Your First Published Novel: Part 16

It's just a hair longer than a month before Death by Cliché releases. About seven weeks until the book release party. I'm not prone to anxiety, but the pressure is starting to get to me. The problem is the tremendous level of powerlessness I'm feeling right now.

At this point, the cover isn't finished (to my knowledge.) The audiobook files aren't all in. I don't start the third draft of book two for another week or two. I can work on book three, but if I get too far ahead of my writer's group, then I just end up with the time pushed off later. Also, there are only a couple hours in the day where I can write, so working on that during all my free time isn't really practical unless I want to burn down the relationships in my personal life.

So I wait. It's been a long time since one of my books was in someone else's hands temporarily. With my game company, I'm frantically working on the book right up until the last moment. Writing books for other game companies, I turn in my finals and I'm mostly done except for the occasional con work. But the marketing of this book still falls mostly on my shoulders. I have a team to advise and set things up, but the actual public work is all me, and that's all still out there. So my emotional ability to move on from a book doesn't apply here. I can't move on. My role here isn't over yet.

Here's my strategy. There is an MMO that recently released in the US called Black Desert Online. It's fun enough. Some of my friends love it, although the gameplay isn't exactly my thing. Here's the advantage the game does have.

It has a rich AFK life. And trade empires. Trade empires that require a rich AFK life.

AFK stand for Away From Keyboard.

The most profitable thing I can do, right now in the game, it actively sleeping in a bed for an hour and a half to build up energy I can convert into cash through hard bargaining. But that's not all. There are trade routes that take 20 minutes or more to run, with a minute or two of buying and selling at either end. You can AFK fish and make solid money.

The last three and a half months almost killed me because I was working 80 hours or more a week. I had no recreation. Black Desert is a game where during a four-hour writing session, I could utilize all four hours in the game with only about fifteen minutes of real attention. My plan is to build my trade empire in that game over this next week or so to the point where, when I have to start drafting again in May and my time just goes away, I'll still feel like I'm playing a game. I'll still be working 80 hours a week. I'll just be playing 30 hours at the same time. Not actively playing, but I think I can trick my brain into thinking that's really goofing off.

And so much of the productivity in our lives is just hacking our brains into doing our bidding, isn't it?

That's my plan, at any rate. I'll let you know how it turns out.