2014 - A Year of Destiny and Purpose

Dear Fellow Writers,

     2014 looms ahead like a bound book of blank pages waiting to be filled. For some, all that white is paralyzing. Others itch to fill the pages. Still others press the first page flat, prep the pen, and plan. Whatever your style, I encourage you to include God for only he can cause us to get it right. Do you doubt me? Look at 2013 one last time before you file it on the shelf.

     The Book of My Life 2013 is filled with scrawls, inkblots, and scratch outs, as well as exclamation points, underlining, and stars. So is yours. Evaluate it through God’s eyes and you may be surprised. What you marked as failure may have held important God-moments that will help you succeed in your writing life or as a person. The success you did reach may have not been as sweet as you anticipated. Why not? The Bible is filled with men who followed God and knew success, only to become prideful, neglectful of family or driven by accolades.

     As writers, we incorporate our experiences into stories of impact. We describe what we see and feel so that readers identify with us. With written words we define and clarify what escapes others. In effect, we are God’s reporters weaving truth into fiction in such a way that light comes to dark minds.When you look at it like this, every moment has the potential of being a God-moment.

     You have a destiny, a purpose to fulfill. This next year will move you closer to it if you let two truths guide you. They are true whether 2014 is a mountaintop or a desert experience.

1.   God has a plan, a destiny, for you that is good. He tells us straight out in Jeremiah 29:11 “I know the plans I have for you… plans to prosper and not harm you, to give you hope and a future.”

2.   You choose your destiny. This destiny is not assured. It requires a decision to follow Christ’s direction. He gives us freewill, yet invites us to follow him and obtain full joy. “I set before you today life and prosperity or death and destruction…now choose…” Deuteronomy 30:15-19

     The year 2014 will hold surprises. Some will delight you. Some will devastate you. One thing is assured. God is faithful. Listen to him. Each day search for the God moments. Be grateful. Then you will say, “Look what the Lord has done!”

                                                             

Happy New Year! 

May this year be the closest you've ever been to the Lord. Live for him. Write for him. 

              Mary Allen 

The (True!) Joys of Having ADD with Member Blogger Dawn Crandall

Most people aren't very surprised when they find out I have ADD. 

It probably (and hopefully) answers most of their questions as to why I am the way I am. I'm a tad out-going, think differently than almost everyone else I know, I'm a little unfiltered, and a bit talkative.

And do you know what? I thank God everyday that He made me this way. Because of my having ADD, I get to do what I like to do more than anything else in the world. 

WRITE.

I started taking the medication for ADD when I was seventeen years old and a junior in high school. It's true, I needed it pretty badly. I would never would have made it into college, let alone graduate from college, without it. It's rather unfortunate that I didn't learn much in school (like grammar and punctuation--I apologize now for any mistakes you might find in my comma placements!), as I was just scraping by before my junior year, getting my only good grades in the classes or subjects that had anything to do with Art or Creative Writing. But I suppose God had a specific reason for that too. I was also seventeen when I became a Christian, which was the true reason I ended up going to college and majoring in Christian Education.

I stopped taking the medication about thirteen years later. You'd think the medication prescribed to help me pay attention would help me focus on writing a book, right? But alas, no. It did the very opposite. I hadn't thought much about writing at all during those years because I was so entirely focused on everything else. When I did finally stop taking the medication, I realized that it was what had been blocking so much of what any writer needs most! My ability to think outside of what was going on in front of me was literally shut off for all those years. All along, I'd remembered how I had once LOVED writing from as far back as I could remember. It was after reading books like Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell and Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier as a teenager I knew I wanted to create a book someday. 

For the last five and a half years I've been off the medication and spending my time developing my voice and my brand of writing. After figuring out how to hone my "day-dreaming" into actual stories that I wanted to write, it didn't take me very long to figure out that this was what I was made for. I wrote my book and got two agent offers within a week of sending my proposals. I've completed another now, and I am on my third. It's a long waiting game to find out what's going to eventually happen with these books, but I'm happy because I'm writing. And truthfully, I really have never been good at anything else... because drawing doesn't count.  

It's true, I'm a bit scatter-brained. In everyday life, I pretty much need to be told what to do and where to be. But I sure can focus on what interests me... and that is brain-storming plots and writing ultra-complex, involved love stories that teach a multitude of spiritual life-lessons, not only to my main character (which I write in first person point of view), but also the reader.

I'm very much like the kitten (and yes, I love kittens and jump at the chance to use them whenever possible) in this picture, who's, in essence saying, "Who cares what everyone else is looking at or paying attention to? I've already found what I love most... and it's this amazing, green jingle ball!"  

Writing books is my amazing, green jingle ball. There's nothing in the world I would rather be doing than paying attention to the plot of my current Work In Progress.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

{About Dawn Crandall}

(Updated since 2012) Dawn Crandall is the author of The Hesitant Heiress (August 2014), The Bound Heart (November 2014) and The Captive Imposter (February 2015), all part of The Everstone Chronicles series from Whitaker House. A graduate of Taylor University with a degree in Christian Education, and a former bookseller at Barnes & Noble, Dawn 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 traditionally published, he encouraged her to quit working in order to focus on writing. 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 pre-marriage 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.

Using Little Miracles to Create Grand Destiny

     I discovered this tidbit in "Writing the Breakout Novel" by Donald Maass: “Little miracles become our personal myths. What are the little miracles that bring your characters to their moments of grand destiny?...Revisit them in retrospect, and the hand of God will show in your story.”  

     Touch points of God’s presence are memorable. They impact us. They give us hope. They change us. 

     I was pondering this recently while waiting for the release of Kernels of Hope, an anthology of incidents of God's hand in the lives of everyday people (Majesty House). Whether it’s surviving a train wreck or seeing provision through extraordinary means, the message of God’s love and grace is evident.

     Non-believers would call this fate or kismet or perhaps, karma. The point is everyone recognizes we have a place in the universe. Interesting occurrences, whether titled interventions or coincidences, leave their impact. Fictional characters are enhanced when they, too, experience such moments.

     For example, I have an angry believer running from God. She continually makes wrong choices that increase her suffering. One day she finds a cat in desperate circumstances. Because it resists her help, it dies. This mirrors her own fight with the Savior. The revelation changes everything.

     In your current works in progress, do your protagonists come to a moments of truth? Does something happen that causes them to change direction? Does a seemingly inconsequential meeting hold lasting import? What are the “little miracles” that produce “moments of grand destiny”?

     If you don’t have an example from your own work, try using this situation to create a grand destiny: A general call to prayer for a brittle diabetic results in a donated insulin pump. 

     I look forward to seeing God's hand at work in your story ideas.

 Mary Allen lives in the Midwest with her husband and a German Short Hair Pointer. She loves God's Word which never changes and also enjoys playing with words which can be endlessly changed. She writes women's fiction and was La Porte County Poet Laureate from 2010-2011.

Today she rescued a brood of eight panicked ducklings by quacking them to shore. Little Miracle or Grand Destiny? You be the judge.