In this week’s episode, I take a look back at my 2023 writing goals and see how many of them I met, while looking ahead to my writing goals for the coming year of 2024.
00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 180 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is December the 21st, 2023 and today we’re going to talk about how many of my writing goals I met in 2023 and what my writing goals are for 2024. Before we get into all that, let’s have an update on my current writing projects. I am 37,000 words into Shield of Storms, the first book in my new The Shield War epic fantasy that I’m hoping to have out in January. We will see if that it turns out to be feasible or not, but I am hoping to have it out in January if possible. I am also 51,000 words into Sevenfold Sword Online: Leveling, which will be the sequel, the second book in the Sevenfold Sword Online series, and I’m hoping to have that out in February. I’m also 4,000 words into Half-Wizard Thief, which is the sequel to Half-Elven Thief. I am not sure when that’s going to come out, but sometime in 2024 would be my guess.
For free short stories, if you want to go to my website jonathanmoeller.com/writer, you will find that I’m giving away 12 free short stories from my Payhip store for the 12 Days of Christmas and all twelve of them are free right now and they will be free through December the 31st, 2023. So if you’re looking for a bunch of short things to read during your holiday travels, now would be the time to get them.
00:01:26 Main Topic: 2023 and 2024 Writing Goals
So, let’s get right to our main topic. Did I meet 2023 writing goals and what are 2024’s writing goals? 2023 without doubt was a year that brought many challenges and changes. So did I end up meeting most of my writing goals?
First off, I would like to thank everyone who bought or read or listened to a book of mine this year. Thanks for coming along on the adventures of Gareth, Nadia, Caina, Jack March, and Rivah Half-Elven. That said, I have to admit from February to about mid-July this year was rather a challenging patch. Everyone’s got their own difficulties, so I won’t ramble on about mine, but I did get COVID pretty strongly in May and that messed up things for a while. Before May I was doing three and a half mile runs on the treadmill three times a week. After COVID I could barely do two minutes before the wheezing got too bad. And most of May and June are kind of a vague haze in my memory.
One amusing anecdote to illustrate that time: about halfway through June, I spent most of a day watching a very energetic three-year-old child. We walked to the park in the morning, but it eventually got too hot and he wanted to go back inside. When we went back, he discovered the house’s laundry chute and once I stopped him from hurling various small and expensive items down that chute, we compromised on letting him drop one of his stuffed animals down it. This delighted him to no end, and it seemed like good, harmless fun that would keep him out of trouble, though obviously I followed along as he did this to make sure he didn’t accidentally lock himself in the dryer or fling his parents’ iPads down the chute or something.
So he dropped his stuffed animal down the laundry chute on the 2nd floor, hastened down to the basement to retrieve it, and then ran back upstairs to do it again. Over and over and over and over and over and over. And as I followed him up the stairs for, like, the tenth time, I had the profound realization, deep in my bones that I had gotten in very, very out of shape. For a while I wondered if I was going to fall over and if the three-year old in question would empty out my pockets and drop my keys and wallet down the laundry chute (which in fairness to him, would make a very cool noise), but fortunately I kept my feet. Eventually, the three-year old got bored with the laundry chute and decided he wanted to watch YouTube instead. Fun fact: I did not know before that day, but apparently there are people who make YouTube videos featuring action figures fighting each other and to judge from the millions of views, apparently toddlers love that stuff.
Anyway, the next morning when I got out of bed and stood up, every single muscle was very eager to inform me that I had really overdone it the day before. Once the muscle aches had subsided and I had driven home, I set about trying to fix things systematically. The first week in July, I made myself run one mile on the treadmill at the gym every day and the week after that I raised it to 1.1. The week after that I pushed it up to 1.2. I am pleased to report that this week, the second to the last week in December, I ran 3.2 miles on the treadmill every day and I did lose nearly all the weight I gained when I had COVID. Many other problems in real life settled down around mid-July as well, which was a pleasant change. Things improved enough that I did 12 ten thousand word writing days after July. Compare that to 2022, when I did only one. I might have missed some of my writing goals for 2023, I still reached some and even exceeded others. Let’s see how I did, then we’ll take a look at what I would like to do writing-wise in 2024.
2023’s Writing Goals
Number One: Write as many words as possible, but try to publish 1,000,000 new words. I didn’t quite make this one. The last time I wrote over 1,000,000 words in a single year was 2020, when I hit 1.27 million words. In 2022, I only did 814,000, but this year, in 2023, I did 929,000 words. So that was a significant improvement and probably was helped a good deal by the 10, no by excuse me, the 12 thousand word days I was able to accomplish in 2023.
