As I sit, I can hear a myriad of birds proclaiming their news to the world.  In the background, the washing machine is ticking away, sloshing the dirt from our clothes, and every now and then, one of the dogs peers hopefully through the flyscreen, trying to entice me out of my writing chair and back to where I should be, which is (apparently) throwing the ball.

I have bread rolls rising on the bench, and just now, two kookaburras have begun laughing at each other down in the park that leads towards the primary school ten minutes walk away.  As I sit here writing, they’ve just been answered by another kookaburra even further away, and I’m wondering what they’re discussing so enthusiastically that the conversation has been taken up in a relay across the town.

Sunday is always a day when I write.  Sometimes it’s just this blog, but usually I put in a significant period of time on my current project.  At the moment I’m writing the final book in my trilogy about Frontier.  It’s at a tricky stage when I’m trying to decide exactly how I’m going to get from the beginning to the end.  The thing is, I know where I’m starting, and I know where I’m ending, and I do know what needs to happen.  The problem is, in what order, precisely, do I need those things to happen?  I’ve actually written close to a third of the book, but at this very moment, I’m contemplating reorganising it completely so that the writing flows more easily and the story keeps the reader on the edge of their seat for the whole book.  I want my readers to be flicking pages so fast that their fingers are blurring.

And as you’ve probably realised by now, I’m being rather easily distracted.  The cat was sitting on my lap.  The bread rolls needed to be put into the oven.  I should check the strawberry patch.  I can see the pile of folding/ironing across from me.  (Note to self:  Hide that in the spare room!)  And those birds keep singing, laughing and chirping, attempting to pull me from my writing and out into the perfect spring day.

But it isn’t quite as perfect as I’d thought.  As I write, a small breeze has wafted through the room, and the scent of baking bread has momentarily been blocked by the smell of smoke.

Even though the major bush fires are now under control, thanks in large part to the selfless efforts of the NSW Rural Fire Service volunteers, the reminder of their damage and their threat, spoken in smoke, remains on the wind.  Those fires are not yet gone, and the wrong weather conditions could flare them again.  

But here I sit.  The conditions are good for writing.  I can ignore the clean and dirty washing.  I really should take the bread out of the oven before it burns, and the strawberries will get picked and eaten, even if it’s not by me.  I can write, and so, now that I’ve inflicted my Sunday stream of consciousness upon you all, I will.