idk wtf this is

For all those who were wondering if my Farm Together 2 obsession ever stopped

NARRATOR: (absolutely no one wondered this)

It has not. And I must say, the recent inclusion of rainbow llamas is probably the best thing that happened to me all week.

Unclear why that screencap is so scronched but you get the idea. They are event critters, so I gotta grind some shit out to unlock them permanently. They are gonna live next to the unicorns.

I suffer mightily from sunk cost fallacy, and I've developed a constellation of rulesets to help me navigate this. One of the most effective techniques I've discovered is being able to simulate physically throwing things away.

All my projects have a trash folder, and any time I need to rewrite a chapter or cut something, it goes in the trash. The idea here is if I made a horrible mistake, I can still dig it out of the trash, just like I would in my office at home. Dig rate is like... less than 1 percent. I've dug something out of the trash maybe once. But the possibility of being able to dig things out of the trash has made it a lot easier to cut darlings.

This past week I was trying to decide which story to finish next and I was pretty meh on most of them. I looked at all the drafts and general cruft lying around, and I set up a trash can, and I started throwing stuff in it. I was ruthless. Anything less than X words, gone. Concepts that have been sitting around a few years that I never "got around to" are clearly not interesting enough to pursue, so gone. A muddled concept that split into two drafts, because I couldn't figure out a clear direction? Both parts gone. (These are the worst, by the way.) Hate this idea now? Goes without saying, maybe, but gone!

By the end of it, I'd whittled down my graveyard to such an extent I realized... I'm done? I'm done. I'm finished with this generation of pen names. I did the thing, and it's time to move on. And I felt it this time. It wasn't, "I should retire this pen," it was, "This pen is retired now. There's nothing left to write for it."

As someone who drags pen names around for years, this was very liberating. So I've spent the last few days chasing down outstanding royalty payouts, deleting unnecessary accounts, and turning off auto-renewal on domains. It's very cleansing.

I was going to do another post but forget that noise, I'll put it right here.

Obvious (?) Shit I Learned the Hard Way Cause I'm That Guy

Over the past few years I have been given advice by people who are much better at this, and I have made a point of Questioning the Premise (QTP, see Becca Syme) or going with my gut most of the time. I've sold 6,000 books which is more than average but not "a lot" so take this as you will. Shout out to all the dudes who were right who I didn't listen to.

( this got dumbly long )

And if you say "Renaldo you don't sell enough books to know squat about anything why should anyone care what you think," that's valid but also fuck you.

ANYWAY, my takeaway is

Don't worry about doing all the things. Do the things you have energy for or like. A lot of "the things" have absolutely negligible impact compared to writing good books, having solid covers that your readership recognizes, and solid passive advertising, unless you're already selling a crapton of books and you are wanting to expand into every nook and cranny.

IDK what my full strategy will be for my next pen but I ain't doin none of ^^^^ that nonsense.