But 'Intern' flats? Really? Come now. Are we supposed to believe that our unpaid workforce - our wannabes, our foot-in-the-door starry-eyed guys and girls - is tripping about town in $1100 footwear while carrying coffee to overlords and overladies ?
Maybe they are. Interning can be privileged - especially in, say, New York where it can be done by only those moneyed enough to go for long stretches of time sans cheque, devoting hours and unpaid weeks, months and days to grunt work, to pleb work, to bottom of the ladder stuff that they're told they're so, so fortunate to get to do.
Interns grab headlines - overseas, with lawsuits around whether they ought to have been paid, whether they were treated improperly. You can even pay to perform free labour - how perverse! - and this is something only the dreamiest fashion houses could get away with, and do.
So - interning, with its ostensibly high-glamour atmosphere and lowly tasks, its silver-screen dramatisations and big money legal problems, would seem to be a goldmine for fiction.
Enter Gabrielle Tozer, University of Canberra alumna and seasoned glossy mags journo, whose debut YA novel is called, you guessed it, The Intern. Already drawing comparisons to The Devil Wears Prada and sparking frenzied searches through book stores for the rare red jacketed version, Tozer's book was launched to fanfare in Sydney. She graciously took five questions for this blog.
Was there a part of The Intern that was a difficult birth, that is, that struggled to emerge and took a lot of rewrites, cups of tea, and stiff liquors, to come to life?
The most difficult stage, especially for a newbie author, was
the rewriting and editing process. It was gruelling – and that’s putting it
nicely. There were countless writer meltdowns as I learnt how to wrangle 80,000
words into a neat and tidy manuscript… quite a change from a 2000-word magazine
article! Thankfully my editors at HarperCollins are incredible and I’ve learnt
so much from them over the past few years (and I’m trying to put all their
lessons to good use on the first draft of my sequel).
The magazine experiences described in The
Intern are fictional. Sure, there are few bits and bobs that cross over –
I’ve met celebrities, attended beauty sales and organised photo shoots – but
when it comes to the major plot points, my imagination is working overtime.
It’s one of the reasons I love creative writing… I don’t have to worry about
fact-checking or research! My little sister did dress me for my first big
magazine job interview at DOLLY magazine, though, which is the same as Josie in
the book; she still teases me about it to this day.
Your story of being headhunted – of being actually asked if you had manuscripts
in drawer, and then being invited to pitch ideas, is really wonderful. It’s a
pretty cool origin story and completely different from the
‘broke-my-way-out-of-the-slush-pile-after-20-rejections’ tale that seems to be
common to even JK Rowling. You evidently have the talent to back up this good
fortune, but what is it about you and your writing that caught a publisher’s
eye?
I’ve been in a daze ever since HarperCollins contacted me so I’ve
never dared to ask them ‘Why me?’ (I didn’t want to accidentally talk them out
of taking a chance on me). My ‘big break’ came when I caught the eye of
non-fiction publisher Helen Littleton at a publishing course who was impressed
with my passion, ideas and online portfolio, and she kindly passed on my
website to a YA publisher – all without me knowing. Even though I’d felt like a
total douche when I registered my first domain name back in 2009, I’ve always
maintained that having a strong, professional presence online is essential for
building a profile as a writer and, somehow, that theory turned out to be true.
There
are a few types of internships across all industries, not just media, in Australia,
so I don’t like to generalise. There are paid internships which are fantastic,
obviously, as you gain experience while being valued monetarily – I’ve done one
of these and it was wonderful. Just like a job, but with less responsibility…
winner!
Next
up, there are unpaid internships with restrictions (say one day a week from
9-5pm), where you gain experience, build contacts and get one step closer to
getting a job (and sometimes you do score the job, as I’ve seen so many interns
do!). You mightn’t get paid, but you might nab freebies here and there – I’ve
done this type too and definitely don’t regret it. I ‘did my time’ and it
eventually turned into paid work.
Finally,
there are the exploitative internships that are unpaid, but on a part-time or
full-time level. This has never happened at any magazine I’ve heard of –
magazines in Australia
have incredibly strict rules surrounding work experience students and interns
these days – but I have been horrified to see internships in other industries
advertised with fulltime requirements. Seriously – a fulltime unpaid
internship! Horrifying. That is exploitative and should be illegal.
For
now, it seems unpaid internships are a stepping stone into many industries in
Australia, so it would be good for regulations to be put in place so everyone
is treated fairly.
What’s the best reaction you’ve had so far to your debut novel?
I’ve had people contact me with daily updates on their favourite parts of the novel, others who are beside themselves over the romance angle, others who can’t get enough of the sillier parts. Every text, tweet, Facebook comment, email and Goodreads review counts as a great reaction to me – I love hearing that people are enjoying The Intern because it makes all the hard work worth it.
