Only a short time ago, I was an IT project manager. My day job had nothing to do with writing historical fiction novels. In fact, I didn’t even enjoy writing and thought it to be one of the most tedious tasks in my job. I’ve written technical documents, reports, and a myriad of emails. When my first story took hold of my imagination, it changed how I viewed writing. Writing time became an escape more immersive than reading or watching a movie. Publishing a book, however, turned out to be a project I had to oversee. I applied my PM skills to publish books on schedule, within my budget, and producing the quality readers expected.

 

Schedule

When you are an indie author, you manage your own schedule. No one sets your deadlines. This lack of accountability is the reason some writers never finish their books. I build a schedule for my writing, editing, and marketing. I meet it by hitting my writing goals each day, editing a certain number of chapters per week, texting my editor to make sure that they are on schedule, or following up with my beta readers to get their comment on time. This means wearing my project manager’s hat, which feels different from a historical fiction author’s hat. Building my schedule and sticking with it keeps me on track to publish books year after year.

 

Decision-making

Managers must make decisions. I heard this line from my first boss when I was still an intern. Not every decision will be the best decision. There will be failures and hard lessons. As an indie author and a solopreneur, I must make all the decisions about my book. What will be the plot of the next story? What image will be on the cover? How many bookmarks should I order? And hundreds more. Analyzing information and making the best decision based on facts is how my PM background feeds my business.

 

Quality Control

Who handles quality control? In the indie world, it’s the author. A self-published author must decide what editors they hire, what desire cover design they can afford, what software they should purchase for formatting, and many other decisions that will affect the quality of the book. There’s a constant balance between creating the perfect book, the schedule, and the budget. Historical fiction readers expect self-published books to match the quality of the large publishing houses. IT PM and an author must know what the customer wants and satisfy their expectations.

 

Learning

I’ve always been an avid learner, and that helped my IT career and writing. As a PM, I maintained a certain number of training hours for my certification. I needed to stay abreast of the ever-changing technology.

My passion for learning serves me well as an author. I schedule time to watch educational videos, travel to author conferences, or attend them virtually, as well as read writing craft books and run a book club to discuss them. The book publishing and marketing change constantly, and technology plays an enormous part in those changes. My old job taught me to stay on my toes.

 

Finding support

As a PM, I needed a team of experts in various areas. Only a handful of them reported to me. Some I met with to seek their advice, ask for their help, or have a casual chat to learn something to help the project. I couldn’t complete a project without my team.

When I transitioned into my author career, I found the writing community to be incredibly supportive. I could not be the author I am now without my tribe. I recommend for aspiring authors to join a writing club, find a Facebook group for writers, or attend an author conference. The connections I’ve made through such events it made me successful in my career. It’s one of the reasons I joined Paper Lantern Writers!

 

 

IT project management and historical fiction may be worlds away, but I made a successful transition. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if I became a writer right after college. I would have been a vastly different author if I hadn’t had the experience of an IT career. Working in IT taught me resilience, attention to detail, timeliness, decision-making, and teamwork.