it based on one

Portrait of Carlo Gozzi (1720-1806) Author of The Love of Three Oranges (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I know. But for some reason this misconception keeps coming up and it drives me batty.

Take this line from The Rotunda’s review of Longwood University’s production of The Love of Three Oranges:

In the style of “commedia dell’arte,” Hillary DePiano amusingly retools “The Love of Three Oranges” from the satirical opera by Carlo Gozzi for the delight of modern audiences.

Sigh....