Back on January 30, 2026, there was a post on Brandon Sanderson’s YouTube channel where he walked an audience of convention attendees through his thoughts on Ai and how it pertains to art.

The conclusion he came to is that what matters about art is how you grow and change as you make art. Which he summed up succinctly as, “You are the art.” He points out that the piece of art you create is the receipt that proves you went on that journey. And that Ai doesn’t do that, it skips straight to making the product.

Last month I already had a blog post in the works, so when I watched this video I felt inspired and started writing in Xed, the Linux version of Notepad. I promptly forgot about these notes, and only when I sat down to brainstorm a blog post did I remember them.

I find that I agree with his core message...

I’ve experienced it myself as I wrote my first book. From the dabbling stage all the way through to the release of my book, I kept feeling a sense of leveling up. My skill at writing novels hitting a whole other level, again and again. And the feeling of holding that finished paperback is so validating.

Since the day I sat down and thought about how I was going to go about this author career, I looked at the contingency that I wouldn’t be able to create a sustainable business. And in that case, I plan to keep on writing in my free time because I find it so fulfilling that I wouldn’t want to give it up.
And in the same vein, even if I could use Ai to magic up a book based on my writing prompt... I wouldn’t want to. Because I’d be skipping the good part.

...but not his complete point.

I started writing those notes that night because I felt a little mismatch between how I feel about Ai art and what he said. It seems to me, after listening to his speech, that he’s hoping against hope that Ai doesn’t become mainstream. He says in the speech that society has the power to say no, and I agree. But it seems to me that society has already said yes, emphatically, and we’re slowly coming to terms with that decision.

Since around 2020, Ai has risen to become mainstream. And now it’s currently being embraced worldwide to create music, pictures, video, voices, code, search results, customer service, podcasts, writing, and that’s just what I can think of off the top of my head.

It’s clear the corporate world lusts after the concept of an Ai workforce, with or without robot bodies. And hell, as a sci-fi nerd, I sometimes dream of having a robot buddy who does all the tasks I don’t want to do.

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Synthesis

It’s too late to put the brakes on. Clearly it was too late three years ago when Elon Musk asked Ai developers to put a stop to Ai advancement and come up with some regulation. So what that means for us creative types is that we have a new toolkit we need to learn how to integrate.

For my writing, I don’t use Ai, unless you count running my work through ProWritingAid to fix my atrocious spelling and grammar. But I have dabbled with Ai art and chat. While I don’t see myself ever using Ai to do the writing work for me, I could imagine bouncing my ideas off an Ai while I work or asking it to give me several alternate ideas for a scene that doesn’t work well. Or dictating and having it write the words instead of using my hands.

As an indie writer, I needed an editor to help me sand off the rough edges and polish my work up. If I had unlimited money, I might pay a pro to do every job other than write and edit my latest book. Graphic artist, web designer, promoter, personal assistant, you name it. The only thing stopping me is money. Indie writers start off in the red, so to speak. It would be a massive help if any of these tasks could be accomplished by Ai.

But I believe in the short term, a synthesis of professional and Ai is the way. They have the knowledge to give you a professional job, but the tools to make the job easier than ever before. That should make it possible to get more work done in the same timeframe and offer cheaper prices per job.

Further down the road

What are the repercussions further down the road? I have to imagine that Ai will be the harbinger of doom for many industries and the origin of new, unthought-of industries. I always liked the term Andrew Yang used: the AI industrial revolution. It speaks to how much of a game-changer Ai will probably be.

I’ve heard people prognosticate everything from apocalypse to utopia when it comes to Ai. Who knows what’ll happen, but I think people might have to get used to defining themselves by something other than what they do for a living. I’ve heard talk about how the abundance created by Ai will enrich everyone’s lives. Perhaps I’m just jaded, but I don’t think we live in that world. I can’t imagine any newly created abundance going to anyone but the dragons of our world.

And who knows, maybe given time people will become good at writing books with Ai.

Also, I can’t help but look at the evolution of this technology and see the potential to augment my intellectual property. It would be massive for me to easily turn my books into audiobooks and translate them into other languages. Why stop there? Not everyone likes to read, so I could make them into point and click adventure games, or animes and movies.

