In this week's episode, we take a look at the "personal curriculum" social media trend and look at how it can be useful for writers.
This coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Dragons, Book #1 in the Cloak Mage series, (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) at my Payhip store:
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The coupon code is valid through September 29, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook this fall, we’ve got you covered!
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 269 of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is September 19th, 2025, and today I am looking at the idea of a personal curriculum for writers. We also have Coupon of the Week and a progress update on my current writing projects.
So let's start things off with Coupon of the Week. This week's coupon code will get you 50% off the audiobook of Cloak of Dragons, Book Number One in the Cloak Mage series (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy), at my Payhip store. And that coupon code is FALLMAGIC50. And as always, the coupon code and the links to my Payhip store will be available in the show notes of this episode. This coupon code will be valid through September the 29th, 2025. So if you need a new audiobook to listen to as we head into fall, we have got you covered.
And now for an update on my current writing projects. I'm pleased to report that Blade of Flames is finished and by the time this episode goes live on what should be the 22nd, it should be available at all ebook stores. Initial impressions have been positive so far, so I hope you'll check that out and enjoy it. Now that Blade of Flames is finished and out in the world, my next main project will be Cloak of Worlds. After a year, I am finally getting back to Cloak Mage. I am now 21,000 words into it, and I'm hoping it will be out in October, though it might slip to November because I think this one might be a bit on the longer side.
My secondary project is now Blade of Shadows, which is the second book in the Blades of Ruin series and the direct sequel to Blade of Flames. I'm a thousand words into that.
In audiobook news, Shield of Power is still in processing and quality assurance at most of the audiobook stores. It is now available at, I think Google Play, Kobo, my own Payhip store, and a few others, but it's still not up on Audible, Apple, or Amazon yet, though hopefully that should be fixed soon. Recording on Ghost in the Siege is finished and we're just waiting on files so we can proof-listen to them. So some new audiobooks will be available before too much longer. So that's where I'm at with my current writing projects.
00:02:18 Personal Curriculum for Writers
So let's move on to our main topic this week, the personal curriculum trend for writers. What is a personal curriculum? The trend of creating a personal curriculum has been going around social media for the past month or two. Basically, a personal curriculum uses a structure of an imaginary class to reframe your personal and professional development goals. It can be as simple as creating a set of reading to do in a month or as complex as creating a major project that will take many steps and months to complete.
How does this work? Instead of having an undefined goal of wanting to learn how to learn more about how to market your books, you make yourself a course called Marketing Literature with Social Media, with a list of related books, videos, and tasks divided into blocks of time, just like the class would have things that are connected in each session. The key to the personal curriculum trend is having weekly goals and projects just like homework (and of course keeping up with it). Some people create monthly personal curriculum while others keep the more academic framework of quarters, terms, or semesters. Some people create multiple classes, while others focus on one at a time. The amount of detail in the curriculum's development ranges from scrawling a plan on a sheet of notebook paper to creating intricate Notion boards that are essentially a prettier version of an online course system used at universities.
The personal curriculum trend is fueled by many things, including nostalgia for the structure of school and its relatively clear paths to success, the desire to spend less time doom scrolling on social media, and the desire to make goal setting more whimsical. Having clear and specific deadlines for completing tasks is one of the most important parts of goal setting, and that is at the center of the trend of creating personal curriculums. Most people spend 14 to 19 years in school (depending on the individual), so it's a structure that's familiar. It also takes an overwhelming and broad goal, such as learning about marketing and gives it focus by defining what is actually being learned and determining how to apply that to real tasks in a manageable way. It transforms the nebulous goal of learning something specific and also gives a clearer path on how to apply the learning into action. By design, it also emphasizes goals that can be done in weeks instead of years, which makes starting much less intimidating.
Many people also need some outside accountability in order to work well, and this is a way of creating it for yourself. Being able to give yourself an “A” if you're completing your homework each week is a simple and free motivator for many. Since this is mostly a writing podcast, I want to discuss how the personal curriculum trend can be applied to writing goals and professional development for writers. To that end, I will share five ways that I think the trend can help you grow as a writer and make more specific and actionable goals.
#1: Defining your priorities. There are endless things to learn both in life and as a writer, especially in the world of self-publishing. Therefore, it can be tempting to chase after every trend or every new thing that's working for other people. The problem with that is that it's impossible to do that in any meaningful or focused way.
It's better to pick a focus for every month or every few months and gain as much proficiency as you can instead of dabbling at things without taking the time to understand them well and then bemoaning that they don't work. A month or a fake semester is still a narrow enough timeframe to pivot if you want to change your goals, instead of being locked into yearly goals.
For example, I set specific goals for getting books out, and then each month is pretty well defined into writing, editing, cover design, layout, publishing, and marketing tasks for me based on each book. Other things I want to try, such as creating videos, doesn't fit within those specific goals because they're not the priority. Other things that are lesser priorities (like trying new effects in Photoshop for my book covers and ad images) are things that I know I can work on after finishing the primary goals I've set for myself each week.
#2: Trying something new. The structure of a personal curriculum makes trying something new feel less intimidating. For example, “making my own book cover” is something of a massive and undefined goal. You know that's important and you want to do it, but you can never seem to get past watching a TikTok video or two on Photoshop when they come into your feed. By creating a course for yourself on learning how to use Photoshop and the best techniques for creating book covers and giving yourself homework of different things from your readings or viewings to try out, you give the goal a specific plan and tie what you're learning into actual tasks that will help you move forward and then make your learning stick by applying it in the right way.
