No one wants to read that shit.
September 11th, 2008
I’ve had quite a few emails over the years asking how I got started in the travel-writing caper, so I thought I’d share with you how it all began.
The first thing I did was to get retrenched.
Twice.
I’ve had two silly dreams come true after I got retrenched. The first time I ‘lost’ my job (I was working as an art director in advertising where retrenching is as common as refilling the water cooler) I searched for another job straight away, but there was nothing around. Then, one day simply out of sheer boredom, I was flicking through the employment section of the newspaper and spotted a job for ‘summer tour leaders in Europe’. That sounded like fun, but what really caught my eye was it also had ‘plus ski resort work available in winter’ (on my first ever European ski holiday in Switzerland I was so envious of the ski guide and thought he had the best job in the world). I got the job as a tour leader and in my first winter scored the job as a ski guide in Switzerland.
After destroying my liver for three years I returned home to Australia and back into advertising. Three years later the retrenchment axe fell again. While I was looking for work (well, while I was sitting at home watching Judge Judy) I started to write down some stories from my days on the road with Top Deck (I’d kept a detailed journal). After I’d written a couple of stories I thought ‘hey, this could make a really funny book’. I decided then to take four months off and told everyone I knew that I was writing a book (so that they’d keep asking how my book was going!). Five months later I had a 78,000 word manuscript. Fourteen drafts later, and after I made most of my friends read it and give comments, I sent the manuscript to ten literary agents (the pic above is of the cover I put together for the manuscript). It didn’t augur well to begin with, though. I had three rejection letters including one that said: ‘No one wants to read that shit’. I’d almost given up when, in the space of a week, I had three agents write to me offering to take me on as a client. (click here for Part 2)