everything is free now
martinesque
by manjula martin
Hi.
When last we spoke ("spoke"), it was eight months ago. That's insane but also not that insane. A lot has happened. I looked back in my "sent folder" here and it turns out I sent my most recent tinyletter to you on February 24, which was 12 days after I had a hysterectomy (uh, trigger warning for frank discussion of ladyparts!). Which means I was probably (definitely) high on painkillers (opiates, I'm fine now) when you last heard from me. Now I'm like, why on earth was I sending a newsletter two weeks after having a hysterectomy, what the hell kind of workaholic am I, but we all know we all are, so let's just leave it at that. Catching up:
February, March, and April are kind of a blur.
In May, I went to Kauai and paid a lady to massage my belly and sing at it, and I decided I was healed.
I wasn't healed. But I'm glad I decided that anyway.
In June, I did the n-th revision of the gardening book I'm writing and I turned it into my editor and I declared it done.
It wasn't done. But I'm glad I keep trying to make it be so anyway.
And from March through... today, I worked. Too much. Part of it was Catching Up at my day job after being in a state of near-constant physical pain for 9 months, and part of it was just trying to do all the things I Signed Up For and a lot of it was willing and even enjoyable. But every day, all day, I felt really, really tired of doing work. Any work. I still do, somewhat, although the crisis point seems to have passed and I'm segueing nicely into the "idgaf, let's cut school" phase of burnout.
In August, I had four women to my house for the weekend to write and it was amazing. All the women who came to the writing weekend have day jobs or partners or children or many of those things. Half of us have books under contract and half of us are working on books we hope to soon sell. All of us wrote (or edited) that weekend. We napped and walked and sat beneath the redwoods and did some A++ literary gossiping. We ate really well, because when you ask women to bring food they show the fuck up with food. We had such a satiating time that we forgot to do the obligatory skincare sheet masks that someone brought. It was the best thing ever.
And it was.
If you are a person graced with space, actual physical space, I highly recommend you host others of your kind in it, preferably for a dedicated time and purpose. It doesn't have to be a huge thing. Just invite some people who you think are brilliant and kind, and give them a minute off. A weekend to not Do It All.
At our writing weekend, I was working -- I wrote thousands of words in my long-neglected novel. But I was also replenishing, and I think that even if you are a person who has given yourself over to the pace of Now, even if you have to do your day job and pay for housing and make art or write on the side and reproduce and see friends and punch nazis and watch terrible streaming shows and do free labor on social media and check your phone at night and and and and
Even if you are a person who feels no ambivalence about the Great Speedup (as I am clearly not, and also that article was written in 2011!), even if you never wonder "why are we all DOING this? why do i love Phone more than People? why Twitter?", you need to at least acknowledge that burnout sucks. And to avoid burnout, one must refresh. Drink in: silence, company, love, staring at the sky, moisture, literature. Allow energies to accumulate and pool. (This may also help one marshal one's resources for the fight against fascism, btw.)
I don't know that I have anything all that new to say about overwork, or burnout, or burning down the internet, and I'm sometimes tired of having these same conversations over and over with separate people. It's like the conversation about real estate in San Francisco: on loop. Tawdry in its everpresent self-ness.
I recently did some publicity in my role as Person Who Knows Stuff About Writers and Money. I was interviewed for an article in CJR about a terrible new trend in freelance contracts. And I was a podcast guest (is that the right term, kids? Podcastee?) with the kind and smart women at Marginally. In this interview I was trying to say wise and helpful things about the balance between Writing Work and Work Work and it was a bit difficult, because I am PR-rusty and I don't feel that balance much at all right now and also because I was tired from working. After I hung up, I was trying to remember the last time I worked as hard as I've worked this year, and it was when I was editing and publishing Scratch magazine (RIP).
It was 2014, I think. My publishing partner had left and I was making a living doing freelance copywriting and trying to keep shit together, editing and publishing a quarterly literary journal by myself "on the side." It sucked, it was hard on my relationship and my body and my own creative life. I got through it, and I decided to close the magazine shortly thereafter. At the time, I thought I would sell the back issues, going forward. They had value, after all. And I was always adamant that Scratch not be free. We needed to charge, and we needed to pay our writers, and also perhaps I wanted to make some sort of tiny stand about the internet and cultural labor and I still believe in that. But also it's been a while. Cultural memory is so, so short now. And so I would like to show you this amazing thing that I made with my hard work, a long time ago; an amazing thing that many people got together to make. And this is perhaps a selfish urge, because I don't want my only memory of that thing to be how burned out it made me. But also I have lately realized that some folks—especially newer writers and internetters who maybe don't remember the great/terrible App Magazine Frenzy of twenty-ought-thirteen— might be able to use some of the info that's in there to avoid their own burnout, their own defilement by the jackboot of Internet Content Related Labor. Some of the info may be dated, but aren't we all.
So, here is a link to download PDFs of every single back issue of Scratch mag.
I will give them to you for free if you promise to take a day off. You can wait until after the election, sure, but you have to promise to do it. Write it in your calendar. Day off. See friends. Moisturize.
burning down the house,
m.
