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.  

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{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.

To Everything There is a Season: Autumn

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.            --Stanley Horowitz

To many people, autumn is springtime’s ugly, older sister. While spring is all things beautiful and new, autumn is a fading away, a death. But to this farm wife, autumn is so much more. And, like He is always faithful to do, God teaches me lessons in the fall. Lessons about life and lessons about writing. Here are a few.

Photo credit: Igor Spanholi

Celebration: For a farm family, harvest is evidence of hard work, sweat, and even tears. Proof of weeks spent sowing, tending, and nurturing tiny seeds, tender sprouts, and towers plants. Fall is a time of celebration. And for writers, those oft-solitary creatures, harvest is a time to answer the question, “What do you do all day?” It is proof of the countless hours, days, and sometimes years, spent rear-in-chair checking facts, turning phrases, and tending the stories of our hearts.

Community: Harvest on the farm is a time of communal busyness. The days stretch from early morning’s light to hours past sundown. Extra hands hire on and even the littlest member of the family pitches in and helps out. For writers, that final push to see our work in print involves lots to do. Marketing, negotiations, and social networking keep us immersed in self-promotion from the time our eyes open to the time our head hits the pillow. Our family might need to sacrifice during our harvest time and additional folks like influencers, agents, and editors come alongside to help us  finish strong.

Continuation: Fall isn’t just about endings. Each year as we bring in the harvest, almost immediately, preparations begin for the next growing season. Fertilizer is applied and tractors work the ground, ripping and enriching it in preparation for the next crop. Seed is ordered and plans are made based on predictions and market research. For the writer, our work doesn’t end with submission or publication. New article or story ideas rattle around in our brain and maybe on our storyboard. Plotting begins for the next book or series based on hot topics,  whispers of coming trends, or the passions in our hearts.

If you find yourself in the harvest season of your current project, let us know so we can celebrate with you. If you are in another season, let this be your encouragement that one day you will reap the benefits of all the time, energy, and passion you sow into your writing.

 Read the companion post, To Everything There is a Season: Spring.

Nikki Studebaker Barcus

Thankfully ...

I have a quiet moment now that the kids are in bed. The brotherly sock war has ceased; the dog has quit chasing the cat and we got her out of the Christmas tree; and my first coat of black paint is drying on a rock being transformed into a lump of coal for an especially obnoxious someone.

This will be my last blog post of 2010. For us it has been a whirlwind year. I wrote earlier that I had started a new job in quality control at a local factory. That was the most overwhelming change, as far as exhaustion and culture shock. I thought I would add to my vocabulary but a lot of my co-workers use one or two words like multi-purpose tools: as a verb, noun, adjective, adverb, interjection, etc. I kind of have to laugh. Mostly nice people with some rough edges.

Exhaustion took a toll on my writing. Many nights I would open the file of my WIP and write just a few sentences, just enough to see that it was updated that day, and a few more words added.

However, I am grateful to God for a job; good health; healthy family; a good year on the farm but most of all for watching over us. He watches over our physical health but also over His plans for us (Jeremiah 29:11).

The Lord has a plan for my growth; my family's development; the farm; our jobs; and my writing. I want to keep plugging away at it and trusting Him to see the big picture and get me there from here.

Random Thankfulness

Yes, you're right of course. Thanksgiving Day is over for another year. Now, we're catapulting toward Christmas. Black Friday has faded to a dingy gray by now.

Someone on the Christian radio station I listen to said, "Thanksgiving is Christmas without the guilt." I like that. So if you'll extend to me a small portion of grace, I want to linger around Thanksgiving for a bit, listing a few random things for which I'm . . . grateful.

I'm thankful for Jerry Spinelli. One of my junior high English classes just finished reading Maniac Magee. We loved it. Spinelli is the master of lists, a.k.a. catalogues. (Until I read MM, I thought Walt Whitman held that title.) Spinelli will make a general statement, one that would cause a critique partner to scream, "Show! Don't tell!" Then he slaps down eight or ten short, descriptive sentence fragments to paint in the sensory details. And what the man does with with extended metaphors is phenomenal. Some of those run for two or three paragraphs. As I taught novel structure and literary devices, Spinelli taught me.

I'm thankful for God's providence. When I resigned from classroom teaching to go full-time as a storyteller, I had no intention of ever serving in that capacity again. Just over a month ago, I was offered, and accepted, a teaching position at a Christian school. My first reaction was, "Hooray!" My second was, "How am I to finish my manuscript for The Second Cellar in time to get it to the agent who [at the ACFW conference] asked to see the full in six months [from conference]?" My third was, "Isn't that just like You, Lord, to plop me down smack-dab in the middle of a bunch of wonderful junior-high kids--my target audience?" Five days a week I'm surrounded by their vivacity, their chatter, and their adolescent angst. It's amazing. And I'm thankful.

I'm thankful for lots of dirty dishes on holy-days. They signify much. Family. The sound of adult voices, each with its own cadence, lost in conversation, trying to hear and be heard above the cacophony of the little cousins giggling and chasing each other through the house, up the stairs, and back again. Family. Gathered around the table. Holding hands and praying, while trying to ignore the mingled fragrance of roasted turkey, sage-and-onion dressing, assorted pies, some specialty coffee, and a caramel-scented candle. Family. Reciting a litany of ingredients for the corn casserole, the cranberry relish, Gran'ma's oyster dressing, the absolute best pie-crust recipe known to man. Family. Listening to the cousins sing, "We Gather Together," "For the Beauty of the Earth," and "Over the River and Through the Woods." Family. God's family. Enjoying a dress rehearsal for the coming Heavenly Feast where the King of Kings will sit at the head of the table. Where we won't have to worry about the dirty dishes. As Maniac Magee would say, "Amen."

by Sharon Kirk Clifton
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