three cents: i needed this, so i made it

1. a thing about money
2. a thing about love
3. a thing about creative work

This past weekend, in a half-hearted attempt at year-end cleaning, aka "mostly just crying and not throwing things away," I was going through some old boxes of mementos and I found a bank receipt from the day I launched Scratch magazine, in 2013. I had $80 in my checking account, nothing in savings, and I was launching a self-funded web magazine that very day. Even then I had known this was insane, which must be why I saved the ATM receipt. But I wanted to do it. I could do it. No one else was going to do it. I was doing it. I had sort of accidentally started a blog that people liked and seemed to need; I seemed to have an angle on it that no one else was going to have; I had found a partner and we had put in the work and done the editing and websiting and emailing and writing and assigning and marketing. 

I worked on Scratch magazine probably 20 hours a week, unpaid, for a year and a half. People liked it, paid for it, it was a nuanced and unusual discussion of an often taboo subject: writers and money. No hot takes or listicles, just real information and genuine experience shared by good writers. And it was good. But it wasn't economically sustainable, oh the irony. The partner left. I kept going. I tried to decide what to do. I consulted colleagues, I picked brains, I agonized, I drove my sweetheart and friends crazy talking about it. Then I remembered that when I first had the idea to make the magazine, the very first idea I'd had was to make a book. Then there were phone calls and connections made and somehow I had an agent, proposals were written, a couple years more of shit-tons of not-entirely-paid work was done, and here we are:

The book came out today. Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living is just what it says on the box: an collection of essays and interviews in which authors talk and write about money, work, and how they negotiate between the art and commerce parts of their work. Scratch is my first book, which is a little weird to say because sure, I'm in it, but so are thirty-two other amazing (and much more fancy than I) writers, and having "my" first book be a group effort is both a little bit strange — is it really "mine"? — and reassuring — I've got a squad! It's definitely a book about writers, but I truly think that anyone with an interest in a) reading, or b) creative work of any kind will enjoy it and learn things about the way art interacts with the world, and money, and the way we as humans interact with all of the above. Which is to say, please buy it. Socially mediate it. Give it as a gift. Go to your local bookstore and ask them to stock it. Tell writing teachers you know to assign it. Come talk about it in person with us at the events. Check it out at your library. Shout it, then throw it, from the rooftops. But mostly, please read it. I hope you read it.

I'll resume the regular format of this newsletter next time (i.e., write more and promote less), but this is all I have to say tonight. I am exhausted, grateful, exhilarated, ill (not illin' like a Beastie Boy, I am actually sick!), and I'm ready to fuckin' rumble. Let's do this, 2017. 

keep loving, keep fighting, keep writing, 
-manjula 




linkage
 
Writer/funny lady/firebrand Lindy West leaves twitter, cites "free labor" (+ harassment as remuneration) as one of the reasons.

Speaking of tech companies, they have, right now, another you. 

Just Enough Money to Pay for Our Eyelashes: the new San Francisco drag. 
 
John Berger has died. 


Scratch contributor's corner (not necessarily about $$, but still darn good)

Sarah Smarsh won the No Depression fellowship, will write 40,000 words about Dolly Parton, had better turn it into a book afterwards.

Mallory Ortberg talks (with Nicole Cliffe!) at BinderCon in Los Angeles this spring. Ladies.  

Caille Millner's Year in Reading. 

Kiese Laymon on his America.

Jennifer Weiner takes up space, loudly, as an act of protest.

Yiyun Li breaks my fuckin heart, is the best writer. 


events (me, plus the fancy writers in my book, in your town)

January: San Francisco (next week!). Austin. Los Angeles.
 
February: AWP. Brooklyn. Manhattan. Cornell University. Portland. 

See you there!