From Russia with love

Front cover of Russian magazine: inside is my article

Early in my career, I wrote an article about how I, a freelance writer, went about trying to sell articles  to magazines.

A publication called The Australian Author picked it up, and then it was reprinted in the Russian magazine pictured above.

And that's how I went public, both in Australia and later in Russia, on the folly of putting your writing about.

Here's how my article read in Russian.

Page one with my byline in Russian

page two (upper area) of my article

You can see that these pages of close print have an academic authority, and I think you should be impressed.  No need to read on.  Just skip to the end and leave an admiring comment.

  

TRANSLATION OF MY STORY ABOUT SELLING ARTICLES: Russian into Australian 

For those who are not fluent in Russian, and insist on knowing what I, an unknown freelance writer, could possibly say that might interest a serious Russian readership, please read on.
(NB: All comments in brackets are my speculation on how Russian readers might react.)



I opened the article with a witty (take my word for it) spiel about how I develop a story and ready it for publication (NB: this story is pre-email).

Then I continue...


The articles I really like are sent out to magazines.  They are my babies.  It hurts to send them out to the big critical world, but I am firm with them, and they leave with a stamped return envelope.

Cleo, Women's Weekly and Woman's Day are usually insultingly swift, and invariably return my articles within seven days.  I cannot help but feel they have not read them.

(NB: at this point, Russian readers could be out of the loop, as they did not, at that time, have such indulgent magazines.)

Other magazines keep the articles longer, and this gives reason to hope.  No doubt, I feel, they are considering them, chuckling over them, writing out the cheque.  But no.  They are just at the bottom of a high heap of other hopeful articles, waiting for some overworked editor to cast them a cursory glance.

My first and only fiction was a well-travelled story.  It first went to Cleo, then Cosmopolitan, National Times, then languished for three months with Nation Review. 

I considered that they had had ample time to read it, so I phoned Nation Review.  After much searching and shuffling of paper, it received 'conditional acceptance' from the Features Editor.  

This would have been cause for celebration, except 'conditional acceptance' meant it would be published when there was space available.  The Features Editor reckoned on around three years.

(As Russian plays are often based on the surreal, Russian readers are now on the same page.)

He recommended I try and sell it elsewhere, and he requested more of my writing. I complied, and sent him two articles.  

After another three months' silence, I phoned him, and asked about the articles.  He shuffled more papers and, in a bored tone, said that he received many such 'essays' and no, he did not think he would use them.  And he never bothered to send them back.

(The Russians are now in my corner.)

Anyway, Forum bought the story.   Paid me $50.  Published it without changing a word, with my name spelt right in big letters.

One step forward.  Two steps back.  An environmental magazine wrote to accept three of my articles.  Then followed another to say no, they had not accepted the articles, but were 'holding them' and I was free to sell them elsewhere.

(Shades of the Revolution!)

Then a new magazine came on the market called Working Woman.  I sent them an article.  The editor accepted it for a magazine in her Practical Planning Series and would I write a follow-up article.  Would I!

I did, and earned $125 for the two articles.  I contributed four articles to Working Woman and they were held pending the next issue.  But the magazine folded.  Pilot sales in America were insufficient to warrant any success in Australia.  So my four unpublished waifs came home.

(Thus proving to my Russian readers that Australia is just another shambling democracy.)

Another new magazine came out, under the wing of Forum, called New Times.  I felt it might consider my style, so I sent an article to them.  But, after three issues, sales were insufficient and it too ceased publication.

I now suspect that my articles have a fatal effect on magazines.  I plan to smuggle some into the offices of Women's Weekly, Cleo and Woman's Day - to hide them where they can exercise their lethal influence.

I always say, if you can't join 'em, beat 'em!

(No comment.)

With thanks to The Australia Author, quarterly journal of the Australian Society of Authors, 1978

Reject slips from my past

One of the hazards of being a writer are the reject slips. 

