My book Metl: The ANGEL Weapon came out today! Hooray!
To celebrate, we did a live Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything)… with a creative twist.
Instead of just answering questions in the normal, boring way, we answered them as if they were writing prompts.
During the last stream, we celebrated the release of my first book Metl: The ANGEL Weapon by doing a “writing prompt” AMA.
Watch the video of the full stream here,
or scroll down for a few highlights.
Here’s some of the questions/answers:
Buttermilkss asked: do you tend to use any “rituals” (e.g., eating a certain comfort food or listening to a certain type of music) when you write?
Cat and Dog both wanted to write a story. Cat sat down at her desk, pulled out her pen and paper, and started writing.
“Cat!” Dog yelled, horrified at what she was seeing. “You’re doing it all wrong. You’re supposed to listen to music to get in the writing mood first.”
But Cat was too busy writing to listen to music. So Dog went to her room, spent her time picking out her favorite CDs, and listened to music by herself to get in the mood. Before she knew it the day was over and she hadn’t written anything.
The next day, Cat sat down at her desk, pulled out her pen and paper, and started writing.
“Cat!” Dog yelled, disgusted at what she was seeing. “You’re doing it all wrong. You’re supposed to light incense to get in the writing mood first.”
But Cat was too busy writing to light any incense. So Dog went to the incense shop, sniffed around at all the different flavors, bought her favorite, and then came back and lit a nice strawberry one. By the time it had burned down, the day was over and she hadn’t written anything.
The next day, Cat sat down at her desk, pulled out her pen and paper, and then turned to Dog.
“Dog,” she asked. “Can you read what I wrote and tell me what you think?”
“Cat!” Dog barked, appalled at what she was seeing. “How could you possibly write anything? You didn’t listen to music! You didn’t smell any incense! You didn’t even have any snacks!”
Cat shrugged. “I don’t do drugs.”
CJ_Withersword asked: What was the original idea for METL?
Old Man Inspiration hobbled around the caves of his host’s mind, cackling and wheezing out giggles. His bare wrinkled feet scratched against the ground; the flappy skin of his arms swayed in the breeze with his wispy white hairs. Just a few feet in front of him lay a mind cave, the perfect hiding spot. He’d been winning at hide and go seek for over a year now, his longest streak. And if he could just climb into that dark recess of his host’s mind, he’d surely win this round too.
But just as he reached out to make the final leap into the dark hole, the cave disappeared. All the catacombs around him vanished, leaving him caught out in the open, bathed in the bright white lights of Thought.
The old man’s wrinkles melted away, splashing off him like watery cocoon, leaving behind a young child with narrowed eyes of indignation staring above. He’d lost this round of hide and go seek, fair and square, and now it was time for him to keep up his end of the bargain, as was tradition.
Young Inspiration reached up to the white oblivion, and gave his host an Idea. It was a simple image: a child leaving an orphanage with nothing more than a photo of his father in hand, while a metallic moon in the sky stared down from above.
His duty fulfilled, Young Inspiration ran away. What better time to find new, better hiding spots than when his host was distracted by a fresh Idea?
ericadeel asked: What kinds of things does Abbey (your wife) do to support your life as a writer? Spouses of creative people are often forgotten in the fray.
The mad scientist stood hunched over the lifeless corpse on his experimentation table, pulling out his twisted white hair so hard that purpled veins were popping out of his forehead.
“What am I missing?!” he yelled. His eyes darted over every inch of the body: its lobster claws, its horse legs, its alligator head. All of it was beautifully constructed and sewn together, a masterpiece of an abomination against nature.
From the shadows off to the side, his assistant shuffled into view. She was a small, tumored creature, wrapped in stained cloth that barely hid the bulbous growths feeding off her body. And yet, she was always smiling.
“Why don’t you take a break, master?” she asked sweetly. She raised the tray she was carrying, bringing two cups of hot tea closer to the scientist’s nostrils. “I made us some tea. You deserve a break.”
A flash of hot rage surged through him. The mad scientist slapped the cups off her tray, sending them crashing to the floor. They burst into a hundred shattered pieces, and the liquid seeped into the stone ground.
“I’ll take a break when I’m dead!” he shouted at the girl, his chest heaving with anger. The girl didn’t budge. She just rolled her protruding eyes.
“Oh yeah? Your mom will take a break when she’s dead.”
The mad scientist was about to lash out at her again, to punish her for her stupid attitude. But then, he realized something. That was it. That was what he’d been missing for his creation!
It was lacking a personality.
He’d hacked off the most impressive limbs he could find, stitched together all the best organs, and yet he’d neglected to harvest the most important part of anything alive: its personality.
The mad scientist smiled. Thankfully, he knew just where he could get a good one of those.
After that, we did a an “Unfortunate Animals” prompt. We’ve done these a few times before, and here’s the unfortunate animal fact we had to write about this time: if dolphins fully go to sleep, they drown.
Here’s what we came up with:
People always wonder why dolphins are so happy all the time. Whenever you look at them, they always seem to be smiling, like long slippery dogs splashing around.
And yet, when you learn their secret, you really start to wonder how that’s possible.
Since dolphins have to breathe air, that means they can never fully go to sleep at night in the ocean or else they will drown. All night long, they have to constantly keep one side of their brain awake, switching back and forth every few minutes by opening and closing one of their eyes. Just imagining a single night like that as a human is pure torture. The poor creatures would be jealous of us if they knew the sweet sleep cycles that we were blessed with.
Right?
Since dolphins can never fully sleep, that means they never get to dream. They never imagine worlds different from our own, or wish that they were a different dolphin, or relive past trauma. Instead, they make their daily lives their dreams. Rather than spending a couple of unconscious hours exploring random possibilities, they live out their wildest fantasies in real life.
For a dolphin, there is no greater adventure than living in the now, whether that’s poking a crab with their snout, breaching with a friend, or giving a sea-sponge as a gift to a mate.
Maybe we should be the jealous ones.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 6:30pm-10:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Scott Wilson is the author of the novel Metl: The ANGEL Weapon,
now available online!