In this week’s episode, JP and Crys talk all about 2021. They discuss goals completed, goals they’ll continue to work towards, and accomplishments they hadn’t even planned for!
Question of the week: What goals did you accomplish in 2021? Share your answer here!
Show Notes
Transcript
JP: Hello friends. This is episode number 74 of the Write Away Podcast, and it is the 16th of December, 2021 as we are recording. I’m JP Rindfleisch with my cohost…
Crys: Crys Cain.
JP: Crys, it feels like it’s been forever. I don’t know why. How are you?
Crys: I don’t know either. It’s been a week, right?
Yeah. Yeah. It’s only about a week. It’s because we barely talked this week, JP.
JP: Damn it.
Crys: Have things been busy with the work stuff?
JP: Yeah, for me. Just rolling along, but yeah, it is a little busy in the work world, which is super great.
Crys: Smalls started summer camp this week. And so I have definitely been more in work mode because now we have a schedule. I drop him off at eight. I get my daily walk in. I get 10,000 steps a day because it’s 5,000 steps to the school, and 5,000 steps back from the school. Do I move the rest of the day? Absolutely not. Do I get those steps in? Yes.
JP: Very nice. I need something like that.
Crys: Don’t recommend having a kid just to get your steps in though.
JP: Oh, absolutely not going to happen. I’ll figure a different way.
Crys: Oh, I’m really excited to talk about our year in review.
JP: Yeah. Agreed. I am very agreed. I’m very curious where we thought we were going to be at and where we are at and all that other jazz.
Crys: Yeah. So where did you think you would be at?
JP: Oh, I suppose I thought I would have at least one or two books in the series with Abe published, and I would have some weird sciency side project business, and maybe one other novel published.
I had a lot of high aspirations, but that’s where I thought I was going to be at the beginning of the year.
Crys: I’m curious, why haven’t you guys published the books?
JP: So I’m currently cleaning through the first edits of book three and we’ve sent the book one out for beta reader and we’ve gotten feedback from that one. And so based on timelines, once I’ve combed through the edits on book three and sent that out for actual edits, I’m going to jump back into one and I’m going to do the beta reader comments and then we’re done. So it’s just timing.
Crys: Nice. That’s exciting.
JP: But yeah. It’s one of those things where I haven’t done it before, so I guess I had a lot of high expectations as to like where we would be. But at the same time, like I’m happy with the progress we’ve made because it’s been significant because we wrote books two, three, and half of four this year. So it’s not like there hasn’t been books.
Crys: But you did get a different project out.
JP: I did, which is like even weirder is having in the middle of the year reaching out to Jeff Elkins, asking if he was going to do a Vella, and then ending up doing one with him and publishing it within like a month and a half. So that’s been really insane, but exciting.
Crys: Yeah. That’s been awesome. I expected, I would have half of the 10 romance books, or at least three of the romance books that I’ve left on my plate, done. I think I got one of the romance books that was on my plate done, and it was one that’s been plaguing us for close to three years. So that was very exciting to just be done.
The most exciting part of my year, and this might be counterintuitive to a lot of people, is I wrote and published only two books. My goal was to get down to four, but because of burnout and summer of chaos, I only wrote and published two. But here’s the extra exciting part, I only made 2000 less in sales than when I published 12 books last year.
JP: That’s insane.
Crys: Right? Now granted, like the sales would go down next year if I didn’t publish a few more, but I also published four audio books, so books that had already been written, and two box sets, again books that had already been written.
I took three months completely off. I took one series wide. And my income, because I have some non-retail non-book stuff, went up. It was 150% more than last year. And it’s not big numbers that we’re increasing 150% more. But it took my total earned income of this year with only two books and a few other side projects to more than I earned last year by a few thousand. Like nothing big, but still more, writing astronomically less.
JP: It’s amazing.
Crys: It’s amazing. I definitely had some little happy tears this morning. And that’s income, so some of that income I think was from a couple books that were published like November, December, earning wise, I’m looking at my chart here. So I made 80% in new revenue, so of books actually published in 2021 and the long tail. I made 80% of what I did last year. But when you have decreased what you have outputted by more than 50%, that’s pretty rocking.
JP: Definitely. And you had several months in the van and I know that you had planned to get writing done at that point, but at the same time, like you were having like strict family time.
Crys: Three months off where I basically only did podcasting.
JP: You basically took a semi sabbatical.
Crys: It was lovely. I’m really pleased with this year.
What other things did you get done that you didn’t expect to?
JP: We both got three-story method editor certifications. That was not on my radar at all. And it was interesting because that whole idea I had at the beginning of the year, which was ultimately, and it still exists, but this offering of doing like the sciency looking at journals, looking at all of the like research that’s been done with various different things, and coming up with a scientifically sound result for anyone that was writing, especially in the post-apoc world and mostly looking for like monsters or something like that. That still exists and I’ve heard I’ve had a little bit of progress with that, but I’ve made money on that, which is pretty cool.
