Two Steps Behind

Thank you to Def Leppard for providing the title to today's blog post.  It's in reference to the fact that at the moment I seem to be two steps behind the step forward I'd taken at last week's Fat Club.

I'm sending the llamas to Madrid for the weekend.  It's the Euro 2012 final on Sunday and they're supporting Spain.  They're all so excited it's been pandemonium round here, what with them flinging their sombreros in the air with jubilation, Enrique doing back flips all over the place, Ricardo getting busy making red and yellow leg warmers for the occasion and Miguel finally getting up from his sick bed to look for his passport.  He's still only on three legs at the moment but the cast is due to come off next week, and he can start training again in a couple of weeks.

You know what that means, of course, and they're so busy celebrating the fact that they're going on holiday that they've failed to notice that there will be no fiesta this week.  They only get upset when I don't lose weight, and have you ever seen an unhappy llama face?  It'd melt a heart of lead, I'm telling you.  Look:

Imagine twenty of those.  I  simply couldn't do it to them. 

After a week of hard slog, self-deprivation, a will of cast iron and Synning like a Puritan in an attempt to lose half a goddam sodding pound - I somehow inexplicably managed to put ON half a pound!!

I was gutted.  And really really narked.  Those blooming scales haven't been on my side since Andrea the Consultant bought them!! 

So, I felt the only thing to do under the circumstances was to come home, pour out a few large glasses of something interesting and have my first pizza of the year.  Let's face it, if I put half a pound on by being majorly strict, I may as well eat yummy food and have a good time putting weight on!!

Of course, I'm back on it today.  I do think having nights where you think "Soddit!" is an important part of the whole process.  I'm not going to put 3 1/2 stone back on by eating half a pizza and a enjoying a couple of drinks while I'm watching the football once in six months.  So long as it's just ONE night of forgetting about it out of seven or fourteen or thirty or however often you officially come to the end of your tether, rather than every night, it's not going to do you any harm and it does keep you going on the straight and narrow for a lot longer.  Constantly saying 'no' to food and drink that you're dying to say 'yes' to just depresses you, especially when you feel like you're constantly saying 'no' and not seeing any results from it.  Like me, at the moment.

Although I was genuinely buoyed when one of the ladies at Fat Club who hadn't been for the last couple of weeks turned to me and said, "Bloomin' 'eck, you haven't half gone skinny!  You can really see it in your face!  You're doing brilliant!"  I mean, I was so pleased that I didn't even think about correcting her grammar!! 

I know half a pound isn't the end of the world, but it's just so annoying.  I honestly feel at the moment that I will never ever get there.  Ever.  So I'm not going to think about it for the next few days, it's just too depressing. 

Besides, I've started reading again.  You know the biggest tip writers get?  READ.  As much as you can.  Just give it a whirl.  Get reading.  Open a book, sit down for an hour and let your eyes dance across the pages.  Not literally.  I have to say, when I was younger I was known to (my friend Emily will testify to this) read at least two books in one night.  Of late, I've totally got out of the habit of reading.  It's sheer laziness.  I've had the best of intentions of reading and just never got round to actually doing it in ages and ages.  Not properly.  Not in that 'I am actually so into this book that I have utterly lost my grip on reality' manner that made me fall in love with books and reading and writing in the first place type fashion.  Until yesterday when I started reading The Prisoner of Zenda.  I have a feeling that even though I've only read the first three chapters, if anyone wants me for the next week or so, I'll be in Ruritania. 

The reason I'm telling you this is because I think I've discovered the real cause of my writer's block.  I vaguely realised it yesterday afternoon when I read a snippet of Suzie Tullet's current work in progress, and couldn't stop thinking about all the different directions the story could have come from and might go to.  The realisation was cemented when I started reading Zenda.  I haven't read anything - and so it naturally follows that I can't write anything. 

I don't even know how this works.  It's some sort of magic.  I had worried for a while that writing after reading would be viewed by others as a type of plaigarism.  This, however, is a stupid line of reasoning because - as everyone knows - there are only seven stories, therefore there are no original ideas, there are only variations on themes.  But reading actually doesn't have the effect of making someone write a carbon copy of what they've read.  It does more than that.  It somehow manages to realign your brain into thinking creatively, so that you can form your own plots and subplots and tangents from what you're writing - no story ever really finishes because everyone can add to it or put their own spin on it.  It brings characters and worlds to life and it shows you the way you need to construct sentences, paragraphs and dialogue in order to do it.  They're How-To manuals for the Muse.  It makes the Muse think 'hang on a minute, I can do better than that!' and then before you know it you've written something, most of the time completely different to the thing you've been reading.  I simply haven't had anything to work from.  That's my problem.

I really wish I'd made this glaringly obvious discovery a lot sooner.  I might need to go off-grid while I get some heavy duty reading done over the next few weeks.  I have ideas and hopefully this will help me to realise them.

So, all in all, the utter devastation I felt last night has somewhat dissipated (I think the pizza and brandy helped massively, in fairness) and I'm really rather looking forward to the weekend.  Hopefully I'll get a lot of reading and some other rather important things done and when I report back on Monday I can tell you all about The Prisoner of Zenda and what happened to Rudolf Rassendyll at the coronation...  I hope that Michael fella keeps out of it.  Never trust a fictional character who has been played onscreen by James Mason - that's my advice!!

Whatever you're up to this weekend, have a lovely time, and thank you so much for sitting through this torturously long blog entry!!