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...