Help

I worked really hard this week. Still I was surprised to find myself excitedly saying, "Thank god it's Friday" when five o'clock hit and all the campers started arriving for the weekend. In a few more hours my family will be up for the weekend so I am done until Monday morning.

I think I thought writing would be easy. I enjoy it, why would it be hard? But it's a roller coaster and every morning I am a little bit terrified to turn on my laptop. One day the muse is with me and I'm astounded at the plot twists and character's development that seem to flow effortlessly onto the screen. Other days are torture. I stare hopelessly out the window praying for the groundhog underneath the cabin to chew through the floor and swallow me whole. Sometimes the tide can turn in a matter of minutes. It's fascinating and frustrating work.

The story itself is, at times, far more action and plot driven than anything I enjoy reading and those parts are absolutely dreadfully written.

Please, does anyone out there have any suggestions of well-written action type novels- preferably literary as opposed to Grishamy- I can read to get a handle on how to write this stuff well?

Wordcount

It's the first day of my new job: writer.

I got a lot done today.

I woke up early just as I had planned. I got in a half hour of kickboxing despite my crippled back, vacuumed both floors of the house and did a load of laundry all before breakfast. I was off to a great start.

After breakfast I completed the first of seven modules for one of my specialization certificates, another load of laundry and digitized even more of my life. Still right on track.

After lunch I was left with two options. I could write or, I could fix my bike tire. So naturally I borrowed my mother's John Deere cruiser-style three speed pedaller and headed downtown to the bike shop to buy patches. I felt very Mjiep ala Anne Frank as I cruised down the deserted daytime streets and tried to decide if the lack of traffic in the "Automobile City" was irony or paradox. The bike shop, it turns out, is closed on Mondays but the air smelled of earth and the sun warmed my skin so I wasn't the least upset.

Except that I had run out of excuses to procrastinate. The piece I'm working on is something of a disaster at the moment; I can't seem to stick with any angle I choose from one sit down to the next and today was no exception. I deleted more than I wrote and I was relieved when my mother came home from work and we set out for a walk.

In this city everyone, and I mean everyone, smiles and says hello when you pass them. This congeniality can actually be more tiring than the walking. We walked at least 3.5 km, were nearly mowed down by a trio of Baptist bikers (as identified by my mother, I don't know my Baptists from my Lutherans), and we ate a well-balanced sufficiently tasty dinner before I picked up the laptop again.

I wrote two sentences, deleted two paragraphs and then helped my mother set up the wireless network which I am now using to record the fact that today, day one of my first day at work as a writer, I have written, at the conclusion of this blog post, exactly -15 words.

Maybe I should have slept in.