Manjula > Manjula's Quotes

“People wonder when you're allowed to call yourself a writer. I think maybe the answer is when you recognize that is work." - Nina MacLaughlin, 'With Compliments”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“She wasn’t rude, exactly. She simply participated in conversation at the absolute minimum and didn’t encourage anyone to speak to her more than necessary. She didn’t do any of the things women usually do, that I spend so much of my life doing: try to draw others out in conversation, smile receptively, laugh at jokes or even non-jokes just to show you are listening attentively. She didn’t draw attention to her silence or deliberately snub anyone; she simply wasn’t playing the game.”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“Publishing is a business based on fiction—and not only the fiction that is packaged between book covers or sold as digital downloads. In order to convince harried, distracted people to set aside hours or even days to read hundreds of pages of non-animated words, we in the publishing business must manufacture an aura of success around a book, a glowing sheen that purrs I am worth your time. This aura is conveyed through breathless jacket copy, seductive cover imagery, and blurbs dripping with praise so thick the words seem painted on with honey. This fiction of success is stoked by the fiction of buzz and sustained by the fiction of social media.”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“Writers are encouraged to believe they are dispositionally opposed to careers in finance, transactions, or law. They are encouraged to self-mythologize as artsy and/or loner and/or incompetent folk.”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“The Internet is no longer new; it’s old enough to drink legally.”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“Almost a decade ago I attended a reading, the impression of which still lingers like the marks of a wire chair on the backs of summer thighs.”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“Insularity is the bane of creativity only so far as we allow it to be.”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“though I loathe debt, I indeed would choose it over starving. It takes a toll but buys a chance. What”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“I actually don’t consider Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work! to be art. I think there’s art in them, and I think they’re artful, but they are primarily supposed to do something for other people. When I do those books, I know it’s a product, I know it’s going to be shelved in a certain part of the bookstore. So what I try to do is inject it with as much artfulness and as much of myself and as much honesty as I can. But it never leaves me, the fact that I’m making something that’s going to have a barcode on the back of it. So,”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“Wouldn’t we all love that simple summing up? Do it well and put it out there and doors will open, eventually some fairy editor will descend, recognize something, lead you on exactly the path you’ve been wanting to travel down since you were a child writing stories about giants and talking chipmunks. Sometimes”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“If you want to be famous, don’t be a writer.”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“The reality is, more and more and more, being a writer is running your own business. While I’ve had salaries, and I’ve been an employee, overall and ultimately and certainly increasingly so, being a writer is running a small business. Do”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“I realize you can write a blog and eventually turn it into a business, but I don’t see that as a good alternative to a job with the rigor of an editor and the ability to understand the audience as a readership that will respond and have expectations. Finally,”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“Today, I own approximately three thousand books. I have gone into debt buying books and made poor financial choices, again and again, for the love of books—buying”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“My father’s parents, my mother’s parents, everyone in that generation of Jews knew that almost anything of worth could be taken from you—your home, your jewelry, your possessions, everything you owned—but no one could ever steal an education. My”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“The work wasn’t just falling into my lap, it was avalanching all around me. But who was I to complain? You’d better clean your plate—starving children in Brooklyn would kill for that review!”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“Older, established writers always tell younger writers about the compromises they must make to succeed. You must be willing to be poor, they say. You must make writing your life. You must piece money together in any way that allows room for writing. It doesn’t matter what those jobs are so long as they don’t sap your creative energy. Wait tables. Walk dogs. Babysit. Make lattes. Figure model. Donate your eggs. Build houses. Bake bread. Freelance at writing. Freelance at anything. I was no longer in a position to naively agree to the sacrifices a freelance-everything lifestyle required.”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living