When I started writing novels, I thought the hard part would be writing the book.

I was wrong.

Writing is still the heart of what I do, but publishing independently has meant learning a surprising number of completely different jobs. Some of them have become things I genuinely enjoy. Others… I’m still figuring out.

Photography

This one wasn’t entirely new. I’ve spent years behind a camera, and by now it’s less a hobby than a compulsion — I chase clouds, I drag my camera up the Sandias and through the Jemez, and yes, I’m the person photographing her dinner before anyone’s allowed to eat it. If it holds light well, I’ve probably stopped to shoot it.

That habit turned out to be more useful than I ever expected. One of my favorite parts of this journey has been watching landscapes I’ve captured out on the trail become part of my characters’ worlds — a ridgeline I stood on for twenty minutes waiting for the right cloud becomes the ridgeline a character is standing on too. The obsession stopped being just mine; it became theirs.

One of the unexpected joys of publishing has been designing my covers with my own photography. When I pick up one of my books, I’m not just looking at a novel—I’m looking at a moment I experienced myself. The landscapes that inspired the stories are the same landscapes readers see before they even turn the first page. That connection makes every book feel uniquely personal.

Canva

People sometimes tell me my covers look professional, and I’m deeply grateful for that. What they don’t see are the hours of trial and error behind them. I still don’t find Canva easy. Every cover teaches me something new, and I still spend plenty of time moving things one pixel at a time, wondering why it doesn’t quite look right. Then I walk away for a while, come back with fresh eyes, and usually realize the first version wasn’t nearly as good as I thought it was.

WordPress

Building a website sounded simple. It isn’t. Writing a blog post is easy; learning menus, themes, formatting, images, links, and plugins has been an entirely separate education. I can usually make it do what I want — but it often takes longer than writing the article itself.

Social Media

This has probably been the biggest surprise. I assumed it would be about selling books. Instead, I’m discovering it’s really about meeting readers, photographers, writers, and other people who genuinely love stories. Instagram has become a place where I enjoy the conversations. TikTok has become my favorite place to create short videos, even if the algorithm still feels like a complete mystery.

Publishing

ISBNs. Formatting. Kindle Create. IngramSpark. Amazon KDP. Metadata. Royalties. Categories. Keywords. Proof copies. Author copies.

I still remember the first time I submitted a cover file to IngramSpark and got it kicked back — twice — over spine width. Apparently “close enough” is not a publishing standard. I sat there recalculating margins by fractions of an inch, convinced I’d somehow broken math, while my actual manuscript sat untouched in another tab. It took longer to get that cover approved than it did to design it in the first place.

I spent years learning how to build a world on the page, only to discover I also needed a crash course in global logistics just to get it onto a shelf. None of these existed in my world a year ago. Now they’re just part of everyday life — spine width included.

And I’m Still a Teacher

People sometimes ask how I find the time. The truth is, I don’t do this instead of teaching. I do it after teaching.

My classroom gets my full attention during the school day. Lesson plans, discussions, helping students understand history and government—that’s the job while I’m there. When I leave school, I leave school behind.

Then I come home and become an author.

Some evenings I’m writing a new chapter. Other nights I’m designing a cover, editing photographs, building a website, or trying to figure out why WordPress suddenly decided to do something different than it did yesterday. It’s a completely different kind of work, but I enjoy the challenge of creating something that’s entirely my own.

Teaching and writing turned out to be the same muscle, just pointed in different directions. Both are about telling stories, helping people see the world a little differently, and never quite believing you’re finished learning yourself.

The Biggest Lesson

Six months ago, I thought being an author meant writing books. Now I know it also means becoming a photographer, designer, website editor, marketer, video creator, publisher, and lifelong student.

I’m still not an expert at Canva. WordPress still makes me scratch my head. TikTok still feels unpredictable. But every one of those skills makes it a little easier for the next book.

What about you — maybe it’s Excel, maybe it’s your own website, maybe it’s just learning to talk to strangers online. What’s the hardest unexpected skill you’ve had to pick up out of sheer necessity?