When last we spoke ("spoke"), it was eight months ago. That's insane but also not that insane. A lot has happened. I looked back in my "sent folder" here and it turns out I sent my most recent tinyletter to you on February 24, which was 12 days after I had a hysterectomy (uh, trigger warning for frank discussion of ladyparts!). Which means I was probably (definitely) high on painkillers (opiates, I'm fine now) when you last heard from me. Now I'm like, why on earth was I sending a newsletter two weeks after having a hysterectomy, what the hell kind of workaholic am I, but we all know we all are, so let's just leave it at that. Catching up:
February, March, and April are kind of a blur.
In May, I went to Kauai and paid a lady to massage my belly and sing at it, and I decided I was healed.
I wasn't healed. But I'm glad I decided that anyway.
In June, I did the n-th revision of the gardening book I'm writing and I turned it into my editor and I declared it done.
It wasn't done. But I'm glad I keep trying to make it be so anyway.
And from March through... today, I worked. Too much. Part of it was Catching Up at my day job after being in a state of near-constant physical pain for 9 months, and part of it was just trying to do all the things I Signed Up For and a lot of it was willing and even enjoyable. But every day, all day, I felt really, really tired of doing work. Any work. I still do, somewhat, although the crisis point seems to have passed and I'm segueing nicely into the "idgaf, let's cut school" phase of burnout.
In August, I had four women to my house for the weekend to write and it was amazing. All the women who came to the writing weekend have day jobs or partners or children or many of those things. Half of us have books under contract and half of us are working on books we hope to soon sell. All of us wrote (or edited) that weekend. We napped and walked and sat beneath the redwoods and did some A++ literary gossiping. We ate really well, because when you ask women to bring food they show the fuck up with food. We had such a satiating time that we forgot to do the obligatory skincare sheet masks that someone brought. It was the best thing ever.
And it was.
If you are a person graced with space, actual physical space, I highly recommend you host others of your kind in it, preferably for a dedicated time and purpose. It doesn't have to be a huge thing. Just invite some people who you think are brilliant and kind, and give them a minute off. A weekend to not Do It All.
At our writing weekend, I was working -- I wrote thousands of words in my long-neglected novel. But I was also replenishing, and I think that even if you are a person who has given yourself over to the pace of Now, even if you have to do your day job and pay for housing and make art or write on the side and reproduce and see friends and punch nazis and watch terrible streaming shows and do free labor on social media and check your phone at night and and and and
Even if you are a person who feels no ambivalence about the Great Speedup (as I am clearly not, and also that article was written in 2011!), even if you never wonder "why are we all DOING this? why do i love Phone more than People? why Twitter?", you need to at least acknowledge that burnout sucks. And to avoid burnout, one must refresh. Drink in: silence, company, love, staring at the sky, moisture, literature. Allow energies to accumulate and pool. (This may also help one marshal one's resources for the fight against fascism, btw.)
I don't know that I have anything all that new to say about overwork, or burnout, or burning down the internet, and I'm sometimes tired of having these same conversations over and over with separate people. It's like the conversation about real estate in San Francisco: on loop. Tawdry in its everpresent self-ness.
I recently did some publicity in my role as Person Who Knows Stuff About Writers and Money. I was interviewed for an article in CJR about a terrible new trend in freelance contracts. And I was a podcast guest (is that the right term, kids? Podcastee?) with the kind and smart women at Marginally. In this interview I was trying to say wise and helpful things about the balance between Writing Work and Work Work and it was a bit difficult, because I am PR-rusty and I don't feel that balance much at all right now and also because I was tired from working. After I hung up, I was trying to remember the last time I worked as hard as I've worked this year, and it was when I was editing and publishing Scratch magazine (RIP).
It was 2014, I think. My publishing partner had left and I was making a living doing freelance copywriting and trying to keep shit together, editing and publishing a quarterly literary journal by myself "on the side." It sucked, it was hard on my relationship and my body and my own creative life. I got through it, and I decided to close the magazine shortly thereafter. At the time, I thought I would sell the back issues, going forward. They had value, after all. And I was always adamant that Scratch not be free. We needed to charge, and we needed to pay our writers, and also perhaps I wanted to make some sort of tiny stand about the internet and cultural labor and I still believe in that. But also it's been a while. Cultural memory is so, so short now. And so I would like to show you this amazing thing that I made with my hard work, a long time ago; an amazing thing that many people got together to make. And this is perhaps a selfish urge, because I don't want my only memory of that thing to be how burned out it made me. But also I have lately realized that some folks—especially newer writers and internetters who maybe don't remember the great/terrible App Magazine Frenzy of twenty-ought-thirteen— might be able to use some of the info that's in there to avoid their own burnout, their own defilement by the jackboot of Internet Content Related Labor. Some of the info may be dated, but aren't we all.
So, here is a link to download PDFs of every single back issue of Scratch mag.
I will give them to you for free if you promise to take a day off. You can wait until after the election, sure, but you have to promise to do it. Write it in your calendar. Day off. See friends. Moisturize.
burning down the house,
m.
you're receiving this email because you know me, know my work, or might want to.
Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to martinesque: