"Dig deeper. Show up. Do the work."

Dana Elmendorf on publishing in 2 genres after 40....

VITAL STATS:

Your age when your first novel published, and the title of that novel: 44, South of Sunshine (YA debut)

Your age now: 51, In the Hour of Crows (Adult debut)

How many novels you published to date: 2

What’s your next novel and its pub date if you have it: Stay tuned, as I hope to share news for 2025 soon!

INTERVIEW:

1. How many novels did you complete before the one that became your first published novel?

My YA debut, South of Sunshine (2016), was the fifth book I had written. I had no idea how to write a book. Nor did I ever expect to be an author. But in December 2008, I saw a little movie called Twilight. (Gah! Dear reader, don’t judge me.) I loved the movie, devoured the books, and when I learned Stephenie Meyer was a stay at home mom, I thought maybe I could write a book, too. So I taught myself how to write, by doing it wrong four times first. But I got better after each book, and eventually figured out how to write. Since my first published novel, I’ve written five more books. Of those, only two went on submission to publishers. And of those two, only one of them was sold, which is my adult debut In the Hour of Crows. (And for the record, that book was re-written from scratch 3 times!)

2. What kinds of jobs did you have to support yourself while you wrote? Are you still doing one of them?

I was fortunate enough to be a stay at home mom for many years. My husband had a great job that supported our family. When I wasn’t raising my boys, I spent a lot of time volunteering for the PTA and signing up to be the team mom for sports. Essentially I did the mom thing to the nth degree, and my writing always came last. But as the boys grew up and needed me less, I wrote more. Now they are 19 and 23, and they haven’t needed me for quite a few years, so writing has become my full time job.

3. What was the writing routine in which you wrote the novel that became your first published? How long did it take to write that book?

As a mother of two busy boys, you learn pretty quickly how to write in the cracks of time you’re given. So I wrote during naptime. In the carpool line at school. At the kid’s practice. In the evenings after everyone went to bed. At the crack of dawn before everyone woke. I became a seasonal writer. I knew it was impossible to write during the summer, so I didn’t. Nor was I able to write from Thanksgiving until the first of the new year. But the rest of year, I wrote every chance I could. Today, now that my children are grown, my writing routine is structured like an 8am-5pm job…except more like 4am-4pm since I’m an early bird.

I have never written a novel the same way twice. The first unpublished book I ever wrote, took me an entire year to draft, never revised. The first novel I had published, I wrote in 45 days, but it took me six months to revise. The adult debut I have coming out in June took me three years to write and three complete rewrites. The novel I’m working on now will be eight months start to finish by the time I’m done. Every book speaks to me differently. Every book takes its own path. I just do my best to listen and follow.

4. What was your darkest moment before selling your first novel?

Since I started writing in 2009, my darkest moment was not before my 2016 YA debut, but many years later. In December 2022, after many shelved manuscripts and no other books published, my second agent dumped me three days before Christmas. I had sent her my upcoming adult debut, In the Hour of Crows. She read the book and decided it wasn’t for her, plus she informed me that she no longer represented YA (at the time it was a YA novel) or magic realism/fantasy type books. To say I was crushed would be an understatement. It put a dark cloud over my holiday. But at the start of the new year, I decided I was done writing YA. So I made the decision to rewrite the book, from scratch, for the third time. Later that year I snagged my third agent with a re-written In the Hour of Crows, and we sold it at auction to a big publisher for six figures. It’s what you do with your darkest moment that matters most. I used it as fuel to write something amazing that no one would ever say no to me again.

5. What advice about writing helps you stick with it?

There’s not one, end-all-be-all piece of advice that helped me stick to it. But it’s a collection of advice that I rotate in the cycle depending on what I need to keep going. If you want it bad enough, you’ll make time for it. This book isn’t going to write itself. You can’t revise words that aren’t written. Dig deeper. Show up. Do the work. Trust the timing of your life. Just keep moving forward.

6. What is your favorite part about the writing life?

The shiny new idea. There’s no better feeling than the spark of a new idea that gets you excited to write. As a pantser, the start of a new story I feel the most free, the most creative. All the words flow easy and fast, and taste delicious to write. Eventually I collide with the dreaded middle and have to actually figure out what I’m doing. But that beginning, that’s the sweet spot of writing for me.

Thank you, Dana! And my own debut was my SIXTH fully written novel. I love that you revealed that South of Sunshine was your fifth - people need to know this kind of thing! Especially as they are making the difficult decision to put that first (second, third, fourth…) manuscript in the drawer. It can still happen!