Scratch 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“If you're going to become a writer, you have to start introducing yourself to people. You have to know how to talk. People need to like you in this business, to remember you well." (Richard Rodriguez)”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“Define “serious novel.” Read the first five pages. Count clichés. If you find one, the buzzer goes off: It’s not a serious novel. A serious novelist notices clichés and eliminates them. The serious novelist doesn’t write “quiet as a mouse” or paint the world in clichéd moral terms. You could almost just substitute the adjective “cliché-free” for “serious.” I”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“If you want to be famous, don’t be a writer.”
― 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

“There may be no advice given to young creative types more often than "Stay hungry." Hunger is encouraged by commencement speakers, noted as a requirement in job listings, looked back on fondly by one-time strivers now on the far side of their golden years. Hunger is everything because its nothing--not yet-- just raw promise, one lack that may eclipse others: talent, pedigree, luck. Like sharks, the hungry must always keep moving, hunting, killing, "killing it." We assure the hungry that they are poised to go far--over and beyond the bodies of the frightened and dull and easily sated. At the end of the day they will stand smiling, jaws bloodied, still wanting more.

When we talk about hunger this way -- as shorthand for a certain noble stripe of ambition--we tend to obscure its roots in our bodies, our biology. Even in this strange sliver of the world where food is ample to the point of thread, hunger remains a real, animal sensation. Every few hours our bodies rumble with discomfort and we are expected to soothe them, whether or not we understand or trust the nature of their want. Perhaps this hunger is honest, or perhaps it's just that you smelled the cookies baking or you got stood up or cut off or side-eyed or just happened to see the clock hit eleven thirty, a time you were hungry before. Hunger confuses the needs of our minds with the needs of our bellies. Hunger lies like a child.

But then, whether or not you give into your hunger, even if you give it nothing at all, it always slinks away; but then, it always returns. It is a fundamental condition. We seem to forget this when we talk about the appetites of the young. "Stay hungry," we tell them, as if they have been drafted into some cannibal army and must devour their own to have any hope of survival. "Stay hungry," we tell them, as if they have any choice at all.”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“Your story doesn’t end when your dreams come true; it changes.”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“I think my family thought I wasn’t ambitious, but actually I was hugely ambitious, because I wanted to make some kind of mark with my writing.”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“The truth is, my dream has changed; it has become clearer to me, and also more challenging. Coming to terms with this change goes hand in hand with shifting my perspective on success, art, and money. There has never been a simple relationship between these things, but now I am better positioned to negotiate a balance among them. I”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“I'm saying that every writer needs to conceive, develop, and maintain a literary relationship to her family, her country, her community, her peers. A writer ought to be thinking about this, yes, when he sends his work out to be published, but also when he's writing it, and when he's contemplating writing it. A literary work unconcerned with the desires of its audience is like a thoughtless gift, a crass experiment in social engineering, like the statue of Jesus your pious aunt bought for your atheist front garden and expects a thank-you note for." (J Robert Lennon)”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living

“Writing is not coal mining. It is merely a pain in the ass, albeit one that tends to invite psychic distress, especially given the bewilderment with which it is greeted by a writer's loved ones, once they realize what one actually does all day while writing: i.e. not much." (J Robert Lennon)”
― Manjula Martin, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living