Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

by Manjula Martin

Overview

A collection of essays from today’s most acclaimed authors—from Cheryl Strayed to Roxane Gay to Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chee, Nick Hornby, and Jonathan Franzen—on the realities of making a living in the writing world.

In the literary world, the debate around writing and commerce often begs us to take sides: either writers should be paid for everything they do or writers should just pay their dues and count themselves lucky to be published. You should never quit your day job, but your ultimate goal should be to quit your day job. It’s an endless, confusing, and often controversial conversation that, despite our bare-it-all culture, still remains taboo. In Scratch, Manjula Martin has gathered interviews and essays from established and rising authors to confront the age-old question: how do creative people make money?

As contributors including Jonathan Franzen, Cheryl Strayed, Roxane Gay, Nick Hornby, Susan Orlean, Alexander Chee, Daniel Jose Older, Jennifer Weiner, and Yiyun Li candidly and emotionally discuss money, MFA programs, teaching fellowships, finally getting published, and what success really means to them, Scratch honestly addresses the tensions between writing and money, work and life, literature and commerce. The result is an entertaining and inspiring book that helps readers and writers understand what it’s really like to make art in a world that runs on money—and why it matters. Essential reading for aspiring and experienced writers, and for anyone interested in the future of literature, Scratch is the perfect bookshelf companion to On Writing, Never Can Say Goodbye, and MFA vs. NYC.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501134593
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	01/03/2017
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Manjula Martin is a writer and editor with more than a decade of experience in print and online publishing. She founded and edited Scratch magazine (2013-2015), an online journal of interviews and information about writing and money, and created the blog Who Pays Writers? Her pieces have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Aeon Magazine, Pacific Standard, Oyster Review, and SF Weekly. She writes “The Dough,” a series about women and money, for The Toast and is the managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story. She is a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto and a graduate of Mills College. Scratch is her first book.

Read an Excerpt

Scratch

INTRODUCTION

Manjula Martin

scratch

/skraCH/

verb

1. To scrape the surface of something.

2. To assemble a desired result through hard work and perseverance.

“scratch out a living”

3. To make something out of whatever is at hand.

“made from scratch”

“a scratch crew”

noun

Writing that is extemporaneous or hurried, usually by hand.

“she wrote so passionately that it was difficult to read the resulting chicken scratch”

informal

Slang for “money.”

True or false: Writers should be paid for everything they write. Writers should just pay their dues and count themselves lucky to be published. You should never quit your day job. You’ll know you’re successful when you can quit your day job. Writing is an art, not a business. Writers should be entrepreneurs. Digital technology has destroyed the market for writing. The Internet will set us all free.

Sound familiar?

In every stage of their careers, working writers are in a constant state of negotiation: work and life, art and commerce, writing and publishing. In the public eye and within our communities, authors are said to practice a calling, an art form, a passion—but rarely a job. We are often told by more successful writers to “do it for the love,” but we are rarely told how to turn love into a living.

That’s where this book comes in.

Scratch magazine was initially developed out of a need for greater transparency in the discussion about work and money within the community of writers. This book deepens that discussion. The interviews and essays that make up this edition come from some of today’s most prominent and promising voices, offering candid and informative stories about their experiences at different stages in their careers. In newspapers and on social media, through blogs and informal networks, writers are just now starting to break the silence about what it’s really like to be working writers. New York Times cultural critic A. O. Scott writes, “Nobody would argue against the idea that art has a social value, and yet almost nobody will assert that society therefore has an obligation to protect that value by acknowledging, and compensating, the labor of the people who produce it.” In Salon, an author’s confession that she is “sponsored” by her husband unleashed a torrent of think pieces. On Medium, online lightning rod Emily Gould published a frequently shared essay describing how she spent most of a $200,000 advance (spoiler alert: unwisely). And in the New Yorker—which itself is perhaps the reigning symbol of opacity in publishing—Junot Díaz wrote a scathing takedown of racism in MFA programs and barriers to inclusive access in the publishing business. In my own experience as the founder of Scratch and Who Pays Writers?, a crowdsourced database of freelance writing rates, I’ve heard time and again from writers who are yearning for any scrap of information they can find about how their own profession functions economically. These heated discussions speak to a need for more openness about how, exactly, literature and the people who make it are valued.

There are stories of artistic and economic struggle in this collection, sure, but more so these are stories of inspiration, empathy, and perseverance. And a few are even pretty damn funny. Taken as a whole, this book is by and for writers who are building careers that deftly encompass all we are: a little bit artist, a little bit hawker, and a whole lot of love. We don’t deny that the dream—the drive and ambition and imagination that make a person decide to do a ridiculous thing like be a writer—is important. The love is real. But so is real life. We all need to make a living, whether we “make it” or not.

