Grace Under Pressure

Back to hairshirts and porridge as my Scottish Aunt Rose used to say. My resolution to simply 'lighten up' is taking on a physical turn with a health jag. Nothing more boring than other people's diets so I won't go there, but a couple of things have inspired this. You need stamina to write a novel, so it's time to get down to some exercise. BC (before children - both 10.5lb babies hence the need to keep an eye on the posture and old ab exercises) - I loved ballet, horse riding, fencing (learnt with an amazing 6'5" man who wore floor length fur coats and a pearl earring). Now my options are somewhat limited - toddler speed walking or dust off the exercise videos.

Apparently the tide is turning away from super-skinny size 0s but that's no excuse. There's even a hip to waist ratio - 0.7 is apparently the ideal woman, and has been since the delightfully curvy Marilyn Monroe. By the time you get to our age you know what works and what doesn't. There is a site out there with exercises for the writer if you are that way inclined - apparently there's even a condition known as 'writer's bottom'. Even Haruki Murakami has just published a book 'What I talk about when I talk about running'. He started exercising once he noticed the adverse effect writing was having on his physique. It is an occupational hazard - we are all sedentary, home-based ... if any of you have tried and tested exercise or diet tips do pass them along.

At 4am this morning (yes, the insomnia continues), I was thinking about the brilliant Christopher Walken video (as you do) where he picks himself up from the armchair and starts tapdancing. Talk about lightening up. I love the Deer Hunter - he was luminously beautiful, and watching him disintegrate on screen from their capture to the final Russian roulette scenes was heartbreaking. De Niro was like a Hemingway hero - courageous, the embodiment of 'grace under pressure'. Missy's comment yesterday about writing taking guts was bang on the nail. Guts, courage is what gets us through, and keeps us submitting work in the face of blocks and rejection. I don't know if writing is more like playing Russian roulette or poker. I remember sitting in a bar in Amsterdam playing poker with my art teacher (not the one from yesterday's post - another, bearded, 70s dude who liked creating double exposures of cling-wrapped nudes). That night I won - at 18, I felt like I knew everything, was full of courage and bluff bravado. These days I feel like I know nothing. You know you have a good hand (an edited book, ready to go), but what have all the other guys (the agents, publishers) in hand?

TODAY'S PROMPT: Robbie Burns was very big on the Scottish side of our family - one of my grandfather's favourite lines was from 'On a Louse':

O wad some Power the giftie gie us,
To see oursels as ithers see us!

(O would some Power, the gift to give us,
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us,
And, foolish notion:
What airs of dress and bearing would leave us,
And even pridefullness!)

Most of us have a picture in our minds of who we are, but when was the last time you caught up with who you are now, how people see you? Do you care (my grandfather also said when you are young you care about how people think you look, and when you are older you care more about how people think you are - your thoughts, personality etc)? Interestingly Son mentioned he often chooses books on the strength of author photos, and Missy had a great post about photoshopping pictures recently. Is the threat of appearing on a dust jacket enough to motivate you? What gives you the courage to keep going with your work? What would help you have more confidence in the hand you are holding? Personally I am starting gently with this whole exercise thing and I'm going to head off to try the Barefoot Doctor's free meditation tasters - someone said it's 'better for you than a Kit Kat' and I could do with relaxing after the two year old switched off the computer half way through this post. Grace under pressure - something to aim for. And just in case we are getting too serious, here's a great lesson in not taking yourself seriously - the lovely Christopher doing a spoof of 'The Three Little Pigs'.