WHAT captivating works can writers produce when given a random phrase? This multi-genre collection of 300-word micro stories, penned by the eclectic High Country Writers of the NSW New England region, shows just how far the smallest inspiration can flow. With courage and curiosity, these wordsmiths gathered once a month to read their work and encourage one another, before randomly selecting the next writing trigger. Take the plunge!

The prologue of Diving Into Deep Water

The High Country Writers group is an informal gathering of wordsmiths who started meeting at The Makers Shed, a small corrugated-iron shop at the southern end of the high street of Glen Innes in northern inland New South Wales, in mid-2019.

In 2024, the group moved with that business to a century-old former butcher shop on the New England Highway at Deepwater, at the heart of the traditional lands of the Ngarrabul people. 

Participants from Glen Innes, Inverell, Bingara, Grafton, Ashford and Deepwater regularly discussed the art of writing until one member – Anna Russell – suggested the group start to write 300-word responses to a prompt, one word or a short phrase selected at random from the High Country Books shelves in the lounge area where we meet.

This ‘homework’ was then read out to the group at the next session, leading to many wonderful listening experiences for all those within earshot. 

Somewhere along the line, High Country Books decided these moments were too good to leave hanging invisible in the air, and offered to publish the work with each writer’s permission.

This collection has been minimally edited, preserving each writer’s response to every prompt (which appear as chapter headings), and their writing style. The 13 prompts appear in order of them being set, but there is no strict order to the 300-word stories within the chapters, I have simply curated them by feel so that readers can enjoy the way the literary responses vary so widely.

The result captures an incredible breadth of storytelling which the writers workshopped into the promotional materials for this collection, sessions that were guided by D’Arcy Lloyd.

High Country Books is delighted that the group developed a title with more than one meaning. Diving Into Deep Water is both a reference to the township where The Makers Shed operates, and the act of creative courage that these writers threw themselves into.

That level of personal bravery is what our artisanal business is all about: creating despite the odds of success, regardless of opinions and in collaboration with like-minded artists. 

I thoroughly commend all these stories to you and encourage you to embrace the third meaning of this collection’s title, which is all about you, the reader, experiencing the depths of writers’ imaginations when handed a theme and asked to explore the infinite within such a disciplined word count.

On that note, let me fill you in on the various “rules” of this project and how some were broken, of course!

Any reader counting words will find the odd infraction of the group agreement, but none of the contributors thought this should be cause for any culling. 

Not every writer wrote to every prompt. Hey, life gets busy and you can’t do everything! Some wrote more than one response to a prompt. Let’s not discourage them!

Not every prompt was extracted from another piece of writing. Some were specific challenges: to write without using the letter E (‘Sans E’), to pen a short autobiography (‘Memoir’) and the account of someone else, from biological or chosen family (‘Biography’).

Some of the works are part of larger storytelling projects, details of which you’ll find in the author biographies at the back of this book; but the vast majority are standalone pieces.

Between these covers you’ll find multiple genres: crime, horror, historical fiction, humour, fantasy, poetry, experimental fiction and non-fiction. Some may find themes and terms they find offensive, used in historical context or otherwise. There is no content warning apart from this advice: skip any parts you find challenging, but don’t let a little literature scare you!

Thanks to all the participants who contributed their work, and to those who took on leadership roles at key times of this process, facilitating sessions and keeping the project moving along. Kris Nissam and D’Arcy Lloyd put their hands up for proofreading; Brydie O’Shea hosted a session at her beautiful garden, and Deepwater’s Top Pub made our group welcome while The Makers Shed was being renovated.

Big gratitude to all the writers for entrusting their work to an emergent publisher. As an acknowledgement of their contribution, High Country Books at The Makers Shed will donate ten per cent of all sales of Diving Into Deep Water to our region’s Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service, for as long as the title is in print.

Dive in … and keep an eye out for our other titles!