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In the Holliday shuffle, I forgot to make the December blog post about my 2026 goals! Since it was the end of the year and I was getting excited looking at year-end recaps, I was eager to do my own. I only realized my mistake around the time I was ready to post my January article. Scrolling past last year’s entertainment, I saw the 2024 goals post, and then I realized my mistake. I didn’t want to go back to the drawing-board, so I simply postponed this article until now.

So how did I do with my goals last year? Let's take a look…

Finish and launch Walk Amongst the Stars: Book 1

This was a success. It still took me longer than I expected, but I launched the book on November 17.

Get the mailing list off the ground; for real this time

Early on in 2025, I went back-and-forth wasting time thinking about this and finally just gave up on it again. A lot of writing advice paints it as the best way to directly connect with readers. But I find I don’t have the patience to set it up, and I dread coming up with content for a newsletter. So the mailing list is tabled for now.

Begin WATS book 2

I brainstormed and worked on the outline for WATS2 while the first book was with my editor. By the time my book was ready, I had finished a small chunk of the rough draft. I’m one of those slow rough drafters who produces a more finished draft, which writing teachers will tell you not to do. Last session I finished Chapter four, and it feels like I’m somewhere around 1/3 of the way finished with the first draft.

Rearrange the blog so it has some structure rather than a giant list of entries

I didn’t even think about this one until it was almost 2026. I’m working on adding store functionality to my webpage, and once I have that, I’ll work on rearranging the blog. I want to make it navigable by year, as well as adding next and previous buttons to each article.

Explore ways to monetize

I did a bad job here. When I looked into this aspect of the business, I encountered the concept of writing a serial story with a membership-first model, and I just kept coming back to that. I decided against that kind of thing for now, as I think it would just pull time away from crafting novels. I did publish my book wide, so it’s currently available in all sorts of places. But other than that, I didn’t get much past the research stage on a bunch of different topics: Amazon affiliation, AdSense, which patron subscription service I’d rather use, etc.

I owe twelve more blog posts and four more merch designs

This one is pretty easy. I might balk at this if I were going to post much more than twelve. The only downside is when I put a lot of effort into these merch designs or blog posts, it can take up more than just a day or two of work.

And finally, I set a monetary goal on a sliding scale. From a reasonable 100 bucks (because I’m a brand new, unknown author) to a completely ludicrous $10,000, because why not aim big?

I technically made $0 for 2025 because each print on demand site only pays out when you hit a certain threshold. But from the launch of my book I made a whopping $27!

Another thing on my to-do list is to get good at marketing my books. Right now I’m a novice at it. So my book has gone pretty unnoticed.

2026 Goals

I came up with more goals than I can accomplish in a year, but here they are...

Finish WATS2.

Start WATS3.

Set up Ko-Fi on your site for tips. (Subscriptions?)

Redesign my blog.

Set up book sales on my personal website.

Create an AI audiobook.

Post chunks of my AI audiobook on YouTube every week.

As always, post at least 12 blog posts and 4 merch designs.

Figure out avenues to interact with readers that I like.

Schedule projects on my planner. (I’m so bad at using planners)

Look into more POD sites for your merch designs. Cast a wider net.

Finish my next book faster than the first one. Need to get the whole process under a year so I can serve readers reasonably quick.

Look into monetizing the blog.

Add RSS to my website.

Make music playlists on my YouTube page to entertain and draw listeners to my author platform.

Make 100 / 1,000 / 10,000 bucks. (since I failed last year)

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Hey did you know I wrote a book?

Walk Amongst the Stars is like The Hunger Games and Ready Player 1 collide.

https://www.danielsevenwriting.com/books-audio

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2025 Goal Recap

I realized too late that December is when I talked about my goals in 2024 and blew right past it with an I, Gamer last month. So this month, rather than make one massive post about both topics, I decided to do the Double Elimination Tournament and then move my goal recap to the next blog post. Whoopsies!

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Books

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Andy Weir does it again with this book. I read this one like crazy, and about halfway through I put the book down and declared that this will definitely be made into a movie. And sure enough, in the summer YouTube showed me that very trailer. In Project Hail Mary a man awakens on a specialized spaceship on a mission to save Earth. Except he has no memory and needs to figure out what he’s doing as his memories slowly come back to him.

