This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
By Anna Bell
The downside to being a full time
writer (if there is one) is that writing is now my work and therefore my
business. I have to admit that it’s taken me about a year to adjust to treating
it like I would a work project, as I’ve struggled with the question – can you
apply business practices to such a creative endeavour?
I’d initially thought that my writing methods and discipline wouldn’t change when my employment status did. I figured that it would be a case of having more time to write would mean I wrote more. Which is true, it does. But that wasn’t the only thing that has changed.
Working from home alongside my husband is really nice, except he’d ask me things like, how long is it going to take you to edit that book? When are you sending it to your editor? And I’d shrug and say those annoying little quips, just like my mum used to say about dinner, it’ll be done when it’s done. He couldn’t understand how I didn’t set myself deadlines, but why did I need to bother when I had all the time in the world? And I was being creative – surely I didn’t need to put deadlines on that?
But I soon realised, when I studied my bank account each month that this was my life now. If I didn’t write books and self-publish them, then there would be no money in the bank account. Suddenly writing without targets and deadlines seemed like a silly thing to be doing.
It’s also not only my time I needed to manage. Self-publishing a book isn’t a lone venture. I use two editors, four beta readers and a cover designer in the process. It isn’t just my time I’ve got to schedule, it’s everyone else’s time too. Before when I wasn’t depending on my book income for survival, it didn’t matter if a book I put out was a month or two behind schedule – whereas now it does.
I started to think about how I used to project manage in my old job, estimating how long each aspect of the project would take and setting deadlines for each section, and I started to apply that to my novel writing. I now mark out on my calendar the first draft stage (penciling in rough daily word counts targets), I then pencil in deadlines for editing, dates I want to get it sent to editors by and give myself a release date so I can start to plan towards them.
I’ve always planned an order of the books I’ve written, but now I’ve got dates pencilled in next to them. I know when my books need to be written to be sent to my publisher, I know when I need to release books in my self-publishing schedule. Whilst books are being edited, I usually have other little projects planned – plotting future books and research, as well as book promotional work for new releases. It’s like one giant conveyor belt.
It’s taking me some time to reconcile the idea that such a creative endeavour can be project managed. Whilst my deadlines are not fixed in stone and I do run over, I feel a lot more organised.
I guess it’s taken me a while to see writing as a business rather than seeing myself as an artist being creative. What do other authors think? Have you got any project management tips?