Saturday, June 3, 2017

An Old Friend Returns

By
Scott D. Parker

This is going to sound silly to some of y’all but it was great to see Calvin Carter again.

Carter is my main western hero. He’s a railroad detective in the old west. A former actor, he approaches all his cases with as much flair as necessary—and maybe a little more.

In mid April, after writing about him for three-and-a-half months, I shifted gears to prep for my “S. D. Parker” re-branding. I wrote about this last week, how I revised two websites, revised all my existing titles—both mystery and western—with new covers, etc. It was quite an undertaking.
Well, earlier this week, all of that busy work was accomplished. The only thing left was writing. I prefer to start new projects on the first day of the month, so I waited until 1 June to restart Carter #4. I re-read all that I had written back in April and got myself up-to-date. I made a few notes and readied myself to get back to the story.

Interesting note: I ended up hitting a wall back in April in chapter 9 of the book. That’s where I left it, literally in the middle of sentence. In my re-read of the story, I ended up thinking that Carter should have made a different decision at the end of chapter 9. Well, as of 5:00 a.m. Thursday morning, I booted up the Mac, opened the Scrivener file, and changed Carter’s course.

And the wall that had stopped me in April vanished.

Amazing what a little time away will do for you.

Speaking of time away, I ended up finishing two separate, non-Carter stories in the intervening weeks. Getting back into Carter’s world was such a wonderful place to be. It was like a breath of fresh air. The urge to write, the anticipation to get back to the laptop and write the next scene returned. I loved it.

So, for y’all writers with series characters, what’s y’all’s feelings when you return to that character and start (or re-start) a new story? Is it like welcoming back a friend?

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