Author Chat: Jenna Winters

Today's author chat is with Jenna Winters, who thinks that writing 50,000 words is too easy and is aiming for double that instead. I will follow up with Jenna midway through November to see just how realistic the target has become.

We would love to hear from other WriMos who would like to participate in an author chat. We welcome everyone, old hands and first timers alike.

Matt Tobin
Aeon Timeline Developer

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Jenna Winters has been writing since she was seven. Although she has a fondness for books, she enjoys writing things of every kind; from poems to songs to scripts. She looks forward to NaNoWriMo every year like a challenge and likes to spend every month that isn't November gearing up in anticipation. She has participated in NaNo for six years and looks to keep doing it for as long as she writes.

How many years have you participated in NaNoWriMo?

I have participated in NaNoWriMo six years, 2013 being my seventh. I did the YWP for two years and the adult NaNoWriMo for four. I've won four out of the six, but hope to make it five including this year.

What are you writing for NaNoWriMo this year?

This year I'm writing a fantasy novel called Ash and Blood where I'm attempting to weave together up to six different character stories by chapter. It's the first year in a while that I'll be writing (hardcore) fantasy, as I've been working on a dystopian novel for the past two years. I'm setting myself up for a challenge: 100,000 words!

What brings you back to NaNoWriMo each year?

NaNoWriMo helps me to write. I'm a very easily distracted person and I find that it's harder for me to stay concentrated on a project at just any other day during the year. During NaNoWriMo, I've found that I can stick with my goals and finish my books because of the challenge. And with such a supportive and helpful community, who wouldn't want to keep coming?

Describe your writing environment

I have: A Macbook for writing (helps if I'm on the go. Obstacles usually pop up at the last minute.), my trusty Scrivener (this will be my second year using it and I ADORE it), Aeon Timeline (this is my first year using Aeon, but it's already become invaluable to keeping my events straight in my novel), RainyMood (rain is always applicable and it helps with canceling out the noise in my environment), candy (it's for goal rewarding, I swear), and iTunes (music is an essential to the writing process. I make a playlist for each novel I write with fitting music so I can get in the mood to write my book at anytime).

What attracted you to using Aeon Timeline for NaNoWriMo?

I was browsing through the Special Offers and (I love looking at the software offers. I'm a software junkie.) I saw Aeon Timeline. Now, I've never really been one for plotting out events in such great detail that I would require a timeline. But I've been working on the same novel for the past two years and haven't done anything as in-depth as a fantasy for quite a long time. Deciding to get back into my mojo, I plucked one of the many fantasy ideas rattling around it my head. It soon expanded to contain five-to-six main protagonists and each had their own backstories and future stories to tell. I'm a lousy time-liner myself (from the minimal times I have attempted to make one) and they usually end up with maybe one or two events before I give up completely. When I saw Aeon Timeline, I was intrigued. A software that could basically do all the sorting and rearranging for me? I got the trial and have been hooked ever since. It's become invaluable to my plotting!

What advantage are you hoping to get from Aeon Timeline this year?

Since I have multiple characters with story events that coincide at various times, I'm hoping Aeon Timeline will keep me organized. I'm a scatterbrain and get lost on the path of creativity far more than I care to mention. I hope that Aeon will keep me whipped into shape with events (as some of them NEED to happen at certain times in order for other events to fall into place) so that I can write without stopping.

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

For my story, I have five/six main characters that each get their own Point of Views and, thusly, their own chapters. I give each crucial character their own Arc and use that to plot out the events that happen (past or present). Using Aeon Timeline's custom calendar feature, I've created a fantasy calendar (I named my own days and months!!!) to go with my novel that includes two eras, Stone and Gold. Gold is present, Stone is past. Using another Arc (titled History), I lay out important backstory, including the timelines of essential wars and the generation of kings in the Stone Era, and present events that happen to my characters in the Gold Era. I use the default Arc, Global, to plot events that happen to the whole world (like a global famine or a troll hoard from the mountains), so that I can make sure they appropriately affect my MCs. Then, using the Entities feature, I create one for every character in my novel and connect them to the events that they take part in (or even observe, using the Observer marker).

What are you hoping to see added to Aeon Timeline in the future?

The ability to drag and rearrange events without changing their times. Sometimes I have three events that fall one right after the other (not using the Time feature) and Aeon Timeline places them in the wrong order without letting me rearrange them. I resort to having to use the Time feature to place them minutes after the other so Aeon orders them correctly. The ability to edit my calendar dates and times inside one of my existing project. I had to restart my calendar three times because my scatterbrained self didn't set up the Eras properly and I couldn't edit that in-timeline, leaving me to start again.

[MT: You can edit month and era names, but actually changing month lengths or adding eras could potentially cause some existing events to have invalid dates.]

And finally, can you share a screenshot of your timeline?

Thank you

My thanks again to Jenna for participating in an author chat.

I will post another Author Chat shortly - why not volunteer and it could be you!

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