The Regression of Elden Williams

Lately I've been thinking about a conversation I had one evening with my friend, Matt Hunter. I can't remember the substance of the conversation but I'm sure that I was, as usual, playing Devil's Advocate. As I mentioned in a previous post, I have a deep distrust of surety in anyone, including myself. Matt liked to take up a position on something and I almost always took an opposite or at least tangential position in order to start a debate. On this particular night, in response to something I'd said, Matt remarked, "You're quite the contrarian, aren't you?" I'll admit, part of me was tickled by that description. This was actually the first time I'd heard that specific word and I immediately embraced it. I was a contrarian. I often found people's strongly held positions were a function of inertia and patterned, rather than critical, thinking. I fall into the same traps which is why I question everything.  So what's my point and how ...

I may have mentioned that I’ve been publishing on Wattpad on Fridays. That will not change. However, I have a confession to make; I don’t really care about the story I’ve been working on. I was not making any progress on the stories I considered to be “worth telling” because I liked the ideas too much. I was afraid I would “screw them up.” By that I mean, fail to tell the story I had in mind. It’s ultimately the same mindset that drove me away from visual arts. I was never able to recreate the pictures I had in my head to my satisfaction.  Seeing my paralysis my girlfriend, April, suggested that rather than work on one of my best ideas, why didn’t I work on one of my worst. Worst is relative, of course. That brought two ideas to mind so I selected one and got to work. I had fun at first. I was amused by some of the scenes, I had a little romance going between two characters, I threw in what I considered to be outrageous action in an effort to “raise the peril.” I got to about 15...

I’d convinced myself to skip posting today. Here I am, third week in and I’m looking for excuses to take the day off. It’s Memorial Day, I can post tomorrow. Everyone takes today off if they can. I’m self-employed so I get to set my schedule. Sure, I promised to post every Monday (I reserve the right not to post while travelling) but what difference does one day make? Humph! I’ve always really loved the song ‘Father and Son’ by Yusuf Islam. When I first heard it as an angsty teenager, I’d just lost my Dad right in the middle of my struggle to get him to acknowledge my fledgling adulthood and the idea behind that song felt right on target. I was the son, struggling to make my father understand me even though that was no longer an actual possibility. Over the last decade, unnoticed at first, I’ve come to realize that I no longer identify with the son. I still feel the old ache from the missed opportunity with my Dad when I hear the song but I find myself identifying much more w...

When I decided to try writing full-time at the end of 2018, I was sure I knew how my new career was going to proceed. After years of procrastination, I was finally raring to go. I knew that my top priority was production. As long as I was writing, everything else would follow. While that is true up to a point, there have been other obstacles. One of the major roadblocks I failed to allow for was my preconceptions. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last four decades that’s central to my way of thinking, it’s to question everything. In fact, I have an inherent distrust of absolute certainty, both in myself and others. The way I see it, certainty is overly restrictive to the mind. I’ve found that once I’ve become certain about something, I stop examining it critically. It’s like taking thoughts, beliefs or behaviors and enshrining them in a mental trophy case, there to be admired but never taken back down and examined aside from the occasional dusting. Once I started wr...

How long should one harbor an unrealized dream? That’s obviously a rhetorical question with a subjective answer but I think, for me, the answer is indefinitely. It comes down to the difference between a dream and a goal. I’ve always dreamed of being a writer but I’ve never been able to make the leap from dream to goal. Goals include action. Dreams are ephemeral; they tend to disappear when you wake up, after all. I’ve certainly never actually submitted any of my writing for publication. Until now. Going forward, I’m going to publish twice a week. I’ll post something here on my blog on Mondays. On Fridays, I will post new fiction on wattpad for weekend reading enjoyment (beginning May 15, 2020). Today’s post is short because I’ve spent most of the day tweaking this site (often unsuccessfully). Please pardon my dust as I learn the ropes.  Talk to you next Monday.