Mount Wilson Writers

For the initial three days, it rained. An unabated, torrential blanket of moisture smacked the pavement like pistol-precision hammers. He could not go outside. It had been enough of a struggle to get from the airport to the hotel, even though he sat in the back of a taxi cab. The driver had not said a word. What could he say? What would be heard above the din of the water that pulsated and punctured the metal frame of the vehicle? Now he sat or, rather, leaned upon the window sill. He gazed through the watery haze while smoking an endless chain of cigarettes. The smoke swirled in giant white puffs out of his mouth, floating toward the ceiling. His sight shifted from window to drifting smoke clouds, only to return to the rain. The television was on. The picture sent lightning flashes about the room. Yet the volume was turned down. No words emanated, only the shouts of the storm.
Sometimes during the three day stretch he lay on his back on the bed, still smoking, letting the ash drop on his bed covers. Room service was his only encounter with civilization—brief and without exchange of dialogue. Only the passing of money and goods signified interaction. After dinner on the second evening, he happened to catch a fleeting glimpse of himself in the mirror on the dressing table. He looked haggard and older than his twenty-five years. He had not showered or shaven since his arrival. He thought of her. The rain paralyzed his thoughts. The storm continued unceasingly as he slipped deeper into an oblivious depression. This was not the journey he had envisioned.

Where Shall I begin? At the beginning I suppose. The most logical of junctures to initiate a story. It is quite possible to start in the middle of the tale, but unfortunately the reader would thus be clueless to exactly what was transpiring. The end would be an ingenious way to approach this conundrum. One might find it comical to be privy to the end results without knowing the thickness of the story. It would save time, certainly. The reader wouldn’t have to wade through an endless stream of detail but rather get hit with the punch line immediately.
Starting at the end also saves the author time and headaches. No meaningless plots, no major or minor character development, no conflict, no denouement. Yes, all considered a less painstaking way to go about storytelling. Unfortunately in this day and age the public demands something far more substantial. Readers actually desire a plot. It’s a sick sick world we currently reside in. The rules of the game have shifted. Gone are the days when an author could scribble the end of a story, sit back, light his tobacco pipe, and congratulate himself on a job well done. Now the public clamors for a meaningful story, a fact that is made apparent by the thought provoking masterpieces that the Hollywood movie industry churns out at an alarming intellectual rate. How can an author compete?
The thing that perplexes me is that if I told you “The man exited through the gaping hole into the purple sugar-coated atmosphere. The End,” why is it necessary to have a beginning or middle. The end result is always the same. It is all too obvious why the man did what he did in this context. If it is not self explanatory then why does the reader go on living his wretched pathetic life?

Scholars who vehemently debate my theory often pose such questions as “have you been published?” To this I often guffaw. If you mean published in the sense that a piece of my written work has been submitted to a magazine, newspaper or book publishing company, and subsequently printed in one of the aforementioned media, and ultimately read by someone other than myself, then the forthright answer is an unabashed ‘no.’ Laugh if you will. I hear the chuckling behind the bleachers at highschool football games, at church picnics, or solitary camping excursions. To those of you who ridicule allow me to pose a follow up question of my own. Was Sam Jones ever published? Wipe that expression of derisive bewilderment off your smug face. Oh you don’t want to answer. You remain silent? You holier than thou sunuvabitch.
I will answer the query myself than. No, Sam Jones was not published. Nor was his father or brother. As it turns out none of them were adequate writers. In fact two of then were illiterate. The other was a deaf mute who took great pride in his fencing skills. I never thought he was that spectacular however. But boy oh boy, his wife could cook up a fine set of waffles.
This brings me back to my original point about where a story should start. I don’t want to bore you with the details of my theory. Suffice to say, in my estimation, the best story is one that is never written at all. And now I begin my ending. Carefully, succinctly, thought provokingly, and candidly this tale, like a woodpecker shot by a bb gun, dies