Tammi (Gracie) asked Jennifer Ashley:

I have been writing little stories since I was in high school. Yet thinking about putting my ideas down and actually writing scare me. How do you get all your thoughts in once place to write your books? Do you use a writing program like Scrivener or something else?

Jennifer Ashley Another writing-related Q, great! The answer is, I don't get all my thoughts into one place. My thoughts are everywhere. I am completely disorganized, and I make up the bulk of the books as I write them. What I do is have in my head one scene, or the hero's backstory, or the h/h meeting. I write this out in a file and save it, even if I'm not ready to sit down and write the whole book. If bits and pieces occur to me in the meantime, I make a note and keep it with the scene or two I've already written.

I used to do all this in MS Word, in separate files with a folder for each book (and each series has a folder containing all books in the series). Now I use Scrivener, which does the same thing, but much more conveniently! Everything goes in one Scrivener file, but my main story is in the "draft" portion and the notes, maps, character name lists, and anything else I've collected for that book in the "Research" area. The great thing about Scrivener is that notes, maps, historical material, whatever I need for the next book in the series can be dragged and dropped into the scriv file for the next book! I love it!

I've bcome a Scrivener convert...can you tell? I do compile and MS Word doc of the main story every day and back it up, though, just in case. Having everything in one file makes me nervous. Scrivener does great backups on its own, but I like to have a backup of the whole book in my fist.

So, the big answer is, learn by doing. I learned to write books by simply writing them. I threw away a lot of stuff. But don't be afraid to not have it turn out right the first time. That's what revisions are for. My first drafts are a complete mess. By the time I turn in the book (4th or 5th draft), it's where it should be.

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