Author Chat: Elizabeth Haynes

What brings you back to NaNoWriMo each year?

There are quite a few reasons. The first is that the NaNoWriMo website quite literally changed my life. My lifetime ambition from about the age of 11 was to be a published writer, and that would never have happened had someone not given me permission to devote a whole month to writing.

Taking my loyalty and gratitude aside, it’s still the only way I know how to write. I’m contracted to write novels now, I’ve tried writing them at various times of the year, and it just doesn’t work for me. So I have to use NaNoWriMo every year to draft as much as I can of the next book, and then spend the rest of the year finishing it off and editing it.

What tools do you use for NaNoWriMo?

• I write on a Toshiba laptop at home, and a Samsung netbook when I’m out at write-ins.
• Last year was the first novel I wrote entirely using Scrivener.
• I save everything to Dropbox so I can access my work from multiple devices.
• I usually formulate a playlist every November using Spotify.
• I usually take part in Word Wars via Twitter when I’m not at a write in, and if I’m desperate I’ll use Dr Wicked’s Write or Die.
• I use a spreadsheet that my husband created to keep track of my daily word count.

This year I’ve also started putting together boards on Pinterest for inspiration for each book, and I’ll sometimes copy pictures across to Scrivener if I find an image that works particularly well for a character.

How are you planning to use Aeon Timeline?

I’ve used it to plot out last year’s novel, to make sure that everything happens in the right order and that I’ve got people’s ages right. I can’t tell you how much this has helped; as well as being confident that I’m getting things in the right order, it has given me a visual insight into what scenes are still ‘missing’.

This year, I’ll be adding my scenes into Aeon Timeline as I write them (and wishing every day that Scrivener 2.0 was out so that I could sync to Aeon Timeline automatically, but oh well), so that plot conflicts will make themselves obvious as I’m doing it. No longer will I have to guess if it’s Tuesday or Wednesday. My characters won’t be 23 on page five and mysteriously 27 three days later on page thirty.

In fact I’m almost looking forward to the editing process this time. I can imagine that my copy editor is going to be immensely pleased and relieved.

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

I’m still experimenting with this a bit.

I have a ‘Global’ story arc which seems to have the main investigation in it (even though I created an ‘investigation’ arc). I have an arc called ‘Abduction’ which is my past narrative – this takes place ten years ago. I have a separate arc for my main character’s relationship woes. I also have a ‘backstory’ arc where I have put all my characters’ dates of birth and other dates that aren’t strictly relevant to the main story, such as when my main character started school – so I know she was in Year 8 when she was abducted.

I’m still not sure if this is the most helpful way for me to break things up – for example when an event seems to overlap between two arcs. But for now it’s working.