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I had seen The Stand miniseries back in the 90s at some point, so I knew what to expect to a certain extent. But when I visited a used bookstore, I saw an absolutely thrashed copy held together with book tape and thought, “I’ll buy that for a dollar!” This version adds some cut content back into the book, stuff that’s kind of crazy that they removed in the first place. In The Stand a manmade virus wipes out humankind down to a small selection of survivors. Out of the ashes comes a great evil that the survivors must make a stand against. One of the greats from Stephen King, laws yes!

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Being a Xennial, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon was a big part of my childhood. I missed out on the whole phenomenon of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird’s original comic run. But for a while I kept hearing about how good The Last Ronin was, and with no more detail I just assumed it was some kind of feudal Japanese tale. Once I saw someone bring it up and reference the Ninja Turtles I rushed to buy it. The story takes place in the near future, where the Foot Clan rules over a chunk of New York. A lone turtle, the last ronin, comes to put an end to a long-standing feud.

Notable runners up:
Eaters of the Dead and Duskfall.

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Video

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Detective Benoit Blanc returns in the third installment of the Knives Out series. A series known for its combination of mystery and comedy. In this one, a priest gets assigned to a small town church. He and the Monsignor don’t see eye to eye, and then the Monsignor turns up dead. Then the mystery is afoot!

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Back in 2024, I watched a lot of really killer movies and TV shows, so much that Pantheon didn’t even make my honorable mentions. I loved this series, and honestly, while I enjoyed season one, ultimately it almost serves as the trip to the top of the rollercoaster and season two is where you plunge downward.

This series is about the first humans to be digitally uploaded and explores transhumanism and the politics therein. Very cool.

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In this one, Nick Friggin Cage plays a caricature of himself. He takes a job to spend time with a superfan at his mansion. After bonding with his superfan, played by Pedro Pascal, he’s taken aside by the CIA, who tell him that his new friend is a brutal criminal kingpin and that they want Mr. Cage to do some spying for them. Very funny movie, I loved it.

Notable runners up:
Cobra Kai final season, The Rehearsal S2

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Games

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Back in 2013, THQ filed for bankruptcy and liquidated its assets. And when I read that news, it occurred to me that I’d probably never get to see a sequel to Warhammer 40K: Space Marine. Imagine my surprise when the sequel I never thought would happen thundered in via drop pod in 2024.

In this game, you resume the role of Demetrian Titus. Stripped of his name and rank, he is made part of the Deathwatch. The game kicks off when you are deployed to a planet that is experiencing a Tyranid invasion.

Very cool game. It has co-op and multiplayer, but honestly I just wish it had a little more single-player content. They did a nice blend of taking the combat from the first game and modernizing it a little. The game is light on the story, and it gets doled out to you in snippets between missions. It’s short but sweet.

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I was only tangentially aware of this one and decided I’d look into it eventually. But it showed up on my PlayStation Plus account, so I gave it a shot. Honestly, the first-person shooter gameplay was only okay, but what really did it for me was the story and nostalgia. Being able to play as RoboCop and to get another look into that retro future world they made.

The story is about a new criminal who makes himself known. RoboCop is deployed to stop him, but thanks to some resurfacing Alex Murphy memories, he hesitates in the line of duty. Angered by this, OCP assigns a psychologist to RoboCop.

They even got Peter Weller to reprise his role as RoboCop.

The gameplay comes in two forms. Large mission areas with one goal and large mission areas that act as a hub for many smaller goals. I liked the latter more and wished the game had more of that.

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This is a game that when I initially saw it, I just saw it as one of those dating sims and forgot it existed. Years later I heard someone talking about it and they paused before any spoilers and said for anyone listening that hasn’t tried it, there’s more to this game than meets the eye and that they were going to just leave it at that and urged you to go play the game. I immediately stopped the podcast and made a note to grab that one at some point.

When it popped up on my PS+ account, I finally tried it, having dodged any spoilers for years. I’ll simply say that I found it to be an unsettling mind-blower.

Notable runners up:
Satisfactory and Spiderman 2

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