Freedom

I’ve just downloaded a nifty bit of software.  If it’s good enough for Nora Ephron, then it’s good enough for me.  It’s called Freedom and it allows you to take a self-enforced break from the internet.  You simply enter the number of minutes you want to work, undistracted by the endless lure of cyberspace, then it locks you out until that amount of time has passed.

The deal is, you can’t just have the computer open and idling, you actually have to be working for your Freedom minutes to tick past.  So the minutes don't tick by unless you're writing. Pretty neat, huh?

So, while I’m talking about things that are neat, there is a similar program called Anti-Social, which still allows you to access the internet except for social networking sites.  Oh how I want this.  BUT it’s only available for Macs at this stage.  I emailed the software developer who, being a real, live person, took the time to email me back! (Thanks, Fred.  Most appreciated).  Sadly, it’s a much more complex process for Windows than for Macs, so it will be a while coming.  If ever.

Sigh.  First and only time in my life I’ve wished for a Mac.  In the meantime I’m going cold turkey on the internet – well as much as I can – until the new semester starts and then I’ll be back online thrashing the WWW in a big way. 



Apple keyboard by Håkan Dahlström @ flickr

Rebel

It was writer’s group day (my favourite day in the month) and one of our ex-teacher members was running a short grammar workshop for the group.  In particular she was extolling the difference between BECAUSE and AS when used as conjunctions.  She claimed that the use of AS when there was causality between the two clauses was wrong, wrong, wrong.

I wanted to jump up and run to the Style Guide to check, as I wasn’t convinced that I’d just been taught an inviolable tenet of modern English grammar.  (See what I just did?)  Sadly, I don’t have my own copy of the Style Guide.  (I’m holding off on the purchase because I hear another edition is due out soon).  So the exactitude of the claim remains unproven.  And the lesson was not well spent on me.  

It did however fire up my inner rebel.  This is the part of me that eats cold pizza for breakfast and drives against the direction arrows in shopping centre car parks, because I can.  The part of me that talks back at the telly like it’s listening, and wears granny undies as a political statement that only I know about.  It’s the slice of me that lives on the wild side, but on the inside.  It’s the glimpse of me that that surprises or even shocks the other members of the group nearly every time I read something I’ve written.  It’s the part of me that is certain it has a story to tell that the world hasn’t heard yet.

I consider this fragment of rebellion to be a useful corner of my psyche, and something that a writer should fiercely guard and promote within her or himself.  It creates a frame to peer through that shapes the landscapes beyond it, like a frost-crazed window that bends the world’s light into something beautiful.  It gifts a writer their individuality, their tiny sliver of moonlit brilliance.  It’s the difference between serving up a predictable story in cheap glassware, rather than the sleight of hand that delivers something crystalline and unexpected.  It’s the good crazy.  The one you want to drag up into your writer’s garret and tickle mercilessly until it vomits up a piece of the sky.



Crystals and Light -
Cristaux et lumiere by monteregina @ flickr



Disclaimer

So, that read a little like a disclaimer, didn’t it? 

I’m not usually a fan of the disclaimer.  They tend to come across as pre-emptive apologies, as if the person knows full well they are serving up an undercooked cake.

Well, I’d like to make it abundantly clear:  there is nothing wrong with my cake.  It just takes a long time to bake and tends to be served up in small pieces, for now, anyway.  But the cake itself is absolutely as good as it should be for someone with my flair for cooking and level of baking experience.  Sometimes I even manage a tolerable layer of icing.

So, why even mention it?

Because if I don’t, there is a cake-eating elephant in the room that I’ll have to ignore each time I squeeze past it to my desk.



O Elefante by Murilo Morais @ flickr

Every time I sit down to write, this altered speed of thinking sits down with me.  It’s a large part of my subjective experience of writing right now.  Acknowledging and accepting this unhappy truth allows me to move ahead with and despite it.  And since Destination: denouement is all about Getting Over It. And Getting On With It it’s entirely appropriate to allow myself this freedom in this space.  

Especially because I would hate for any Destination: denouement readers to be injured by a pachyderm.   





I'm only going to say this once

I’m trying to learn not to be so fussy about things.  Generally, but with my writing especially.  My cognitive speed has recently slowed (yes, there’s a story there that I may or may not share one day) and so has the pace of my writing.  I especially have trouble trying to work out whether there is internal order in what I have written.  This means the editing process is lengthy and painful, and that this level of travail is entirely new to me.

But, I’m trying to channel some blitheness in my approach, some just-keep-moving dynamism and flow.  I’m convinced that the more writing I lay down in volume, the more my brain cells will fire and the neural pathways will rewire.  Eventually, the writing will cure itself.  So, if my grammar is a little unorthodox, or you come across a scandalous misuse of vocabulary, cut me some slack.  I do, and for now at least it’s a good thing.