I went along with a school field trip to the recycling center a while back, and stumbling upon these pictures again has me thinking about recycling old ideas into brand new things.
Early on, as I took this fledgling idea of being a writer and tried to learn how to actually do it, I asked my wife for help thinking of character names. All those names are forgotten to time. Almost. Waters Cooper remains.
For some reason, Waters has stuck with me all this time. When I finally found the perfect place for him, it felt like he’d been patiently waiting for this story the whole time. His story.
Around the same time, I had a simple title idea come to mind (an homage to one of my favorite books): A Wizard of the West. I never did anything with it. I wasn’t good enough to write the story it deserved. (I’m still not.) Unused, the title went back from whence it came, waiting in my subconscious for its chance to see the light again. A few years ago it bubbled back up, and while it still isn’t a title I think I’ll use right now, the feeling it invokes has taken hold of my current writing.
Both of these ideas were, over time, forgotten, found again, and recycled into the current series I’m working on, the story of a wizard-in-the-making named Waters Cooper, and his world that, even if it isn’t quite “The West”, definitely branches off the same family tree.
Justin Williams 