Author Chat: Amelia Lynn

What are you writing for NaNoWriMo this year?

This year I'm a rebel. The story I truly want to tell isn't ready, primarily because I just got my hands on, and learned to adapt, the various software solutions I needed to track a series of the magnitude that I am trying to write. Instead of telling the story, I've decided to continue to world-build throughout NaNoWriMo, with spurts of creative outbursts flooding into my novel. Unfortunately, this means I probably won't be able to hit 50k this year, but I feel that what I will accomplish will be far more satisfying than trying to force out a story that isn't ready.

The first story I'm working on is a Dark Fantasy/SciFi series that will be at least six books long, the first of which is focused on a young girl who told a lie as child that began a chain of events now leading to an apocalyptic finale. The second is a much lighter story, about an imaginary friend who's interaction with a child leads the locals to believe the boy is mentally unstable, and the insanity that ensues as he tries find a way to return the boy to his home, while pursuing his career as an imaginary friend.

What tools do you use for NaNoWriMo?

Copious amounts of warm beverage, preferably with unsafe levels of caffeine, as much sugar as I can handle without shaking too hard to type or scribble, my laptop, and a notebook and pen for when the power outlet defeats me. What more could a writer want?

Seriously though, my laptop is my world during NaNoWriMo, and it's brimming with programs that can help me on my path. I use:

• Scrivener: to create and alter my outline, and draft my novel.
• Aeon Timeline: to keep up with every character at all times within my story, and to see events and backstory at a glance. Eventually it will be connected directly to Scrivener for Windows, and life will be complete. Meanwhile, I just toggle between them.
• Liquid Story Binder, which is where I built my massive story binder. The vast array of useful tools and organization options within the program is insanely useful, but extremely distracting, so I'm actually in the process of transferring it all to Scrivener, which I find less distracting and just as powerful.
• Scapple for when nothing but a good old fashion whiteboard-style space is good enough.
• YouTube to keep me connected to writing classes and seminars that I like to review when I get in a rut, as well as a cornucopia of music and videos when I need to set a mood.
• Open Office's Calc and a lovely Word Tracker Spreadsheet from Svenja Liv to keep my progress rolling.
• TreeSheets, for when nothing but a spreadsheet will do. I've only just begun experimenting with TreeSheets thanks to a lovely recommendation here at NaNoWriMo, and I find it absolutely fascinating.
• Freedom to keep my word count out of the forum and on the paper. Also a recommendation I ran into on NaNoWriMo.
• Last but not least, Dropbox. If you don't have it, or one of it's competitors, get it. Don't be the victim of hard drive corruption mid-November. Have a backup of your backup of your backup, and store them all over the place.

How are you using arcs to break up your timeline events?

In my series, I have arcs for backstory (events that happened before the story), background events (events happening off the pages of the book), the primary plot, and any major subplots. I generally am working with four to ten arcs at a time.

In my secondary book, the main two characters are a writer and an imaginary friend, and there are three different worlds/realities in which the story runs simultaneously. I have an arch for each world rather than for subplots and background events, so I can track what is happening in what reality. The story is chaotic at best and fast paced, so it's extremely useful to be able to see the events that are all unfolding at once in different locations to the same people.