Hillary DePiano's Blog, page 99

Photos from EF International Academy's production of The Love of Three Oranges

EF International Academy was kind enough to share photos from their recent production of The Love of Three Oranges and I, in turn, am happy to share them with you!

You can read more about it here. (Website is not in English)

You may also enjoy these related posts. . .

No related posts.

Northeast New Jersey finished NaNoWriMo 2010 in the top 50 highest word counts!!

Guys, I hope you'll indulge me. I have to do a little bragging.

This year I was the ML for Northeast NJ region and we had this amazingly fantastic group of people. We had a great turn out at events, had a ton of fun and had a lot of people finish the competition. I couldn't have asked for a better area.

But I just learned today that the NE NJ novelists were even cooler than I had any idea.

NaNoWriMo released some site wide statistics today and they ranked the "Wordiest...

NaNoWriMo feature on The Enthusiasts' Radio Hour

[image error] The Enthusiasts' Radio Hour recently did an episode about writers and NaNoWriMo and they interviewed Lindsey Grant, program director of NaNoWriMo, and two authors with works in progress: Isaac Adamson and Hillary DePiano (which is me, in case you are new around here). I spoke to them twice, once when I had just started my novel and the second time when I was almost done.

I haven't listened to the final show yet but we had a hell of the time with the audio of the second...

Feed has moved

This feed has moved to http://www.hillarydepiano.com/feed/.

Another NaNoWriMo, another novel in the can…

Last night, while chatting with the fun people from my NaNoWriMo area in our chat room, I passed the 50k mark and also finished my novel. How is that possible, you may ask, when a novel is usually more than 50,000 words? Well, my friend, I am a filthy cheater. I actually wrote out a several big scenes as just narrative summary because I couldn't deal with them at the moment and I wanted to get to the end of the book. Considering the epic number of massive plot holes and other ...

And that's why I love NaNoWriMo. It gets you ...

And that's why I love NaNoWriMo. It gets you started. It gives you the impetus to finally start, and/or finally finish. Knowing there are thousands of others out there trying to do the same, who are using this ridiculous deadline as cattle-prod and shame deterrent, means goddamnit, you better do it now because you know how to write, and you have fingers, and you have this one life, and during this one life, you should put your words down, and make your voice heard, and then...

And that's why I love NaNoWriMo. It gets you...

And that's why I love NaNoWriMo. It gets you started. It gives you the impetus to finally start, and/or finally finish. Knowing there are thousands of others out there trying to do the same, who are using this ridiculous deadline as cattle-prod and shame deterrent, means goddamnit, you better do it now because you know how to write, and you have fingers, and you have this one life, and during this one life, you should put your words down, and make your voice heard, and then let others hear your voice. And the only way any of that's going to happen is if you actually do it. People can't read the thoughts in your head. They can only read the thoughts you put down, carefully and with great love, on the page. So you have to do it, goddamnit. You have to do it, and you can step back and be happy. You can step back and relax. You can step back and feel something like pride.

Then of course you'll have to revise it ten or twenty times, but let's not talk about that yet.

Write your goddamned book now. The world awaits.
-Dave Eggers' 2010 NaNoWriMo pep talk

You may also enjoy these related posts. . .

No related posts.

So, guess what my word count for the year is…

"I'm sick of sitting 'round here trying to write this book." -Bruce Springsteen, DANCING IN THE DARK

There was an online write-in for NaNoWriMo today and I am now at 42,504 words. I haven't been giving you constant word count updates this year because I've got that widget at the top of the page which updates my word count in real time and it seemed like overkill to keep giving you updates in posts. But I'm making exception today because I have some extra exciting news.

During the write-in today, not only did I reach the number above, but I also… well, let me let the potato tell you…

Remember my plan to write 500 words a day in 2010? How I concluded that would be 182,500 words for the year? I just hit my 2010 writing goal a full month early!

Now, of course, I told you over the summer I was planning on raising my goal to 200,000 words, because I was already ahead and wanted to make it more of a challenge. Besides, 200,000 is a nice even number. So I'm a smidge over 17,000 words away from that goal. Considering at least 7000 of those will be completed with the end of NaNoWriMo we're looking at just 10,000 words to meet that new higher goal. Totally completely doable even with December insanity.

The one thing that is sort of putting a damper on my celebrating is the fact that, while I did write a large amount this year, I managed to do it while taking several weeks off because of my hand problems. The fact that I was able to still meet my goal even with taking a chunk of time off, even if it was time off for very legitimate reasons, makes me think that the goal I set the first place wasn't hard enough. So, I'm already formulating ways to kick it up several notches for next year. But more on that in the future.

On a side note, several people have asked me what the deal was with my hands. Long story short, the problem isn't something fixable and it's just something I'm going to be dealing with on a certain level for the rest of my life. Not exactly the diagnosis I was looking for. I was kind of hoping it would be something easily fixable, that we could correct and then move on issue free. But there are many ways it could've been much worse so I'm thankful and disappointed both.

One of the things the doctor kept stressing was that I had to just keep living my life. I'm still supposed to rest my hands whenever there is pain, but he didn't want me to avoid using them entirely because he was afraid the muscles would become weak which would only make the situation worse. So I'm pretty much doing the same thing I've always done, though I am making some adjustments in my life to get rid of some of the worst repetitive mouse work that I have to do. I'm going to continue switching back and forth between right and left hand for the mouse depending on which hand hurts less and I'm also going to be using the dictation program as often as possible when it comes to typing. After so much practice, I'm getting much better at using it and it's nice to have it as an additional option on days (like right now) when my hands feel awful, but there's lots of work to do.