If I’ve learned one thing while working with these amazing authors on this difficult topic, it’s that the art of making a living is always evolving; the economics of literature are diverse. Some writers choose to freelance—journalism, copywriting, editing. Some teach and fit in their creative work around their class schedules. Some do a combination of both. Many writers have means of income that have nothing to do with the publishing world—paramedic, law clerk, carpenter. What the authors in Scratch have in common is that they are creative professionals navigating and expanding the relationship between art and commerce every day.

Within this spectrum of authors are those who haven’t always taken the usual paths to a writing career. It’s particularly easy for people with economic and social privileges to say, “Do what you love and the money will follow.” But it’s not always so simple for the rest—the people without prestigious degrees or parents standing ready to help with a loan. Scratch’s vision of a thriving literary community includes authors writing from the margins, people who may have additional obstacles to crafting careers that enable their artistic work but also pay the rent.

When preparing this book for publication, I was often asked by potential writers and readers alike, “So, which side are you on: commerce or literature?” But to be honest, if this is a contest, I don’t much care who wins; I’m more interested in how we all got here, and where we’ll go next. Literature and commerce will always be (and have always been) somewhat at odds with each other, uneasy bedfellows—an odd couple. For authors, the path to success is not always one of hardship. Nor is it always a direct route.

The authors in Scratch are looking beyond binaries to seek greater truths about writing, work, money, and publishing. In the business and art of literature there are no rules, no surefire steps to success, no amount of “tips” or lists that can guarantee you will increase your income or readership. Ultimately, for each and every writer, the answer to the question “how do you sell a thing like love?” has to be found within their own practice, within the context of their life and work, their resources and desires.

What if each writer could learn to navigate the balance between art and commerce for themselves, making choices according to their means and temperament and finding the best way to put their work—their own, specific, beautiful work—into the marketplace? What if, instead of parachuting into whatever flame war about publishing and pay is happening at the moment and then forgetting we were ever there, those who make literature and those who buy and fund literature sat down and listened to each other’s stories?

I realize that “it’s complicated” may not be what you wanted to hear when you picked up a book about how writers make a living. I realize it’s hard when we’re all thirsty for answers. But, as you’ll see in the more than two dozen perspectives represented here, there really are no easy answers. There is experience and example and wisdom and luck, and it’s up to each writer to put them all together into something shaped like a career, to develop a balance between art and commerce that leaves them nurtured enough to keep writing. Besides, we wouldn’t be true to our profession if we went for the quick fix, would we? Show me a writer who goes for easy answers and I’ll show you a person who is uncurious, uninteresting, too thirsty to make it to the next shimmering oasis. The authors in the following pages are right there in the weeds along with readers, navigating the complex relationships among art, life, and work at different stages in their careers—and revealing the heart of American literature in the process.

Care to join us?

Table of Contents

Introduction Manjula Martin xi

Early Days

Owning This Julia Fierro 3

With Compliments Nina MacLaughlin 9

Faith, Hope, and Credit Cheryl Strayed Manjula Martin 14

On Staying Hungry Rachael Maddux 23

Portrait of the Artist as a Debut Novelist Porochista Khakpour 29

The Mercenary Muse Colin Dickey 41

Running the Widget Factory Susan Orlean Manjula Martin 50

The Wizard Alexander Chee 59

You Are the Second Person Kiese Laymon 69

Five Years in the Wilderness Cart Luna 84

Freedom Richard Rodriguez Caille Millner 89

Word Hard, Read Dead Yiyun Li Manjula Martin 96

Write to Suffer, Publish to Starve J. Robert Lennon 104

The Daily Grind

The Best Work in Literature Manjula Martin 111

The Insider Kate McKean 120

Against "Vs." Leslie Jamison 126

Love for Sale Harmony Holiday 136

Unlikeable Emily Gould 143

Sad Birth Lady™ Meaghan O'Connell 148

Ghost Stories Sari Botton 156

Economies 101 Susie Cagle 162

Security Roxane Gay Manjula Martin 170

Monetization Choire Sicha 174

Not a Complaint Nell Boeschenstein 184

The Jump Sarah Smarsh 192

Someday

Selling Out Austin Kleon Manjula Martin 205

A Sort of Fairy Tale Malinda Lo 214

Growing Up Nick Hornby Manjula Martin 222

FAQ: How to Buy a Home Mallory Ortberg 228

Diversity is Not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing Daniel José Older 235

