I didn't write on Saturday. Actually I didn't do much of anything on Saturday, although I made plans to go out. When I finally got up and dressed, the darn rain would not stop and it was so hard. Not that I care about rain, but it's a drag to be wet. So I sat around and watched the "MI-5" marathon on A&E. I think they call it "Spooks" in the UK. I seem to remember sitting around and watching it last year around this time as well. I love "MI-5", have always loved spy shows and always will.

I loved the ending of the first episode of the new season. This is an only in the UK kind of ending. The head of the Joint Intelligence Committedd (an actor I seem to remember from the Black Adder series) is sitting in a club talking to someone from the PM's government. The head of MI-5 comes in, who is also a member of the club. The JIC guy says to the PM aide, "are you a member of the club, because you're not my guest." The head of MI-5 says "he's not my guest either", so the guy has to leave. The head of the JIC had attempted to take over MI-5 and had failed, but he and head of MI-5 are members of the "club", so despite their recent fight the two remain at least in public cordial friends. It's such a Brit class thing I think. The PM aide who obviously is not of the same class gets shunted aside like trash because class has so much more meaning in the UK. It's the same the same here, but they never show that stuff on TV because the US is supposed to be a classless society. Whatever.

I'm so happy about my writing progress this year. It's going like gangbusters! I finished Chapter 10 today, and I was so happy. I wrote the summary for chapter 10 on New Year's day while waiting for my flight at the DFW airport, and now the chapter is written.

This is new for me; writing a summary of what the chapter is supposed to be about. I usually don't do that, but it's really helped to keep me focus on what I'm supposed to be writing about. And if I get lost in the writing, as I tend to do since I write the chapter in more than one sitting, the summary ends up being a map as what I'm supposed to be writing about.

I even started a rewrite of Chapter 1 since New Year's as well. I edited Chapter 1 on the plane to DFW, and it just was not good. The subsequent chapters read much better, so I decided I needed to rewrite chapter 1. The voice was just not there, as I didn't develop the voice till much later. Since I'm now comfortable writing in the voice, rewriting chapter 1 was easier and I think reads much better. There's a real character now talking.

I'm like, okay the rest of my life kind of sucks right now, but at least the writing part is working. Usually the rest of my life is okay, and writing part sucks, or my life is bad and the writing is bad. It's never been where the writing is better than my life. Is this a good sign? I'm starting to think of myself as a storyteller, and it's a good feeling.