In celebration of our 25th
anniversary of children's publishing we are delighted to present the eighth
edition of Onion Origins.
Finding my people
I was a sporty, bookish kind of girl, and at the end of my first year of
university I realised that Accountancy was not for me. Accountancy was so not
for me that I had to leave the state.
So I moved to Sydney. The only qualifications
I had were one year of an abandoned Accountancy degree and a one-week bartending
course. Despite this lack of experience, I quickly secured three waitressing
jobs. One at a restaurant in St Leonards where I quit before the end of the
first shift, one at the brand new Powerhouse Museum where I spilled a tray of
champagne all over myself on opening night, and one at the Pitt Street Pizza Hut
where the pay was $4.25 an hour. The actual bonuses were the occasional free
pizza and stolen bacon bits from the salad bar, and the unexpected bonus
happened only once, when I left work and found myself outside Town Hall Station
accidentally face-to-face with the Queen. There was a barricade between me and her
majesty, but it was flimsy.
After three months I asked for a raise and when denied it, I quit in order
to sell encyclopedias door-to-door in Queensland. Yes. Encyclopedias.
Door-to-door. In Queensland. My friends tried to talk me out of it. But I was
determined. I'd never been to Queensland. And encyclopedias were books, right? I
started in Ipswich, then went to Toowoomba, then Roma, then Chinchilla, Dalby,
Kingaroy, Gimpy, Noosa, Maryborough, Childers, Bunderberg, Rockhampton, Mackay,
Townsville, Innisfail, Cairns, Port Douglas, then back down to Gladstone. We
were young and reckless and it was Queensland and we had adventures. Many
adventures. But three months was enough, so in Gladstone I boarded a late-night
bus bound for Sydney and wept quietly every time 'Better Be Home Soon' played
over the coach stereo. Crowded House was on repeat for the entire 17-hour trip.
Quite a lot of quiet weeping.
So, seeking less adventure, I took a job in the watch department of a
Prouds Jewellery store. We sold Longines. We sold Seiko. We sold Swatches.
Sometimes there were sailors. There were time-cards and we had to clock in and
clock out. They were not my people.
When I returned to Melbourne, most of my friends were finishing degrees and
taking their first 'career' jobs. I knew that I didn't want to be an accountant,
and I didn't want to work in hospitality, and I didn't want to work in retail.
But what did I want? I just wanted to read books and talk about them and that
wasn't a job, was it? Oh? Publishing.
Investigations revealed that the trick to getting a job in publishing was
to know someone who could help get one's foot in the door at a publishing house.
But I didn't know what a publishing house was, and I didn't know anyone who
worked in publishing, and I didn't have any idea how to even find the door, let
alone get a foot in it.
Eventually I went for a job as typesetter (even though I didn't know what
typesetting was) at a company that designed and printed advertising material. I
didn't get the typesetting job because most people who applied were already
doing a typesetting apprenticeship. But unexpectedly I did get a job as a
proofreader. I had no proofreading experience and I suspect I only landed the
job because the HR manager was sick that day and the Boss interviewed me and we
talked about books and he was impressed that I had lasted a whole year in
accountancy - he'd only lasted six weeks.
I was incredibly fortunate to work with three tremendously knowledgeable
professional proofreaders who taught me many wonderful things about words and
how to proofread them, and proofreading marks and layout and typography and
fonts - and that the dictionary was my very best friend.
After a year though, I remembered that I really really wanted to go to
university. I wanted to go to university because I wanted to learn all the
things. I wanted to go to university because I wanted my parents to be proud of
me. I wanted to go to university because the walls of the Old Arts building were
so solid and impressive and the grass on the South Lawn was so green and
inviting. I wanted to go to university because that meant having a student card
- so everything would be cheaper.
And I knew a little bit more about the world by then. Many of my friends
had done Arts degrees, and I realised that I was foolish not to have done Arts
the first time around. Why had I done Accountancy instead of Arts? Who ever
knows. Well, I know, but I'm not telling. Okay, I'll whisper it. I
didn't know what Arts was. I thought it was painting.
There, so now the secret is out. Let us not speak of it again. After all, I
learned A LOT selling encyclopedias and that probably would never have happened
if I had chosen Arts over Accountancy.