Here's an example:

A reject slip: not even the original, but a carbon copy.

I did not start out collecting reject slips.  I started out intending to be published.
I would send an unsolicited article - all neatly typed - to magazine editors and they would get the help to send it right back.  It would include one of these little notes.


I collected reject slips for many years

It was a kind of ping pong game with envelopes - back and forth - with the postman as neutral observer.


My first acceptance letter

Then, one day, Woman's Day editors did not send the article back.  Instead, they sent an unfamiliar sight: a small envelope with an acceptance slip inside.
It was party time, and the postman even ventured a smile. 
We both calmed down when the magazine only used one paragraph of my story.
Nevertheless, I felt that I could, as a published writer, be able to count on a career in journalism.


I did not sell another word for the next two years

And not for want of trying.

Check out the original signature. I'm thinking of selling this one on ebay.

And so it went on.
After an article was returned, I would read it through and somehow see it afresh.  I'd rewrite it and submit it to another magazine.  Some articles would be rewritten 10-15 times, and then sent on their way.  It became a routine.
Why I stuck with it, I don't know.  I had no axe to grind, no angst, no deprived childhood...


My background as a writer 

I was born to middle income parents - an accountant and a secretary - and brought up in a beach suburb that was famous for having the second longest railway station in NSW.
My childhood was forgettable: I was not battered, orphaned or starved.
My mother recalls that I was a happy child until my little brother dropped my very favourite teddy bear into the lavatory pan.  My mother retrieved it, boiled it in the copper for several hours, then pegged it by its ears on the clothes line.
Possibly this was the trauma that later drove me to write.
I grew up and followed my mother's footsteps, becoming a shorthand/typist, then wife, then mother of two children.


The Writing Class

I was pregnant with my second child when I joined a writing class which met every Tuesday night. We all had to take turns to read what we had written during the week, and when I read my piece out, the class laughed.  Not because it was bad, but because they found it funny.  That was when I discovered that I was writing humour.  I had not seen it like that.  To this day, no one has twigged that I am in deadly earnest.
That writing class also taught me about writing.  Not how to write.  Just things about it.
To my surprise, I discovered that everyone did not write in the same style as I did.  Somehow, I had expected that we would: instead they each had their own distinctive - and instinctive - style and viewpoint.  As such, we broadened each other's horizons.


Life as a Learner Writer

At the same time, I was sending my unsolicited articles to magazines.  I was a learner writer.  It was my apprenticeship.  To learn to write, I had to write, and rewrite, then send it into the market place to test it.  If it came back, I had not got it right yet.
In those years, I was, without realising it, learning to write.


My Second sale

Then I sold my second article.  I had sent it out nine times, rewritten it nine times and somehow the mood changed. Editors did not return it with a printed reject slip.  Yes, they returned it, but with letters.  Nice letters, saying 'sorry'. This, I knew, was encouragement.
Finally, someone bought it.  Paid $60 for it, and I think I bought a coffee table with it.
Thus encouraged, I sent that same editor more articles, and she bought some, returned others.
I took note of what she returned, and I was learning another thing about writing: what the market wanted.
It applied then.  It applies now.  I have to guess what an editor will want.
And writing comic articles was even trickier, because there were no rules.  What one editor liked, another found silly.


The regular gig

Around this time, I was offered a regular column in the (now defunct) Australian Home Journal.

And that's when I finally twigged that I wrote a 'column' style which was why my articles were difficult to sell: they were casual, they were opinionated.

I wrote that column for four years...

I had to come up with one idea a month, a saleable idea, a funny one, written to a deadline.  Australian Home Journal ran it on the inside back page, often with a cartoon.  Here's what it looked like...

During that four years, the editors changed three times, and each one reviewed my column, no doubt intending to chop it.  They didn't.  Not sure why.
But by then I knew that I wrote, not so much for a magazine, but for an editor.

TO BE CONTINUED...