Time Management

In the Information Australia office (1988)

In 1984 Alistair Jones, a musician friend, set up a meeting between me and Jane and Paul Gardiner, the husband and wife publishers of Rolling Stone (Australia). From this meeting I wrote a story called Azaria’s Rock about the Chamberlain case. I was paid more than $1000 for the piece and it was the first time I had cover lines in a prestigious magazine.

1986-1987

At the close of 1985 – on my son Joel’s birthday – Phil Ward’s editor-in-chief, Don Hoult handed me an Osbourne computer and said, ‘You are now the editor of the Small Business Letter’.

I will always be grateful to Don for that moment.

Whatever Don’s critics may say about him, he gave me the job.

Robbie, Amber, Joel and I moved from Bermagui to Sydney in December 1985 because we felt there would be better opportunities for me to meet publishers, editors and to find employment as writer. I didn’t want to peak as a columnist for the Bega Times – not yet.

I arrived in time to watch Phil Ward’s mini-empire being decimated by his so-called friends, and I was appointed the new editor of the Small Business Letter – a position I held for the next seven years, until it drove me nuts. Also in 1986 I took over the editorship of a time management newsletter called Time Talk. We renamed it Time Management. I have worked for it, owned it, sold it, and I have never stopped writing it after all these years. (It is currently owned by Brad Tonini of NGT Diaries.)

You cannot believe the business scenes I saw in 1986. Here I was, fresh from seven years living in the country and full of artistic idealism watching screaming matches, accusations, liquidators, schemes, plots, armed guards on the doors, and such unrest that I fully believed that the entire business world ran like this. I had seen nothing else.

By the time Michael Wilkinson bought the business, along with me, in 1987, I was a nervous wreck.

1987-1989

In mid-1987 my family, plus newborn Zoë, moved to Melbourne where I worked in the newsletter wing of Information Australia.

My new boss was Michael Wilkinson, a former journo, who said he liked my writing – because I didn’t write like someone who had gone through the Fairfax/Murdoch/Packer schools of journalism. But – as a negative – he said my writing was always left field. ‘If only we could centralise you!’ he would often say. We were always friendly – later on we became friends – and I well remember him taking me out for a sandwich and on several occasions he would talk to me about the ‘centre’.

Shoot for the centre, Lowell. The heartland, not the edges.

1989-1993

Michael sold the newsletter branch of his business to International Business Corporation (IBC) and I was returned to Sydney with a charming Englishman for a boss, Oliver Freeman.

IBC had also purchased the Huntley group of newsletters, which is why my next boss was Ian Huntley, who was also a terrific person to work for, but in an opposite kind of way to Oliver. Huntley stories are legendary, but it’s not for me to spill the beans.

In 1967 I didn’t think about the reader at all. I paid back my teachers and other enemies. I did everything my way - and the book didn’t sell well, although I was very pleased to have written all those awful schooldays out of my system. In the novel, I even caned the cruel teacher who caned me .Top fantasy.

In 1993 I took on the editorship of the Franchising magazine. The part-time editorship of Franchising was an easy editing job at the start.

At that stage I didn’t have to source stories and photographs, I didn’t have to conceptualise anything. All I had to do was clean up the copy and pass it on to the layout people.

1993-1994

Still doing Franchising magazine, still doing Time Management, and still ghosting books that nobody will ever know about, in 1993 I quit working for Huntley. Robbie and I set up Lowell Tarling & Associates. I began working for Clare Loewenthal and Peter Blasina on a new magazine, Dynamic Small Business. Robbie ran the office, the tax, the fax and the budget.

Peter and Clare – especially Peter – were not ‘quiet’ like the owner of Franchising. They wanted razzmatazz. Our first issue was launched by the Federal Minister of Small Business, it featured a piece by Prime Minister Paul Keating, plus an interview with Australia’s No 1 social researcher, Hugh Mackay, and another with Australia’s most prominent researcher on small business failure rates, Professor Alan Williams of Newcastle University.

This was an intense learning period for me. And the magazine designer, Cavan Lenaghan taught me heaps. There is an illusionist aspect to magazines which I did not fully understand until I met Cavan. He said, ‘Remember Lowell, someone has to lay out whatever you write’.

This effectively means, you need lead copy followed by a couple of paragraphs before introducing your first sub-head. It also means that captions, heads and sub-heads – which take seconds to write – are more important to a magazine designer than gutsy body copy which takes ages to create.

Not only that, my friendships from the Huntley days were still strong – Gomez, Satan, Tea-Bags, Kevin Forde and Bobby Dee were still on the phone or calling around.

We were occasionally slinging each other work. For example, I interviewed Paul Simons CEO of Woolworths for the Asian Retailer magazine in Singapore because Richard Leather – from Huntley’s – scored me the gig. Kevin Forde got me work in the Medical Practitioner – a doctor’s magazine that he edited, and I got Bobby Dee into an accounting magazine that needed an editor.

1994-1998

Although nobody noticed, I think I blossomed a bit in 1994, the year my name began appearing under the banner of the Franchising magazine.

I’d gotten away from all my ‘teachers’ - Phil, Michael, Cavan, etc - and I was now on my own.

Phil used to say, ‘It’s not tight enough’. Now when I’d say, ‘It’s not tight enough’ there was nobody to think I was echoing Phil.