For example, what I did for myself to learn Photoshop well enough to do a book cover was during early COVID in 2020, I bought a couple of courses on it and took the courses. Now, I suppose that's something of more of an actual structured curriculum since someone set up that course, but you could do it for yourself with the same thing by getting The Beginner's Guide to Photoshop or (the some unfortunately titled) The Complete Idiot's Guide to Photoshop from your library, reading that, and then watching a few longer focused YouTube videos on the process of creating a book cover. And then that would give you enough to go on in terms of starting your own personal curriculum and then developing your own book covers.
#3: Managing your time. With endless distractions, it's too easy to look at a week or even a month and wonder where the time went with little to show for it. In contrast, the school environment has a rigid time structure, even at the university level. There is never a question of where the time went there. Work must be done at a specific time, and you have to show up multiple times a week to learn more and prove you understand what you've learned already.
People often struggle without that structure after graduation, especially people who thrived in the school environment. But there's no harm in recreating it for yourself, especially if you are one of those people who thrived in the academic world. For example, if you want to do research on a specific time period for your next book, creating a course defines what that means.
Instead of endless scrolling and watching videos online, you define what the scope of needed research is before you begin, so you're spending your time more efficiently. If you pick out the books, videos, and what you specifically need to research for the plot in advance and give yourself a set amount of time to learn the material, you're spending your time more wisely and freeing up time for other tasks.
For example, in my most recent book, Blade of Flames, part of one of the subplots is inspired by a period in English history called The Anarchy, which was the civil war in the early 12th century between Empress Maude and King Stephen for the throne of England.
Now, I knew a fair bit about this period already because of other reading I've done, but if I wanted to learn more about it, the best way to do it would be to read a few books and some of the more accessible books by popular historians. Like for example, maybe the best way to learn enough about The Anarchy to base a book on it would be read some of the books by Dan Jones, who has written many excellent popular history books about the medieval and early modern English time period.
#4: Professional development. Most professions have professional development where you have to keep your skills updated, whether you're a teacher who has to get re-certified, a doctor who has to learn new procedures, a system admin who has to learn the latest bugs Microsoft has baked into their software, and so forth. Writing is no different (especially if you're a self-published writer) because there's so many side skills like layout and web design and so forth that it's kind of helpful to keep up on.
It's hard to carve time out for professional development because as a writer, it's time away from the task that actually gets you paid, which is writing new stuff. Learning or trying new things becomes something that either feels insurmountable or happens in a haphazard way that doesn't actually move things forward for you. A personal curriculum gives you the permission to carve out time to learn new things. It's easy to hyperfocus on writing and feel like anything else is less productive, but there are many parts to being a writer, especially for the self-published, so it's important to give yourself a structured way to explore new software, marketing strategies, and social media channels as they emerge.
For example, to use something of a negative example, I rather notoriously have a very low opinion of the AI tools currently flooding the market like ChatGPT and Midjourney. That wasn't an opinion I arrived at haphazardly. I did thoroughly investigate each of these tools. I tried Adobe Firefly, I tried Midjourney, I tried Microsoft's ones, Bing Chat and Bing Image Create. I tried ChatGPT, I tried one other, I can't think of off the top of my head, and I just did not come away impressed with these tools or the capabilities.
So I suppose that was a negative example of something I'm talking about, whereas a positive example would be in 2018, I started using a Mac program called Vellum to format my paper books. It was a lot easier and more useful than the method that I'd been using previously, and I was so impressed with that that I eventually switched over into using Vellum for my ebook formatting as well, and learned how to do that as well, and I've been using it ever since. So that'd be a positive example of professional development.
#5: Holding Yourself Accountable. One of the most difficult things about writing is that it lacks the structure of a traditional job or school environment. For that reason, many high achievers tend to struggle with starting or completing tasks when they leave school. Creating specific goals and making a clear timeframe for completing them helps with that tendency. For that reason, some personal curriculum devotees will even assign class times on a certain day of the week or a certain time of the night to make sure they're on track with their goals or homework for the week. National Novel Writing Month has kind of crashed and burned from its scandals over the past year, but the principle of accountability in giving yourself a set period of time to do something is helpful there.
In the same way, your homework for each day for writing could be a set number of words or a certain percentage of progress in editing. Did you spend that day looking at social media instead of getting words done? There is a grade for that and it's not a good one. “A” students complete their work and turn it in, and that's the core of writing, putting down words consistently and publishing them.
Now, I suppose you could think that the personal curriculum thing seems like a silly social media trend, but for some people, especially people who really thrived in and enjoyed the academic environment in school, it might work in a way that average yearly goals do not. Studies show time and time again that the happiest adults are those with defined priorities who make time to learn new things and enjoy hobbies. A personal curriculum provides a way to emphasize those important things in your life in a more whimsical way than say, the various yearly evaluation goals of the corporate world.
For writers, it can be a much-needed way to add structure to an unstructured work environment and make sure that they're spending their time in the best way possible. And it all boils down to essentially one of the oldest dictums: know thyself. If this kind of thing would not be helpful for you, then there's no point in pursuing it. But if you know yourself and know that you have the kind of personality and mental inclination that would respond well to structure like this (even if it's structure you're creating for yourself), then a personal curriculum might be a good idea to pursue.
So that is it for this week. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. I reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes at https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy, and we'll see you all next week.
