I'm honored today, Rob Parnell used some

correspondence of mine in his weekly newsletter. Here's the link http://easywaytowrite.com/

Sign up if you are in writer mode. There is tons of free information, professional advice and other goodies.

And me, today.

My manuscript topped out at 82,843 words. I'll sleep on the ending I worked out today. We'll see if it sticks.

Once I tune this one up, I'll start thinking of book two. I've already got the shape of it mapped out.

Now I need to go back to the early days in the story and massage forward. Shouldn't be too difficult, I've been working on the entire thing each time I added a new section.

If you write, I'd love to hear a bit of your journey. Mine has been a wild ride. It's been a long one. It's one of the best I've been on.

Write every single day.

Writing in Thailand, a unique place to hide away

I would be lying if I said writing is easy. I am at the point today, after having the luxury of sitting down and writing in quiet, pleasant surroundings anywhere from 3 to 8 hours over the stretch of many daysI have developed the habit of writing.

I have the luxury to go and fall into the huge pristine pool where I live, usually mid day, to clear my head, as I take a keyboard break. With a considerably lighter work schedule narrowed my focus substantially the past couple of months. I don't get distracted. I don't wander around my ground floor apartment looking for stuff to clean or things to tidy.

Every morning I wake up, fix a cold coffee and sit on the little patio, fire up my notebook and begin. I don't stop until I start typing words inside out.

The bushes/trees beside my patio give me some green privacy.  Birds hop down on the leaves and look at me, then finding me uninteresting they flit away and check back later. Usually I haven't moved.

My tv and dvd player sit unplugged. They haven't been plugged in since I moved. I quit reading the newspapers on line. I glance at the paper at work.

I took all my Thailand stuff, including photos, off this blog, made a clean sweep. I may put  the early posts back on and/or start a new blog. Hard to say. My job now is to tinker, fix, rewrite and massage my manuscript.

The discipline of sitting and writing so much every day has benefits. I won't list them. Although it may read like my life has narrowed, it has truly expanded in so many ways. I've found a new pen pal, have someone who looks forward to reading my new pages, (that is encouragement enough to forge ahead) and guess what?

I write every day. That means every single day. No matter what.Once over the past couple of months I took one day off from my ms to get my breath back. I forced my self to not turn on my computer. The next day I flew trying to keep up as the pages tumbled out at light speed. If I find a problem in the ms that is not fixable at that moment I ignore it, write around it or move on to other parts. I go to bed for the night and like magic, the solution arrives by the time I wake up.

Focus. Discipline. Positive results.

Mac is back - after writing an 80,000 + word manuscript

Historical fiction. Based on a true story. I've been churning out 1,000 to 2,500 words a day since I moved, got the slum off me from my tin shack neighborhood, which I enjoyed while I was there. But it is better with a pool, a health spa avec sauna, and all the bells and whistles.

Rob Parnell is featuring me and a part of my journey in his newsletter coming out this week. Am I flattered, honored and a bunch of other things. Well, how do you write an 80,000 word ms? One word at a time.

Rob is Australia's grand writing guru.

I've been swept into my characters, their problems and their developing conflict.

I feel very good. Hope you do!

I will be blogging again, daily.

Good to be back on line, I focused and sacrificed every waking moment when not working to my manuscript. As you should do.

Mac