I was excited about my first day of classes. I knew in my heart that the
other Arts students would be my people. I was so excited that I missed my first
two lectures because I was overcome with nerves and vomiting on the banks of the
Yarra River. My boyfriend tried to calm me down enough to stop the vomiting but
when that failed, he went to my first two lectures for me. And took notes.
Oh how I loved studying Arts. I loved it. And then, three years later it
was finished, but I didn't want it to be finished so I enrolled in an Honours
degree. And I tried very hard to do it full time. I really tried, but I needed
money and found it was easier to survive if I studied part-time and worked the
night shift as a ward assistant in the delivery suite at the Mercy Hospital.
Every night there were new babies born, there were exhausted mothers and
exuberant fathers, and there were delivery suites to clean, and delivery
trolleys to ... wrangle. I was sleep-deprived and I had a nauseous-linen
allowance, but I had enough money.
More than enough. I discovered that I had enough money to go overseas and
why not do that instead of finishing my Honours degree. No reason I could think
of. So I did. I lived in London for six months, and sailed around the Greek
Islands with five friends for two weeks, and saw the Acropolis and admired the
pebbled beaches of Nice and went to a casino in Monaco and camped in a
thunderstorm on the side of a hill in Florence and discovered that Venice was
real and got a hire-car wedged between buildings in the pedestrian precinct of
Verona and almost acquired a taste for Guinness in a lovely old wooden pub in
the south of Ireland where a Dutch couple told me I spoke very good English for
an Australian.
And then I came home. And went back to uni. And needed a job. Again. A
friend helped me secure employment in the mailroom of a law firm while I
finished my Honours year (okay, sometimes I was also the tea lady - but I
infinitely preferred the mail room with its fancy mail train system and the
whizzbang of the new photocopiers). And then I was done. Degree completed. And I
never ever in my life wanted to study again.
So there I was, a somewhat over-qualified mailroom attendant, surrounded by
lawyers. And I still didn't know anyone in publishing. I sat the public service
test and made it to the last round of interviews and might have been successful
had I not just read The First Stone by
Helen Garner. The question for the group interview was about how best to handle
a sexual-harassment complaint from a female student against a male housemaster.
I had PLENTY of ideas about that.
Then my (musician) partner thought he was interested in a job at the
Australian Music Examinations Board, but on enquiry he discovered that the
position description was not for him, so I applied for it. After all, they had a
music publishing program. Perhaps this was the door I had been looking for?
Almost, but not quite. It was a wonderful job and I worked with fabulous,
dedicated people, but it was not book publishing. Clearly.
And then one day, an acquaintance invited me to a launch of Visible
Ink. I didn't know what Visible Ink was, but I didn't have
anything else to do that day, so I went.
It turned out that Visible Ink was the anthology of writing from the students of the RMIT Professional
Writing and Editing course.
That afternoon, in the Lounge on
Swanston Street, I truly found my people. There they were. All in one place. And
even though I had promised myself I would never ever in my life study again, I
enrolled in the RMIT course and I loved every minute of it. Every single minute.
And in the second half of my second year I did the Practical Placement subject
at a children's books publishing house.
Ten years earlier I had realised I wanted to work in publishing. Eighteen
months earlier I had found my people in a bar on Swanston Street and since then
had spent countless hours with them, talking books and writing and short stories
and poetry and ideas and editing and publishing and works-in-progress. And life
and art and the creative process. And now I was doing the first day of my work
experience placement. I stood on Gertrude Street outside Black Dog Books. I took
a deep breath. Here, finally, was the door. In I walked.
And then ten years ago, I had the great fortune of being swept into the House of Onion on the wings of Margo Lanagan's heartbreaking short story Singing My Sister Down
from Black Juice.
Ten years ago.* Ten tremendously rewarding years.
- Jodie Webster, Commissioning Editor
* TEN YEARS! Ten years of working in this wonderful House with so many
brilliant creators and colleagues. Ten years of being endlessly inspired,
delighted and encouraged. And incredibly proud of the wonderful books we have
produced together. Thank you all for being so extraordinarily fabulous.