Michael used to say, ‘Use them, don’t let them use you’. Now when I’d say ‘Use them, don’t let them use you’, I’d get the credit for saying something smart.

I would always try for a news cover ,‘You’ve got to see it 10 feet away, on a news stand’, I would tell the publisher, Peter Trevilyan. And Ray Macarra of Paper Sun Graphics, in his Mambo shirt, would nod in agreement.

Paradoxically, even though I hated editing the Franchising magazine, during the last two years of my editorship, the bloody thing only got better! I resigned after seven years.

1998-2002

In 1998 Michael Wilkinson saw Commonwealth Gold Medalist, Heather Turland take a public address in Melbourne. He was impressed, and rang me (on a public holiday) to see if I would like to co-author her book.

Yep!

I didn’t hesitate. I was in Bowral as soon as I could get there. Heather and I, burrowed into her story like a couple of rabbits and strove to write a masterpiece. You’ve always got to strive, cos you never know!

Leadership

After Heather, Franchising magazine became intolerable. I quit and started writing the fortnightly Leadership Letter, a newsletter published under Information Australia’s Who’s Who of Australia banner. My wife Robbie began writing too. She joined me in writing for Information Australia as editor of the Customer Service Bulletin. Now two writers were under the one roof: two deadline fanatics. (Poor Zoë.)

Leadership gave me time – usually every second week – to co-author more books. Furthermore, the nature of the newsletter required that I should interview many prominent people, which kept me in touch with leadership issues, politics and publications.

The Leadership Letter

In every instance, co-authoring has brought me close to the people with whom I was writing. Tom O’Toole and his family, Joe Sammon and his friends stand out as fantastic hosts when I visited their home towns of Beechworth and Adelaide respectively.

My Dad Thinks I Rob Banks (co-authored with Joe Sammon and Breadwinner with Tom O’Toole

Another pleasure was working with Clare. Seven years after Dynamic Small Business we enjoyed each other’s company, in my study where we worked. Frank Fisher’s Driza-Bone story gave me great satisfaction, and working closely with Frank and his wife Pat, resulted in another great friendship.

Guilty To Driza-Bone

I must say though, that this brief chapter does very little justice to many people who have influenced me, worked with me and taught me so much. For example, my immediate family has been a part of everything I have written, listening to chapters – especially The Secret Gang Of Oomlau – and contributing to and commenting on everything. In the early 80s I literally read to Robbie every word I wrote.

Then there are people like Clayton Simms and Genna Levitch who have always been there, every step of the way, commenting on articles, novels, ghosted works, co-authored works – the lot.

But I will say that Allan Broadhurst and Robert Wolfgramm, in their own ways, have tended to crack the whip and say, ‘jump’ to which I have invariably replied, ‘How high?’

It was Allan who complained that I was taking it too easy co-authoring a stream of books. He said that was ‘okay’ but felt that I should put myself on the line one way or another, which is the reason behind this book. And it was Robert who said it was his ‘mission’ to make sure I followed this project to its conclusion.

As I write, Allan is working on a CD called I Never Saw The Cat and the Gospel songs that Robert has written all his life are only now being rediscovered.

Biographies

Friends sometimes ask why don’t I write another novel?

Last year I wrote a short novel called Masks which did not find a publisher. Other than that short offering I don’t necessarily feel I have much to say in the fictional form.

In 2001 I wrote five published books, and because I am writing other people’s stories, I am prolific. Co-writing gives me the advantage of having something to write even when I don’t have something to say.

If I asked myself, ‘What is the best Australian book written in recent times?’ I would probably pick a biography – probably Ned Kelly by Ian Jones. My second and third choices would also be biographies. One day I would certainly like to write a definitive biography.

I also find myself thinking more and more about teaching people how to write.

It is the motive behind my writing The Method

2008

With Amber, Joel and Zoe now out of school, Robbie and I no longer needed to live in Sydney. So we moved to Katoomba NSW. Rather than ghostwriting, I decided to start with the much-needed job of tidying up my Martin Sharp and Tiny Tim writings.Doing it took the first four months of 2007, but it was an urgent job, without which the tapes, the clippings and the fragments of writing would have become less and less approachable for possible future projects.

So I did that, and now I really need a publisher. But alas, chasing publishers requires a different kind of energy. Richard Walsh (Allen &Unwin) liked what I’d compiled and edited my Martin Sharp manuscript twice, and Martin went through it once, all of which was done with good energy and good will, although I found it difficult to stop writing and start selling the document.

In 2007 I started doing something new, ‘writing from television’. Not ‘for television’ it’s ‘from’, meaning the book of the TV show. The first was my Mythbustersbook, published in 2007, the second was South Side Story about the South Sydney Rabbitohs NRL footy team (2008). I also ghosted another six books on subjects like the sharemarket, sales and leadership, none of which have my name on the cover. And for fun, I am writing a never-ending autobiography that will probably find its way onto this site in due course.

Finally, I am pleased to say that I have found a small place in teaching, at the Katoomba Day/Night College and also the Vale Street Centre. Maybe I’ll get more teaching gigs, maybe more books – who knows what the future holds? In the words of the song, ‘my future’s so bright, I’m gonna have to wear shades’.

Here’s hoping.

Where's the Aspirin