My book Metl: The ANGEL Weapon was just published!
But even though it’s my first published book, it’s far from the first book I wrote.
So let’s take a look at my first, hot-garbage-fire of a book that I wrote, and talk about all the things that I learned from it.
During the last stream, we talked about how you can recycle ideas from old books and use them in your new ones, which is exactly what I did with Metl.
Watch the video of the full stream here,
or scroll down for a few highlights.
Here’s some of the questions/answers:
The First Book I Wrote
- My first book was a 200,000-word hot mess
- Of course, being inexperienced, I thought it was amazing
- I worked on it for over four years, pouring my heart and soul into it, only for nothing to come of it…
What I Recycled
- …but just because this book didn’t work out, that didn’t mean it was a waste of time!
- Not only did I learn a lot, but some of the ideas in it were cool, and they were recycled it into Metl
- Some recycled ideas: friends going on a journey, skepticism of authority/tradition, a mysterious all-powerful being, secrets/truth about the world
Abandoning a Book
- It’s good to pursue something as much as you can, but it’s also good to know when to stop
- You can drop a smaller goal (a single book) in favor of the larger goal (getting published)
- When that happens, it feels bad, but you can always recycle the ideas later in new/better stories
- It may seem like you’re falling back, but you’re actually taking a step forward toward your larger goal
For more details, including seeing the summary/first page of my old book, definitely check out the video above!
After that, random-subscriber capricy chose that we write this prompt: A person lives on a star, and is able to bounce around to their neighboring stars in her constellation but has no one to talk to. Suddenly, she’s released from her tether and can go wherever she likes.
Here’s what we came up with:
Once upon a time, when the Earth was still young, the Sun was very curious about her green and blue planet-neighbor. She wanted to go down and visit all the strange little creatures that she’d heard lived there, but there was one problem: if she got too close to the Earth, then the planet would burn up and all the poor little creatures would die.
But one day the Sun got an idea. The ball of shining light was actually made up of her bright blonde and red hair, constantly curling and flowing around each other in fiery fashion, while her small body dangled down below.
If she cut her hair off, then she could go and visit Earth!
Excited that she had found a way to travel, the Sun sliced an asteroid-knife through her luminescent locks, cutting herself loose from her giant blazing mane. With a smile on her face, and only a little bit of hot hair left on her head, she ran toward the Earth, feeling quite a bit of relief from leaving all that weave behind her.
When she got to Earth, she was so happy to see all the cute little creatures. There were mastodons with big white tusks and hoses for noses, there were giraffes with necks as tall as trees, there were turtles flopping around on land using flippers like hands, and there were humans who adorably clinked together stones and wood, trying to make tools.
The Sun loved watching them all day, until the night came. When the night arrived, blackness covered the Earth. All of the cute little creatures hid for safety, shivering and shaking in fear, no longer able to see anything, and assuming the worst was waiting in the shadows.
But there was nothing the Sun could do. As long as the Earth rotated, there would always be night and day. Even she was powerless to stop that.
It was with a heavy heart that the Sun travelled back home. She wished she could help the poor Earth creatures, but there was nothing she could do except keep shining as bright as possible during the day for them.
She brought her head back up to where she’d cut her hair before, pushed against the strands, and…
…nothing happened. The Sun had expected her old hair to reconnect back to her head, but all the strands did was rub against each other. Her old ball of hair, that had once been a part of her, now grew and shone all by itself without her.
For a moment, the Sun was devastated. She could no longer go back to being the star that she was! What was she going to do?
Then, she got an idea.
The Sun ran back to Earth, hoping that her idea would work. She parked herself in the sky that was just turning dark, and let the few hairs that remained on her head shine as bright as they could.
Suddenly, all over the shadowy half of Earth, a bright ball of light appeared in the sky. All of the creatures, startled at first, crawled out of their caves and shelters to stare up at the new sight. It wasn’t as bright as the sun, but it was plenty to give them a little light during the dark scary night.
The Sun was so happy. Not only could she now be closer to all the cute little creatures on Earth, but she could make their nights a little more bearable too. There was only one issue: she couldn’t be called “Sun” anymore; that was her ball of hair.
She needed a new name. And what better way, she thought, to get a new name than to let the Earth creatures she was protecting decide it for her? She listened down to the Earth, deciding that the first name she heard one of them call her she would take as her own.
It came from a black and white creature with an udder and hooves that looked up at her and spoke her new name aloud:
“Mooooooooooon!”
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!