This week, my 100th article was published in The Tweed Valley Weekly.
But the number sent me back to the first time I walked into its office, when I still didn’t know whether my first two stories were good enough to print.
I had filed them under deadline a couple of days earlier and was there to meet editor Jonathan Howard for the first time. It happened to be print day. That week’s layout had been decided the day before, distribution was the following morning and work on the next edition was already underway.
I hadn’t yet learned that newspapers seem to exist in several weeks at once.
Jonathan looked at me and said, “I recognise you. You’ll be in the paper tomorrow.”
I assumed he meant a small mention somewhere inside.
The following morning, I was the front-page story.
I had walked into the office wondering whether I belonged behind a byline, only to discover the paper had already placed me on its cover.
Journalism had never been part of my plan. I was finishing a Diploma of Fashion while single-parenting two daughters and managing the usual chaos of our lives.
Then there was Madeleine Murray, one of those unmistakable village characters who had taken a particular liking to me and my girls. She praised our beauty and talents with the shameless enthusiasm of someone determined that we should see them too.
With no grandparents present in my daughters’ lives, my father gone and my mother having disowned me, as I have written about previously, Madeleine became a friend and mentor during a period when I had very little older support around me.
When she needed knee surgery, she repeatedly asked whether I would cover her stories. Somewhere between assignments, sewing deadlines and school runs, I said yes without appreciating how little I knew about newspaper journalism.
Then an email arrived from Madeleine’s hospital bed: two stories were due in four days.
I panicked.
Fortunately, panic can be an excellent teacher. Finding subjects, asking questions and drawing out their stories came naturally. Compressing a person’s life into 350 words while making every sentence earn its place was harder.
Madeleine guided me from her recovery bed, while Jonathan generously showed me where I was going wrong. Slowly, the unfamiliar rules became instinct.
In the nine months that followed came conversations with Suzanne Vega, Richard Clapton and Thomas Mayo, alongside artists, actors, drag performers, chefs, teachers, volunteers, teenagers and elders. Each required me to listen differently.
My 100th published article was a profile of 17-year-old musician Wren Hynes, drawn from my 97th interview. Publication schedules and interview order had long since parted ways.
My 100th interview was a joint conversation with Australian music legends Troy Cassar-Daley and Ian Moss. When I told them, they responded with such warmth and delight that I briefly allowed myself to feel proud. Their story will be published next week.
There is an irony here that I love: I found my own voice by listening to other people.
Finding it in print, at a time when the medium can feel increasingly fragile, is bittersweet. Perhaps that is why each story feels worth preserving.
One hundred articles later, I don’t feel as though I have arrived. I feel grateful that one slightly reckless yes changed the direction of my life.
