Can doing one difficult thing help you achieve another difficult thing?

I don't enjoy exercise. I know it's good for me. I know it's necessary. I always feel great afterwards.

I resent the time it takes out of my day, especially if I have to drive somewhere before I can even begin.

Still, I have to do it.

This afternoon, I decided to go for a walk. Easy. No problem. Except I hate just going for a walk. I never feel like I've accomplished anything. If I walk with someone, I accomplish social contact. By myself...

So I walked to the nearest shopping centre. I went the long way round, but it was still a short walk - about 20 minutes. Then I walked to the other end of the shopping centre and straight into my favourite cafe. It's a book cafe. I've blogged about it before. All the walls are lined with books and bookcases separate the diners. It's cosy and intimate and no one bothers you.

I ordered tea and sat there for two hours. During that time, I edited a chapter of the next story I'm writing, I wrote basic character profiles for the three main characters (Rik, Jon and Steve), and I plotted the story - ten chapters, although that might change if the secondary characters come alive.

Plotting is something I don't usually do until about half way through a story and I never plot the end of the tale. I sort of have to with this one because the part I've already written is actually the last chapter... or maybe the second last. I have to work out what came before it.

Now the challenge is for me to actually write the rest of the story. I have trouble writing a story if I know what's going to happen - hence my reluctance to plot - so this is a totally new path for me. I'll have to push myself to continue.

It's not going to be an easy story to write either. It's about domestic abuse so there's lots of angst and tension and bad-and-sad things going on. Expressing emotion is one of the toughest things for me as a writer (my friends say it's also tough for me as a person - they're right).

I think I'll wed this story to walking. I'll go for another walk tomorrow afternoon and see if I can end up somewhere else for a couple of hours to work on this story. Doing one difficult thing to achieve another difficult thing might make both of them more achievable.

Let's hope I can keep it up for more than a day or two. Rik's story needs to be told.