When it’s Time Not to Write by Dawn Crandall

My writing career started out a bit on the crazy side.

First of all, the main reason I’d decided to finally write the novel I’d always wanted to write (at the age of 32), was because I couldn’t seem to get pregnant. So I wrote that book, and then got an agent. And then I wrote another book. Started getting recognition from big name (unpublished) writing contests. Then started book three. It might seem like three years for all that to happen would feel like a blessing, but all I could think about was getting traditionally published. No more babies on the brain. They have been replaced by my two manuscripts and all of the ones in my heart I needed to write.

And then I got pregnant. And six months later, I got my three book contract. So I had two books release in 2014, and had a baby. Had another book release in 2015, and got pregnant again. Wrote another book while pregnant, had a baby and that book release in 2016. We also moved into a fixer-upper farmhouse which my husband basically had to devote all of his spare time to. And my laptop died the same day my last book released.

By the middle of 2016, I was beginning to have a revelation.

Novel writing, being a stay-at-home-mom for multiple babies, having ADD, a fixer upper house and dead laptop was a pretty awful mix.

Most of these things were blessings, of course, but I felt like God was making it impossible for me to write.

It literally was becoming impossible. And it sucked.

But I kept fighting it. Getting mad, because it wasn’t fair. I was an author now. I needed to write books!

My publisher wanted another book by the end of 2016. But I couldn’t.

And everyone kept saying the same things—just love your baby boys, they’ll only be this little for a short time.

So, finally, I did. It only took a few months of fighting with God about it, but I did let it go. I had to. It was either that or continue to drive myself crazy wishing I had time to even think about another story to write.

I basically gave up writing for a year. Right in the middle of books releasing and my publisher and readers wanting more. But you know what? A year later, I don’t regret it.

I was sane again. I brainstormed up ideas in my very limited spare time, but I didn’t write. And now, with a 4 1/2 year old and 2 year old, it’s easier, though I had to learn a completely new way of writing in little spurts (which I am still far from mastering!).

