Are Aussie short story writers an endangered species?
JUST last month I had begun my latest story. At the time I had no idea how it would turn out. As usual I just had the characters waiting in the wings and a wisp of an idea of what they were going to do once I’d brought them on centre stage. For a while the four characters I had introduced didn’t seem to have anything to say, they just stood around mumbling inanities to each other, so I began to think I’d been wrong about the idea in the first place. Perhaps I would have to discard the work after all. But then, as so often happens, something clicked into place and the characters suddenly came to life. And, as it turned out, they had plenty to say and do. It also turned out they were accident prone and willing to take risks. Fertile ground for any story. Within a few paragraphs they were on their hazardous way, heading for some vaguely realized denouement which would, hopefully, carry with it an unexpected surprise for all of us. However, having roughly completed several pages, I began t
