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