Now that my break is over, I have another release coming out in October! Enchanting Nicholette is a short story to finish my Everstone Chronicles series. It’s been 2 years since the release of my last book, but now that I’m right in the middle of getting back into things, my break doesn’t seem to have been as bad as I’d thought it would be. I’ve found that my readers have been waiting patiently and are getting excited about reading something new from me. I’m so glad I took a break, because really—my kids are more important than my popularity and effiency as an author. And readers and author friends told me left and right during the last two years how they admired my decision. It was hard. It was so hard! But it was worth everything from the last year being so much better than if I hadn’t.

~~~~~~

Here’s more about Enchanting Nicholette!

Young, widowed, and newly out of mourning, Nicholette Everstone is an heiress yearning to know true love. She’d been fortunate her parents had arranged for her to marry her loving late husband, but the marriage ended tragically on her wedding day. Bereft and alone, she returns home to Boston after being away for two years, to find there’s someone new to her set of friends and family she can’t help but fall for. But when she learns of the danger and sacrifices this man takes on for the safety of others, will her heart be strong enough to keep her fears of “what if” at bay?

Enchanting Nicholette will be available October 9, 2018 wherever books are sold.



Dawn Crandall’s debut Gilded Age Victorian romance, The Hesitant Heiress, was a 2015 ACFW Carol award finalist in the debut category and received the 2015 Gayle Wilson Award of Excellence, the 2015 Write Touch Reader's Choice Award and the 2015 Romancing the Novel Reader's Choice Award. Her follow-up novel, The Bound Heart, received the 2016 Laurel Award from Clash of the Titles.

Dawn earned a BA in Christian Education from Taylor University. She’s been balancing books and babies lately as her two sons were both born as the first four books of her popular Everstone Chronicles series were being released from Whitaker House between 2014 and 2016. Dawn lives with her husband and two young sons on a hobby farm in her hometown in northeast Indiana. More at www.dawncrandall.blogspot.com.

Waiting by Dawn Crandall

Hi, Terri here. I’m thrilled to welcome my friend, Dawn Crandall, to Seriously Write today. Dawn is a 2015 Carol Finalist for her debut novel The Hesitant Heiress. If you haven’t read Dawn’s books I encourage you to give one a try. They are fantastic.

Dawn Crandall

****

People who don’t know me might not realize that I signed my three book contract with Whitaker House) when I was (finally) six months pregnant with my first child. What they also wouldn’t know is that I’d waited twice as long to have a baby than to get published, and that they both, unfortunately, happened to come about at the same time.

Yes, unfortunately.

Or at least, that’s what I thought most of the last year as I was busier than I’d ever been in my life, launching my three eBook series from Whitaker House—all within my son’s first year of life. But now, as the first year of my author career comes to a close and the three books of my Everstone Chronicles series release as paperbacks this Fall, I’ve come to realize that maybe I should have been more trusting with my God-scheduled life.

One proposal. One chance. That’s all I had because I’d written my three book series out completely.

Even as I did so, I knew it seemed unlikely that my one proposal would make it through the “barrier” every yet-to-be-published author wants to break through. Especially when publishing house after publishing house—some which were quite interested in my manuscript—either closed their fiction line or merged with another publishing company. I waited two long years from the day I signed the contract with my agent until she informed me of the book contract offer. I had come to the point of wanting nothing more than to see my name in print, to the point that I’d completely given up on having children because I thought I knew what God wanted to do with me. It certainly wasn’t that He wanted me to be a mom. So what else was there? But then it kept not happening. Month after month. Year after year. And yeah, there were times I wanted to give up and never write another word.

Are you in this place of waiting? Are you waiting for the call from an agent—for representation or news of a book contract from a dream publisher? Hoping that the next stage in your writing career will be IT?

Well, let me urge you to enjoy whatever time you have at each stage… because there is no IT this side of heaven. No matter where you are in your writing journey, there will always be something more your heart yearns for. And yeah, you might feel down and discouraged because you don’t have some higher-up’s stamp of approval for everyone to see, and you might even feel that God must not be paying attention or doesn’t want to see your manuscripts published, but that doesn’t change the fact that He’s doing exactly what He sees as best for your life right now.

I can see this now that it’s all been laid out behind me in His will for my life. Can you see the ways He’s worked in the waiting periods of your own life?

Trust Him. Continue to trust Him. Are you writing for Him or for fame, recognition and attention? I know it’s a struggle, but when it’s all said and done, whatever we do, it should be for the Lord. No matter what stage of the journey we’re waiting in.

This was originally posted August 27, 2015 on the www.acfw.com blog.

Amazon

Dawn Crandall is the author of the award winning series, The Everstone Chronicles: The Hesitant Heiress, The Bound Heart and The Captive Imposter which will all three release in paperback from Whitaker House this fall. She is a graduate of Taylor University with a degree in Christian Education, and is represented by Joyce Hart of Hartline Literary. She is a member of Romance Writers of America, American Christian Fiction Writers, secretary for the Indiana ACFW Chapter (Hoosier Ink), and associate member of the Great Lakes ACFW Chapter. can be found online at www.dawncrandall.blogspot.com and www.facebook.com/dawncrandallwritesfirst.

Self Editing With a Kindle by Dawn Crandall

How do you edit your manuscript? Today, author Dawn Crandall gives us a heads-up for editing that doesn't require printing out a ream of paper to discover each and every mistake. -- Sandy

Dawn: Did you know there’s a way to self-edit your WIP without using ink or paper? 

Not that I invented this or anything, but I did discover this on my own a few years ago.

I’d heard once that when we self-edit, critique a manuscript on only a computer screen, we miss about 30% of the mistakes and changes we would have otherwise caught by either printing it out…. or reading it on a device in which you couldn’t simply make an easy fix. I don’t know where this info came from originally, but I have found it to be 100% true. 

When I bought an iPad mini in place of my Kindle keyboard, I started reading through my chapter documents on my Kindle App as I wrote them, instead of printing, and printing, and printing them out.

Before I write a book, I make a pretty extensive outline made up of scenes I already have in mind with characters I’ve been thinking of and getting to know for at least a few weeks, and then sometimes I write a three-page synopsis. Once that’s finished, I begin writing chapter one. However, before moving on to chapter two, I go about editing my chapter between five and ten times on my Kindle, or however many times it takes to get to the point that I don’t want to change anything.

After writing about a third of the novel, I send it to my critique partner. After I get it back and administer her edits, I read through the chapters again on my Kindle. Only then would I move on to write the second third of the book, and so on.    

As you can see from the photo to the left, this is what this article looks like on the Kindle app. There’s the option of highlighting in four different colors, as well as taking any number of notes you want. The notes can be as longs as you want and can be copied and pasted into another app/email on the iPad.

Here is a breakdown of how I use the colors: 

• Pink: I want to move a sentence to another paragraph.

• Blue: I need to make sure the details of a sentence match where the subject is brought up elsewhere.

• Yellow: I want to change wording.

• Orange: DELETE!!!

  

Okay, so now that I have your attention, would you like to know how this all happens? 

1) Set up your Kindle or Kindle app with your Amazon account. Amazon will make an email for your kindle. It will most likely use your standard email account’s name but change the handle to @kindle.com. You can look up what the email is both on your device and online at your Amazon.com account. 

2) You’ll need to go to your Amazon.com My Kindle account. Under the “Digital Content” section you’ll need to click on Manage Your Kindle. 

3) Along the left side of the screen will be a list of options, and you’ll need to click Personal Document Settings. 

4) Scroll down to the end of the website to where it says Approved Personal Document Email List and add the personal email that you’ll send the document from on your computer. Remember, if you plan to have any of your friends or critique partners email you their documents, you’ll need to add their email to this list as well.

5) TO SEND: Go to your email account. Type in your Kindle email address, attach the document file you want to read or edit and push send. Easy. :)

I’ve never considered myself a very technologically-advanced person, but once I realized the possibilities of what the Kindle App could do to help with my writing career, I worked hard until I figured it out. I usually try to live by this one-chapter-at-a-time process of going over my manuscripts from my iPad now (basically because I really HATE rough drafts!) and used it to self-edit both The Bound Heart and The Captive Imposter [books #2 and #3].     

Have you tried this method of editing? Do you have your own favorite way to edit?

