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

Mac sorts out traffic - true story, fire in the hole!

Coming from the bus on the back of a motorcycle I saw a fire under a car parked on the street outside my condo village. I thumped the driver and yelled "Stop!"

No way he's driving me by a vehicle with a fire ball under it. So he stops, I pay him and he zooms off. I'm at the corner, a good way off from the fire under the car. Now the security guards and the drivers at the mo'cycle station get active - no fire extinguisher. I'm afraid the vehicle will blow so I stay where I am. Traffic keeps rounding the corner - then stops when the drivers see the action.

I hear the first emergency vehicle. I set down my bag of groceries and start motioning for the stopped drivers to back up, turn and keep going down the main artery I'll call it. I'm waving at the other traffic that wants to turn into my street and wave them forward away from the corner. The drivers are cooperating and they get out of the way. I see the emerg vehicle pulling in and by the time it arrives to turn the corner the other cars have moved out of the way.

They stop and thank me in Thai, saluted me and carry on as I give them the thumbs up with a grin. (Why take the time to stop wandered through the caverns of my mind at the time, but hey, I wasn't driving.)

Now there were likely 30 people who could have easily grasped the situation and worked out what needed to be done. Instead the running around like chickens was amazing. There was no extinguisher handy, the next condo village security ran out with a hose - about 500 meters too short. It was like the politics here. All the frenetic activity and nothing of meaning going on. The innate ability here to miss the point every single time time must be ingrained in the cultural/societal structure.

The fire had consumed the engine by the time the emerg vehicle got in place, but they had an extinguisher and it was quickly put out. A new Lexus is now a barbecued Lexus.  No one hurt, nothing too dramatic. I hiked up my skirt, picked up my groceries and finished my walk home.

All in a day.

Long time no blog - I moved and have been getting sorted.

I left the district I have lived in with barely a backward glance. No more bus/motorbike noise, no more voices at 5:30 am drifting up from downstairs, it is good to get situated in a different type of neighborhood.

Peace and quiet reigns here. I have moved into a gated community with a pool, a health facility, it is a well developed quiet spot.

I did a fill in at a gov't school (I know what was I thinking of?) for 1 day at a primary school. It was just fine. Polite little kids waied me non stop. Quite enjoyable. I have my full weekends and work 2 hours Mon - Thurs, evenings 6 -8. I'm trying to keep Fridays free for a day off.

I've got several convenience/service outlets in the condo village, restaurants, a small store, laundromat and so on. I can get a hair cut, and there is a pharmacy here. I don't have to leave the place on the days I'm home.

Good security. A few teachers live here so it is wonderful. Great change for me.

Not much going on in the news these days. We do have a Hoof and Mouth outbreak however. There is a very interesting post here http://www.khonkaen.ws/ commenting on a Reuters article on Thailand. If you go to the site, click on the picture of food on a blue table.

All about tourism and the problems that need addressing.

Myanmar tourism should make a huge dent in Thai tourism. I hope as they open up they will keep the pristine beaches clean and make wise decisions on development. Letting things run amuck causes quite a problem as we see here in so many places.

Anyway, back to my day.

Fortunately everything on the protest/rally side is quiet.

Life ticks on without disruption. Weather, frequent downpours, hot and sunny in between. I don't know (know one does) at this point if there will be flooding this year. Work has been going on concerning dredging and flood walls.

The flood situation could go either way. It depends on the amount of rain. I haven't heard of any tree plantations going on. There must be some reforestation going on but if there is it hasn't been in the news.

I would love to see less garbage going into the klongs and rivers. That would help a lot of things, the garbage blocks drainage and adds to the problem. It's all about education and having proper waste removal systems in place.

I hope we don't face what we did last year. That was astounding when I think of it. Let's hope this year is better.

It's pretty hard to overturn a bus...but the driver managed it

Three people were killed and about 20 others injured when one of three buses taking executives of the National Anti-Corruption Commission to a seminar at Khao Yai overturned on Mitraparp highway in front of Choke Chai farm in Pak Chong district of Nakhon Ratchasima province on Sunday morning, reports said.

Of the three killed, one was a woman identified as Somrak Phukchodngam, 51, the wife of the bus driver, one was Supawan Pinyothammakorn, 54, a female executive, and Chai Chinso, 51, a male executive of the NACC. Go here for the short news story. http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/local/302536/3-killed-in-nacc-bus-accident  

Sad, very, very sad. Please fly to your destination. No bus or van is safe here. These were gov't VIP's. Imagine. From today's Bangkok Post. 

PS: The Nation reports two died. To be fair, two could have died in the crash, one later. Who knows?