where is the rain...?

they keep predicting it, and it keeps not coming. At least not in my part of Melbourne, anyway. They did finally get some falls over the major dams over the weekend, which is good, but while that might help stave off level 4 restrictions for a day or so, it doesn't help those of us who are battling to keep gardens and trees alive. And if we do hit stage 4, all our efforts will be for nothing, because with stage 4, there's no watering outside at all. Of course, the water predicament wouldn't be quite so dire if the damn government had listened to the right people ten years ago and built another dam to cover Melbourne's growing population. But no, they listened to the greenies, who told them they couldn't destroy the forests and that we didn't need another dam because we had five already and why wouldn't they cope with any drought? And hey, the fish needed the water more than we humans did...(as an interesting side point, the government has only just stopped flushing millions of gallons of fresh water from the dams to keep the rivers 'healthy' for the fish. I think the fact that we have little more than a year of water left to supply for the entire population of Melbourne has finally sunk in.) I'm all for green living, but I'm also for a little common sense. Yeah, okay, trees would have been destroyed in building the new dam. But trees all over the state are now stressed and dying, not just gums but other imported trees that have been here as long as the white population (Melbourne has some of the oldest elms surviving in Australia). If we'd had an extra dam, maybe we'd have a little more water to use to help some of the old trees survive. (not to mention saving the backs of countless grannies out there who now cart buckets of waste water from sinks and showers in an effort to save their own gardens).

And why am I suddenly going off on a bit of a rant? Because I'm sitting here listening to the song of a chainsaw. The beautiful old tree that lost its limb several weeks ago is being heavily trimmed today in an effort to save it. The tree is close to a hundred years old, and if we don't take the weight off it, the entire tree could come crashing down. I just hope it'll be enough to save it. We've already got two dead trees on our property--I'd hate to see another one go.

Anyway, enough of that--onto some writing news. The edits for Embraced by Darkness weren't as bad as I thought they might be, so I was able to get them done in record time. But I think all that fast thinking blew a fuse somewhere, because I basically fluffed around most of the weekend, doing anything I could to avoid the subject of writing. The muse just wasn't in the mood. It still wasn't in the mood yesterday afternoon when I decided enough was enough, and I really had to get something done. I sat down and wrote 5 pages, but the story just felt flat and uninteresting. So, I went for a walk and climbed some hills. I think it cleared the cobwebs, because after tea, I sat down and wrote another 10 pages. And they're good! (actually, the five pages I wrote in the afternoon weren't that bad, either. They just felt that way.) So, in the end, I'm only a few pages off my stated goal of 100 pages, and considering I had the edits to do, I'm pretty please with that. I'm even more pleased with the fact that the story line is rolling along nicely. While it has deviated a little from my original ideas, it's still following along roughly the same path--and I think this one is a little more interesting. Which is why I'll never be a plotter--my muse just can't come up with good ideas until I really get into the story.