~~~~~

Dawn Crandall is the author of The Hesitant Heiress, The Bound Heart and the soon to be released [March 1, 2015], The Captive Imposter (all part of The Everstone Chronicles series from Whitaker House). Dawn didn’t begin writing until her husband found out about her long-buried dream of writing a book and encouraged her to quit her job in 2010 to write her debut novel, The Hesitant Heiress. When she signed with her literary agent a year later (go to ACFW!), it didn’t take her long to realize that writing books was what she was made to do.

Apart from writing books, Dawn is also a first-time mom to a precious little boy (born March 2014) and also serves with her husband in a pre-marriage mentor program at their local church in Northeast Indiana. Dawn is a member of the Romance Writers of America, American Christian Fiction Writers, secretary for the Indiana ACFW Chapter, and associate member of the Great Lakes ACFW Chapter.

The Everstone Chronicles is Dawn’s debut series with Whitaker House. All three books composing the series were semifinalists in ACFW’s prestigious Genesis Writing Contest, the third book going on to become a finalist in 2013.



Facebook: facebook.com/DawnCrandallWritesFirst

Book Review Blog: www.APassionforPages.blogspot.com

Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/dawnwritesfirst

Twitter: @dawnwritesfirst / www.twitter.com/dawnwritesfirst

Author Website: www.dawncrandall.blogspot.com

That Time I Had Attention Deficit Disorder, a Newborn Baby and a Three Book Contract ... by Dawn Crandall

Dawn Crandall

Getting anything done effectively while suffering through the scatter-brainlessness of having ADD is a challenge. Organizing things is impossible. Keeping track of upcoming events doesn’t happen. And I often don’t have a very good filtration system when it comes to deciding what needs to and what needs not to be said in most instances. And somehow, through all this…I wrote a book series that Whitaker House Books wanted to publish.

Don’t ask me how. Only God knows. He made it happen… because I can honestly tell you that if I tried to do anything else in the entire world that took such concentration, focused energy and mental organization, it would NEVER happen. And this crazy book writing thing, it’s actually happened three times now. I’m amazed every single time. I can never seem to do the same thing twice the same way… and that goes for writing books too. So far, I’ve done it completely differently each time. I can say that I do try to plot the books out ahead of time first though.

For the most part, I simply collect a bunch of characters, plot situations and conflicts… and somehow they all find their order and become a finished manuscript. It might be that I’m just too distracted by what I’m doing to pay attention to how. I don’t really know. All I do know is that when I wrote The Hesitant Heiress, The Bound Heart and The Captive Imposter. I was completely in the story worlds, in the character of my heroines, and seeing everything from every direction, as well as only from their first person perspectives. I would delve in for giant chunks of time—like for 8-10 hours straight on writing days—and I had tons of fun doing it.

