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.



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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?

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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
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Email: dawncrandallwritesfirst@gmail.com
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