And then with doing the three-story method certification, I’ve added that into the bubble of offerings for author services. And I’ve had a few clients this year. I think I’ve had four or five. And yeah, five, I’m trying to remember numbers, paying clients. And it has been an interesting and unexpected source of revenue, but it’s been nice.
Crys: Lovely. One of the things that was planned for this year and has been super rewarding is I joined J Thorn in running The Author Success Mastermind. And so that did take some of the three months where I was doing time there, but I was mostly being a member of the community. I wasn’t actively creating content, which is my role in TASM. So it’s been very stressful to me to not be actively creating for those three months, especially because it’s a newer responsibility.
I did get the weekly emails out for that every week. And we have the podcast for that. But then I also have gotten such lovely feedback from members who have appreciated what I have contributed. And I have such high expectations for myself, that it’s really nice to hear from people that they see you as doing. They probably see you more accurately and that they see you as doing far more than you personally think you are.
And I’ve had this conversation like a few times in the last few weeks, just about how my perceptions of what I can do are far higher and probably at like at the top level of my peak manic productivity levels. And I’m like, oh, I should be able to do that all the time. And it’s absolutely not realistic or healthy. And for the most part, I’m not too hard on myself. I’m quite gentle on myself, but there’s still that niggling thought in the back of my brain all the time that you’re not doing as much as you did that like one month when you didn’t sleep, but you didn’t sleep because you were energetic. So like, why aren’t you like that all the time?
JP: Because you burnout, that is why. Evil little brain inside. I know that feeling all too well. Yeah, there’s been a few times where I’ve been feeling like the burnout, but I think that regardless, it’s been really nice to just change things up and figure out a different way moving forward. I don’t feel like any point this year I was like stuck for too long in a rut.
Crys: I can’t say that, can’t say that. But it’s like, there’s some deep breaths there. But I finally, after what, more than two years talking about this, have put so much more of my attention on writing fantasy and sci-fi. And that just makes my life so much better. I opened up the map that I use for my fantasy story the other day, and it just popping up on the screen just gave me such giddy, heartfelt feelings of delight that I’m like, this is what it’s supposed to be like at least 30% of the time.
JP: Definitely. And another thing too, that Write Away made me do because of book club, I read more books than I normally do in a year. Because not only book club, but also having like you and I talk and we’re like, hey, we need to read this book just because it’s an excellent book.
So for me, this is a lot, I read 27 books this year. Which I know that in a month that’s like Sacha’s reads, but I’m getting there. This is like double the amount of books that I read the previous year. And the year before that I was reading like nothing. So it’s been interesting. I didn’t expect that.
Crys: I haven’t read very many text books this year, like ebook or anything. I have been far more audio. Between being on the road and just wrist/hand problems, making holding my phone problematic, I’ve read through audio so much more.
So it would be very interesting to pull that up and see where I’m at, because we’ve read the 12 books for book club. I know that I’ve read a bunch of fiction books. And if we included fan fiction, it would be just like ridiculous.
JP: Definitely. I think if there was a way to include Vella, that would be a higher number, but I don’t know how you would. It’s like, oh, you’ve started a bunch of Vellas.
Crys: Yeah, I’m really happy with 2021. Like 2020 was a dumpster fire in every way, shape or form.
JP: And that is absolutely correct.
Crys: And I was very energetic and hopeful going into 2020 and ready to kick 2020 to the curb. And a lot of people were like, don’t get your hopes up, just because the years change doesn’t mean anything else has changed. But I think like your mindset can change a lot. And looking at the frame of the year 2021, it’s been fucking great. I went on the three-month road trip, I moved towns, I love my new town.
So last week I went back to Puerto Viejo, which is where I’ve lived most of the last eight years, which is wild. As of next month, so about one month from now because I think it was like January 14th, I will have been in Costa Rica eight years. Wild. I will have lived in Costa Rica about as long as I lived in Nashville.
And so we went back to our town, and the first morning I woke up to toucans and I just was devastated. I was like, oh my gosh, have I made a terrible mistake? I don’t get toucans where I live now, I get motorcycles. But then throughout the week as we actually spent time there, all of the reasons why I chose to move away were validated again. And it’s not that there’s anything wrong with Puerto Viejo, I still think it’s a magical fucking place other than the gentrification that’s currently taking place. But it just doesn’t fit anymore. And so I’m just so happy to be in my weird little city life now.
JP: That’s excellent. Yeah, I remember the first time you went to go visit this and you sent me a picture of a waterfall, and then I wish I could remember what the animal was, but it was some type of monkey-like animal that was just coming at you wanting to be friends.
Crys: Yeah. I can picture it, little black and a gray critter that just wanted to climb in my car and eat snacks.
