Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: Our latest feature in the Writers’ Day Jobs series is Martin Ott, who reached out to me when he saw the debut post for this series. A copywriter and marketer in the past, he feels like his current job is the “perfect writing job.” Here’s why:
How would you describe what you do for your day job?
I’m a technical project manager. I organize large-scale fax/messaging implementations for the health-care industry, which needs assistance in getting patient files where they need to be quickly. I fell into this job at my current tech company after the reorganization of my previous team. My career, up to this point, had been primarily in content development and marketing.
What do you enjoy about that job, and what are some of its detractions?
Benefits of my current job include:
No commute: This allows me to start my day over my first cup of coffee and to save time normally spent on an LA commute.
Flexibility: In between setting my own schedule, I can find time to write at different points of the day / evening, knowing I can manage my workload.
No writing: In previous positions I would sometimes get burnt out by copywriting, and this position allows me to feel more creative when I do write.
How, if at all, does your day job inform—or relate to—your writing life?
I manage queues and timelines all day. This discipline puts me in the frame of mind to manage my own writing/submitting schedule with the same professionalism.
What creative projects are you working on right now?
Titles of my current works in progress:
- Michigone, a novel (literary thriller about returning to the Midwest)
- Caves of Los Angeles, short stories based in different time periods
- The Destroyer, a prose/persona poetry collection
I am also working with a manager and a couple of producers on pitching previous novels/stories and new concepts for TV/screen.
Martin Ott’s work has been published in more than three hundred magazines and twenty anthologies. The author of ten books of poetry and fiction, he has won the De Novo (C&R Press) and Sandeen (Notre Dame Press) prizes. His blog Writeliving has had more than thirty thousand visitors in 100+ countries
