Ode to the billycart

Author Bruce Atherton writes about an 18 year journey to get his first children’s book The Billycart Ride published.

In the beginning there was a billycart and a very steep hill and some mad moments of misadventure. Then one day, many years later, there was a family gathering and a few beers and without really thinking about it, I blurted out:

“Dad made us a billycart we christened Lightning Runner,
“She went like flamin’ clappers when she had the right bum on ‘er.”

Ok, runner and on’er will never rhyme in a month of Sundays and I know it’s not the most inspired piece of verse, but my clunky little couplet was well received. Whether it was the drinks or the fact that Dad was chuffed that he’d been immortalised in verse I can’t be sure, but for a split second, I was king of the castle.

Suddenly, I felt a burning desire to write a children’s book that captured the exhilaration of the billycart ride and the mayhem that followed when it all went pear shaped. It was 1988.

A year later I had hammered out nearly 30 verses of clashing, bashing, rolling and smashing verse that was all over the place. I sent it off to a publisher and waited for their limousine to come and fetch me. Six months later a letter arrived and this is what it said:

Dear Mr Atherton, thank you for the opportunity to view your manuscript. Unfortunately it is not suitable for our list.

And that was it. No words of advice or encouragement. No hint that my story had any potential. I’d burnt the midnight oil for a year and my reward was a two sentence rejection.

As I was to learn, it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. There were times in the years ahead when my manuscript simply disappeared into a black hole and the silence was deafening.

Eventually, more than 20 publishers rejected The Billycart Ride in its various manifestations before Penguin Australia picked it up. But here’s the rub - unless you are a Shaun Tan or a Mem Fox, you need some luck to get your story chosen from the slush pile of thousands of manuscripts that publishers receive each year.

My bit of luck was an invitation to a charity function where Bryce Courtenay was speaking. It was 2001. In the 13 years since I’d started my story, the plot was essentially the same but I’d learnt to write verse without bashing the syllables against one another. I’d sought advice from other writers, friends and colleagues and even to self edit.

Eventually, I felt it was just about as good as I was going to get it. It was close to 600 words long. Six hundred words in 13 years – less than 50 words a year. Still, as I sat on a tram on my way to ambush Bryce Courtenay, I couldn’t help but tinker with it. By the time I got to the function, The Billycart Ride was bleeding with red pen.

When I mentioned to Bryce how long I’d been working on it, he glanced at the corrections and said: “You’d think you would have got it right by now.”

Regardless, he took it with him and I suppose he liked what he read. Six months later I got the call. When I got off the phone I leapt with exhilaration. I was delirious. I had bagged the elephant.

For the man mountain of Australian publishing to support an unknown, unpublished writer like me was beyond my expectations – it was extremely generous and ultimately the turning point for the book. Bryce’s name opened the biggest publishing doors in town.

Fast forward five years and The Billycart Ride is finally on the shelves. The illustrations took four years. Keith McEwan is a brilliant artist and his ilk won’t be rushed.

I took the family to look at the book the other day. It wasn’t easy to find. For the first time I understood the enormity of the competition. Hundreds of picture books squeezed into small spaces. Only the best-selling books have their covers displayed. The rest have nothing but their spines to advertise their wares. It all seemed a bit hopeless.

But then I thought, hopeless? Don’t be daft. At least you’re in the game. Hopeless is when the kids are feral, the dog’s sick on the carpet, you’ve lost your car keys and you have an appointment in five minutes with your across-town accountant to brainstorm some creative ways to make ends meet.

When I think about it , compared to parenting the publishing game is an absolute doddle. So keep an eye out for my next book. It’s due out in 2024.

By Bruce Atherton

This article was first published in Australian Family Magazine, November 2006.