JP: Yeah, that was pretty much when I was like well, I wasn’t particularly jealous that you were living there, but then you were like, I’m going up into the mountains with all of these wonderful sites. And I was like, fine, whatever.
Crys: I’ve been resisting sending you photos of beautiful, not expensive real estate here.
JP: Don’t spend an inordinate amount of time taking these pictures, but I would not be opposed to it, just saying.
Crys: So what are you planning for 2022 other than moving to Costa Rica?
JP: I think that this year, 2021, it was way more community focused than I thought it was going to be. And like working with people, like I ended up with a lot of projects where it’s with other people. And I think that I just need to accept that. And I think I need to accept the fact that I really like working with people. I love the collaborative world.
So like 2022, I need to get stuff out. Everything is like 60 to 80% there. And I’m just ready to be like, here, take it world and do with it what you will. I really hope that I can get at least like four to five things off my plate by publishing them. But we’ll see where that goes.
I’m not going to rush the process, but I’m not going to like lollygag on the process. Like I’m going to make sure that what we get out there is what I want out there, if that makes sense.
So that’s my plan. Get stuff done. Get it published. Get it out there. And let space for all the other things that I want to get done that year. Because I have another project that I can barely have mental space for that I really want to work on. I have another project in the back of my head that I have started talking to you about yesterday that I have. So I just feel this, like incessant need to get things out.
How about you? Tell me your things. What are your plans?
Crys: I do want to get into the practice of publishing again, because if I can survive on two books a year that’d be glorious, but I don’t want them to be romance. So I am starting from scratch with my name as a fiction name and not just my teaching and editing and podcasting identity. Also, hopefully soon, my legal identity as I actually get divorced.
I want to do more client work. This month in particular, one of the services that I offer TASM members, The Author Success Mastermind, is a free scene analysis. And that is going through their work with, one scene up to 2000 words, with a review of the three Cs, conflict, choice and consequence, and seeing how we can make those stronger. And I’ve just found those so rewarding.
And I haven’t had one where the author was like no, I disagree with everything you’ve said, like we’re just not on the same wavelength. I’ve always been able to find something that they were like, oh yeah, I couldn’t put my finger on it. I knew there was something that was off and it was that. Or they’re like, oh my gosh, like the scene was good and you just helped me take it to the next level, and that’s what I was looking for.
So that’s just been amazing. And I want to do more of that. I want to work deeper with clients on longer projects. It’s just, yeah, I’ve got one edit coming up at the very beginning of the year, super excited about that. And if I can just get a few more of those, and just for me, because I am rather introverted and people exhaust me, it is far easier for me to build up those deep relationships with authors and have a friendship as well as a client relationship and like this mutual investment in each other, than it is to just do the work and get out. Like that doesn’t work for me. So I really am looking forward to doing more of that.
And then yeah, publishing. And so I have to finish the short story that my deadline was like two weeks ago, but at least I know where it’s actually going now. And I have done a lot more pre-work for the serial. Like I tried to get in and start writing, and then I realized that because I know the ending on this book, I know the direction I’m going, my brain won’t let me just write into the dark. I have to plan it. Like I have to turn the headlights on in the dark and see a few steps ahead of me. I’ve done more pre-work than I thought I would need, but it’s been super helpful. Today’s a big day of calls, but if I can fit in a little bit for writing, definitely going to.
And I’m really hoping that I can travel more this year. That feeds into what I write, particularly because I did set the main city that is in my serial world in a tropical area, because I wanted to be able to include a lot of the inspiration around me. And visiting other places will let me contribute to other places in my world. So fingers crossed. Back the F up COVID.
JP: Yeah. I’m gonna push you down.
Crys: Yeah. That’s it. And then we continue podcasting and read books and all that good stuff.
JP: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know if I want to have a plan episode, but I do at the same time. But then I’m like, do I want to commit?
Crys: Maybe we should do quarterly.
JP: Probably. I think for me, that will probably be better.
Crys: All right. Excellent. Thank you guys for joining us for almost two years now. There are a number of episodes because I started this without JP and then brought him on and he has been the best decision I made for this podcast other than actually starting it. We aren’t quite on par with the one-year. And what is it April is one year?
JP: I can’t remember when it officially start.
Crys: We’ll call it a year and a half.
JP: I’m looking… April 23rd is when you started.
Crys: And when did you come on? September, August.
JP: There’s some weird amount of episodes that really count, but I think it was October 11th. It was an 11th, I believe.
Crys: Cool. Yeah, so here’s to another year. We’ve got a couple more weeks left in this year, but here’s to another year. Thank you so much for everyone who has been sticking with us throughout this year, and we hope you join us for next year.
We do have another book club coming up, which we are a little behind on deciding, but if you’d like to help us decide, we’re going to discuss right after this what books we’re going to put in our poll so you can join our Patreon to help us decide.
Thanks so much.
JP: See you later!
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