Yeah, so last summer when I was in the midst of hearing some pretty encouraging things from my publisher regarding the three book contract…I finally got pregnant. After seven years of trying. That was longer than I’d been writing, and the main reason I’d started writing in the first place. I’d needed something to do, something to think about besides not having babies. And so, you know—because God “makes everything work together for the good of those who love Him”—having a long wished for baby at the same time as a book contract sounded just PERFECT.

Okay, maybe not. But I have to believe that it’s happened like this for a reason. Is it that God knew I would likely never end up writing a book after I had children since I have ADD? That had been my plan ever since high school. I would marry after college (ha!), have babies right away, and then write books when they went off to school. And I know LOTS of writers (now) who have done just that! But not me!

So, now I have a four month old baby boy and my debut novel is released August 1st! I have a six week blog tour going on through the end of July and all of August, the second (less intense) launch for book #2 in November and then another for book #3 in February! At the beginning of this year, right after I’d signed my book contract, and I was six months pregnant, I didn’t make New Year’s resolutions. Instead, I picked a word for the year, a word I was going to focus on every day. The word TRUST. Because I had to trust that God knew what He was doing when I prepared for what would easily be the busiest year of my life.

Having my books published is a strange thing—especially when my main goal in writing them was for the pure enjoyment of creating something for myself. There are so many questions I still have unanswered, a ton of ways I still need to trust God, especially since all three of the books I’ve written will have been published by this time next year… and I have no idea when I’m supposed to find the time to write for 8-10 hours on any day in the near future.

But I will TRUST the God who has made my days, He who has ordained this most crazy year of my life. He knows what He is doing! And hasn’t He taken me thus far, sadly, on what little faith I’ve had?

Click to Tweet
But I will TRUST the God who has made my days. Click to Tweet.
But I have to believe that it’s happened like this for a reason. Click to Tweet.

About the Author

About The Hesitant Heiress
After being unjustly expelled from the Boston Conservatory of Music, Amaryllis Brigham sees her dreams of founding a music academy disappearing before her very eyes. Now the only way to achieve her goal comes with high stakes for someone set on avoiding men as much as possible: marry within the year to inherit her grandmother’s fortune. Amaryllis reluctantly takes part in her aunt’s society,

The Hesitant Heiress
by Dawn Crandall

intent on getting to the west coast on her own… and without a husband.

Despite her own misgivings, she soon finds herself falling in love with the most unlikely of men, Nathan Everstone, whose father not only had a part in her expulsion, but whose ominous presence has haunted her dreams for a decade since her mother’s tragic death. Nathan turns out to be much more than he seems and everything she never knew she wanted. But just as everything Amaryllis has recently hoped for comes to fruition, it all falls apart when she finds that the real culprit who has been managing her life isn't who she thought at all.

About Dawn Crandall
A graduate of Taylor University with a degree in Christian Education, and a former bookseller at Barnes & Noble, Dawn Crandall didn’t begin writing until 2010 when her husband found out about her long-buried dream of writing a book. Without a doubt about someday becoming published, he let her quit her job in 2010 in order to focus on writing The Hesitant Heiress. It didn’t take her long to realize that writing books was what she was made to do. Dawn is represented by Joyce Hart of Hartline Literary.

Apart from writing books, Dawn is also a first-time mom to a precious little boy (born March 2014) and also serves with her husband in a premarriage mentor program at their local church in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Dawn is a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers, secretary for the Indiana ACFW Chapter (Hoosier Ink), and associate member of the Great Lakes ACFW Chapter.

The Everstone Chronicles is Dawn’s first series with Whitaker House. All three books composing the series were semifinalists in ACFW’s prestigious Genesis Writing Contest, the third book going on to become a finalist in 2013.

CONNECT WITH DAWN
Facebook: facebook.com/DawnCrandallWritesFirst
Book Review Blog: APassionforPages.blogspot.com
GoodReads: www.goodreads.com/dawn_crandall
Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/dawnwritesfirst
Email: dawncrandallwritesfirst@gmail.com
Twitter: @dawnwritesfirst