Worth Jennifer Weiner 243

Like a Fish in a Tweed Suit Jonathan Franzen Manjula Martin 258

The If of It: Lunatic Independence in Nine Easy Steps Laura Goode 270

Contributors 279

Editorial Reviews

09/12/2016
Martin collects interviews from her online magazine, Scratch, and pairs them with new and reprinted essays to demonstrate that the mysterious economics of literature create wildly different versions of writerly success. The writers, including Alexander Chee, Jonathan Franzen, Roxane Gay, and Jennifer Weiner, recount an assortment of amusing anecdotes, hard-headed pragmatism (Nick Hornby: “I do understand I’m working in a marketplace”), some tongue-in-cheek ribbing (J. Robert Lennon: “Art and commerce are not separate. They are not even different”), and a few harrowing tales of poverty, discrimination, and despair. The collection pokes holes in cherished cultural myths about the writing life and examines, from various angles, the transformation when writing goes from being a dream to a job. The shared conclusion among the diverse, entertaining, often humorous, sometimes plaintive voices is that writing should be as remunerative as any other useful skill, but the work must be its own reward. Martin’s collection removes the romantic veil surrounding the production of the written word and provides some solid counseling for aspirants on what it means to offer the labors of their heart for sale in the marketplace. Agent: Kate McKean, Howard Morhaim Literary Agency. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"Illuminating...Includes hard truths and thoughtful meditations on class and capitalism while also functioning as a survival guide.” —The Atlantic

"Excellent, honest looks at the economic realities of writing for a living.” —GQ

"Scratch repeatedly demonstrates the nitty-gritty on this stuff...the relationship between work and money in writers' lives." —Slate

"Honest." —New York Times Book Review

"Solid counseling for aspirants on what it means to offer the labors of their heart for sale in the marketplace.” —Publishers Weekly

"In her introduction, Martin suggests that writers are “yearning for any scrap of information about how their own profession functions economically.” She’s right. . . . These voices occasionally stand at a miked podium and tackle ideology and institutions but more often pull up a chair with a cup of coffee to talk brass tacks. Readers will greedily (pun intended) soak up such details." —Booklist (starred review)

"In this well-organized, fascinating anthology, a host of fiction and nonfiction authors share practical tips and emotional intelligence. . . . Highly recommended for both experienced and aspiring authors and for avid readers who want to learn the back stories of the contributors." —Kirkus Reviews

"I loved this book...I read through it in one sitting." —Jaime Herndon, BookRiot

"A useful and inspiring read." —The Millions

From the Publisher

★ 11/15/2016
Martin (founder, Scratch Magazine) asks writers, how do you make a living? From journalists to genre novelists, Martin brings together a compelling collection of essays on the writing life. Personal accounts, anecdotes, interviews, how-tos, and cautionary tales provide a vivid, often humorous look at the wizard behind the curtain, dispelling myths and sharing wisdom on everything from writing with a day job to buying a house. While there are a number of collections on the life of the writer, this one delivers a refreshing, diverse variety of voices that will appeal to professionals and hopefuls alike. Contributors range from the critically acclaimed to New York Times best sellers, agents, freelancers, indie writers, bloggers, artists, screenwriters, and more, with the tone of the essays ranging from serious to tongue-in-cheek. Reading like confessionals by some of the best in the business, as well as lesser-known and soon-to-be known talent, each story carries a heavy dose of truth to balance the hope and passion of beginning writers. VERDICT This is a book to be devoured. It's truly inspiring and worth a read for writers and bibliophiles alike. —Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib.

Library Journal

Sept. 8, 2016
The founder of the online journal Scratch, loaded with information about how authors labor to earn a livelihood, collects essays and interviews that appeared online and supplements those with original offerings.In this well-organized, fascinating anthology, a host of fiction and nonfiction authors share practical tips and emotional intelligence. Among the best-known authors included are Susan Orlean, Cheryl Strayed, Jonathan Franzen, Roxane Gay, Jennifer Weiner, Richard Rodriguez, and Nick Hornby, all of whose contributions are worthy. Yet many of the most compelling essays come from lesser-known writers, some of whom have yet to publish a book. One such standout is Sarah Smarsh, a former grant writer and current magazine writer who splits her time between her native Kansas and her new home in Texas and whose first book will be published in 2017. Smarsh specializes in writing about poverty, especially the poverty of relatively uneducated whites; in her essay, she reflects on making the jump from her family's poverty to higher education and, eventually, a promising writing career. In “The Best Work in Literature,” anthology editor Martin, the managing editor of Zoetrope: All Story, grapples with similar issues, sharing anecdotes about trying to pay the rent and eat properly in an economy that pays poorly for published writing. Each contributor deals directly or indirectly with the often unhappy intersection of commerce and art in the contemporary American economy. For every commercial success story—e.g., Strayed, Weiner, Franzen, or Alexander Chee—there are countless failures. At times, what can best be termed as "luck" arrives, as in the essay by Nina MacLaughlin, who explains how a piece she reluctantly agreed to write for no pay led to a book contract. Highly recommended for both experienced and aspiring authors and for avid readers who want to learn the back stories of the contributors.

Kirkus Review