Number Two: Continue Dragonskull. Not only did I continue with the Dragonskull series, I actually finished it with the Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods this summer. Additionally, thanks to the hard work of narrator Brad Wills, the entire series is also available in audiobook, which is the fastest I’ve ever gotten a complete series of audiobooks out. Dragonskull was overall the strongest selling series of 2023, so I’m glad I was able to bring it to a satisfying conclusion.
Number Three: Continue Cloak Mage. I did get two new Cloak Mage books out, Cloak of Dragonfire and Cloak of Embers. Three would have been nice, but I didn’t quite get there.
Number Four: Continue Silent Order. I did that as well. Not only did I continue the Silent Order series, I decided to push onward and finish it completely for a total of 14 books, which officially made summer 2023 my Summer of Finishing Things since I finished Dragonskull and Silent Order back-to-back.
Number Five: Write in a new genre of fantasy. I did that as well with Sevenfold Sword Online: Creation, which was LitRPG. It didn’t do as well as I hoped but I’m about halfway through the sequel (as I mentioned earlier in the show, which I hope to put out in February 2024). So we’ll see how that does. I also wrote Half-Elven Thief, which while not in a new genre of fantasy, did quite well out of the gate, better than Creation did, in fact.
So I did meet most of my 2023 writing goals and even exceeded the continuing goals for Dragonskull and Silent Order by finishing the series.
Let’s see what my writing goals will be for 2024, bearing in mind, of course, these wise words that were written some time ago:
“Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ “
With that in mind, if it is the Lord’s will, here is what I would like to do next year, 2024’s writing goals.
Number One: Write as many words as possible while trying to hit 1,000,000 new words. I have not published 1,000,000 new words in a year since 2020, but it would be nice if I get over 1,000,000 words. Again, we’ll see what happens this year.
Number Two: Start The Shield War. I want to start my new epic fantasy series, The Shield War, which will be set back in Andomhaim. Currently, I’m over 30,000 words into it, 37,000 words, I believe, as of this recording on December 21st. So hopefully the book will be on track to come out by the end of January 2024. Hopefully I can get one or two more out in the series before 2024 ends.
Number Three: Continue Cloak Mage. I also want to continue the Cloak Mage series. Next up in the series will be Cloak of Titans, which will be the 11th book and I think I will be starting writing that in late spring. I’m not entirely sure how many books Cloak Mage will end up having, but I think it will be 15 or 16 in total.
Number Four: Continue Ghost Armor. Next up in this series will be Ghost in the Veils. I am really hoping to start writing this towards the end of February because I have a recording slot scheduled for it in the second half of April, but more on audiobooks in a little bit further on in the show.
Number Five: Continue Half-Elven Thief. Half-Elven Thief, I basically started writing on impulse in April or so. For a while I’ve wanted to start writing shorter series that come out more quickly and I gave some thought to writing the entirety of Half-Elven Thief after Dragonskull was done, but then I got sick with COVID in May, as I mentioned earlier and I didn’t have the energy to do anything but the bare minimum for a while. So I set Half-Elven Thief aside and didn’t think about it again till November when I decided to come back to it and have it be the last book I would publish in 2023. I’m glad that I did. It had a strong response and sold much better than the last two times I tried something really new. I’m about 4,000 words into the sequel and we’ll work on it as a side project for a while until I get to a good spot where will become the main project and then I will publish it.
Number Six: Continue Sevenfold Sword Online. I almost walked away from this series this summer, but I was persuaded to continue it. I’m about halfway through the second book and I’m hoping that will come out in February 2024 if everything goes well, but we will find out shortly.
And finally, Number Seven: new audiobooks for new books. I think at this point in my self-publishing adventure, I’m only going to do audiobooks for some of my new books as they come out. Like, I’ve done as many of my old books in audio as I think I want or is feasible to do. Frostborn is completely in audio from Tantor and through my ACX productions with Brad Wills, Sevenfold Sword and Dragontiarna are from Podium publishing as narrated by Steven Brand, The Ghosts and Ghost Exile are done and I did them through ACX with Hollis McCarthy. I could try to get Silent Order, Ghost Night, Demonsouled, or the rest of Cloak Mage in audio, but it would be a massive amount of work that would take years to turn a profit.
Doing the Dragonskull audiobooks so close to the publication date of the ebooks worked pretty well, so I think I’m going to do that or as close to that as possible in the future. I have Shield of Storms and Ghosts in the Veils scheduled for recording next year and hopefully I should have good news about Sevenfold Sword Online audiobooks soon. If Half-Elven Thief reaches a certain sales threshold in the first thirty days, I will consider doing audiobooks for that series as well. So that is what I hope to do for writing in the coming year of 2024.
As always, thanks for coming along and reading and listening to those books and as always, thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder, you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com and don’t forget to visit jonathanmoeller.com/writer and get your 12 Days of Christmas free short stories, which will be free until December 31st. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