There were so many delays and long waits for appointments and insurance clearance and other things throughout this process that slowed it down. It's somewhat insane that an issue that started the end of June would only get an answer near the end of November but, at the same time, now knowing the big picture, I guess it's appropriate that we finally got a diagnosis days before Thanksgiving. It feels like a message not to take anything for granted and to be thankful for what you have while you have it.

(It occurs to me as I reread this that I should probably be looking at this in terms of, "Wow! Even with all my hand issues, I still managed to meet my write goal! How awesome I?" Instead of "if I managed to meet my write goal with busted hands, I should've made a harder write goal." This must be that "you are too hard on yourself" thing everyone keeps telling me about. Must work on this.)

Even though I met my goal, I'm still going to keep writing, obviously. When we get to the end of the year, we'll take a look at the final count and I'll show you some of the insane graphs I made to track my progress and work habits. I've also started planning an even more insane spreadsheet for next year's goal.

I've been so busy with NaNoWriMo that I wasn't even paying attention to my yearly write goal so when I put my word count into the spreadsheet today it was a nice little surprise to see that I passed it.

I'm actually hoping to finish NaNoWriMo before we leave for Thanksgiving break on Wednesday just so there's one less thing on my plate when the holiday retail season kicks into overdrive but I may leave myself a few words to do at the very end. Just keep things interesting.

Here's wishing you and yours a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday (assuming you celebrate it)!

You may also enjoy these related posts. . .

No related posts.

The Offsite Recap for November 22, 2010

eBay nags sellers to ship items they haven't been paid for yet
At 8:15 AM Saturday morning, I get this email from eBay: Yeah, I sold my old Sony Discman for $15. Don't judge. In this email, eBay is nagging me to ship out my item that very day (in this case yesterday, November 20th). I got this and panicked a little. I always get stuff out [...]

Jim Cummings News: Week in Review November 20, 2010
Jim Cummings plays Wart & Fat Cat in… Jim Cummings stars as the snowman in… Word on the street is that Jim Cummings… rt @DaveOshry I will look for any excuse… RT @Macaluso They should just have Jim… Tags: Jim Cummings

Being "that guy" (the My Little Pony geek that needs to correct every detail you see online)
A few days ago, a few of us were chatting on our Facebook page about this blog post. It's mostly a very funny article that rips on Teddy Ruxpin, Care Bears, Inspector Gadget and more and culminates in a bit about My Little Pony. The post specifically talks about "Rescue At Midnight Castle" aka "Firefly's [...]

Jim Cummings News: Week in Review November 13, 2010
Hear Jim Cummings in the new Winnie the… "When I was a child, I actually had… A cappella versions of some of your… First Look at the new Winnie the Pooh… FYI, Facebook doesn't notify me if you… rt @DaveOshry Just read a top 10 game… Tags: Jim Cummings

Jimmy Kimmel's National UnFriend Day is November 17, 2010 (the moral dilemma)
Jimmy Kimmel, friend to the Muppets, (which is actually how I judge celebrities as worth my attention or not) is starting a movement mostly for the sake of comedy called NUD or National UnFriend Day. I'll let him tell you about it himself: I understand that this is largely a joke and yet… I like [...]

eBay Partner Network offers additional incentives for referrals during the holidays (Good news for bloggers & sellers)
(Writing this blog post has been on my To Do List since the end of Oct and I kept forgetting to write about it. Sorry! Senility, it can apparently happen to young people.) The eBay Partner Network (who I make fun of constantly despite the fact that I actually really like this program) came up [...]

How far in advance of the holidays should I contact an eBay Trading Assistant to sell my stuff?
How far in advance of the holidays should I contact an eBay Trading Assistant to sell my stuff? You have holiday related items that you're looking to find someone to sell for you. Maybe it's Christmas ornaments, collectible menorahs, holiday Barbies or pieces of a holiday village. You know they'll sell better if you sell [...]



You may also enjoy these related posts. . .

The Offsite Recap September 13, 2010
The Offsite Recap for September 20, 2010
The Offsite Recap for October 4, 2010

Small RSS & email subscription option change here at HillaryDePiano.com

Faithful readers,

Those of you that have been around for the long haul know that HillaryDePiano.com and my blog (Unpublishable Pennings) used to be totally separate pages with separate RSS feeds. For a long while now, they have been the same website which is why it was always a bit counter intuitive that there were still two RSS feeds when both syndicated the exact same thing. I'd been meaning to combine them for a very long time but since they both literally had the exact same number of subscribers, there was no obvious choice of which one to delete.

I finally bit the bullet and deleted one. If you are subscribed to the one I deleted, there will be a 30 day period when Feedburner will forward you to the correct feed but, after that, you'll need to correct your subscriptions. I'm sorry to have to do this but I'm sure you appreciate what a pain it's been to maintain two feeds so I'm hoping you will be understanding in this matter and I won't lose half my subscribers.

Here is all you need to do:

If you subscribe to this blog via RSS, make sure that the feed address that you are subscribed to is this one: http://feeds.feedburner.com/hillarydepiano  (If your browser auto-detects RSS feeds, that's the one it will find automatically.)
Prefer email subscriptions? No problem! Subscribe to Hillary DePiano.com by email here.

If you miss the fact that I moved all my eBay chatter off-site, you can also opt to subscribe to The Whine Seller, my ecommerce and business blog, here.

Painless enough, right?

You may also enjoy these related posts. . .

No related posts.