1. Wear thick-rimmed glasses. Preferably black.
2. Carry a notebook with you at all times. Listen to other people’s conversations on the train. Tweet while you’re on the toilet.
3. Get physically violent when someone misuses a possessive apostrophe. After all, they started it.
4. Befriend student politicians. Write down their mobile numbers, favourite kinds of chocolate, and whether or not they’ll yell at you if you call
them at 7am. One of these people could be prime minister one day.
5. Be really efficient at ordering dumplings (everything is a deadline). But be really bad at counting your change. Maths is for people who misquote or don’t file on time.
6. Buy a typewriter. Every room in your tiny I-can-barely-afford-rent-because-I-do-media apartment needs a typewriter.
7. Call up the Australian Christian Lobby and pretend to be sympathetic to their cause. Then do a Daenerys Targaryen-style smack-down in article form the next morning.
8. Pick up the phone and call people. Call all of the people. If you just send one lazy email and hope someone will get back to you, the journalism gods will frown upon you. You do not want the journalism gods frowning upon you.
9. Don’t sleep. Sleep is for accountants and landscape architects.
10. Disregard all this advice and make up your own rules. If you do one thing, though, don’t ever date another journalist. Just don’t.
Broede Carmody
