As a writer, this was such a poignant collection of essays by some of my favorite writers about what it's like to be a writer in today's world. A must read for any aspiring writer.

If you are a writer, want to be a writer, or know a writer - get this. It's vital reading and talks about writing and money in a way that I've never seen before. I learned a lot, and I know I'll get more from this book each time I read it.

Manjula Martin did a great job editing this collection of essays and interviews on what the title says: writers, their lives, money, finance and advertising, among other topics.

The book is divided into three sections:

1) EARLY DAYS, which delves into the making of a writer and the process to being published.
2) THE DAILY GRIND, which tackles the struggles of working writers.
3) SOMEDAY, which comprises hopes, dreams and advice.

This is a book all aspiring writers ought to read. Within its pages, contemporary authors talk about the financial realities of being an author in today's market. From MFA programs to grants and programs available, to how they actually earn a living, there is a lot to be learned in this tome.

Scratch, an anthology of writers on $, covers a multi-faceted, uncomfortable conversation from different perspectives

Lesser-known writers along with Jennifer Weiner and Nick Hornsby each approach the subject in a different way in Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, edited by Manjula Martin, “founder of Scratch magazine and Who Pays Writers?, a crowdsourced database of freelance writing rates.” The subjects here range from what’s basically a CV to the steps to writing and funding an independent movie, how to buy a house, and side hustles including carpentry and marrying a lawyer but the essays always get back to the idea of art vs. commerce and passion vs. profit. And they all make you wonder why so many of these authors teach writing when the jobs are so scarce and underpaid.

Nina MacLaughlin’s essay about writing a review for free hits home, “I justified it easily: it was purpose, focus, work. It meant fewer of my hours would be occupied by staring dead-eyed into the Internet.” That hers turned into a paying gig feels like the fairy tale Tumblrs tell ourselves and that’s okay, good for her. But it begs the question if they all got paid–and equally–for these contributions which include time-saver Q&A’s with a few of the best known names. Bonus mystery in Emily Gould’s awesome piece “Unlikeable”: Who is the then soon-to-be highly successful female author who had the balls to be generally unfriendly when Emily Gould met her in 2005? I’ve done the math and still can’t figure it out.

Wendy Ward
http://wendyrward.tumblr.com/

Great book for aspiring writers. It's not the usual "just keep at it" fluff. Honest take on what it's like to be a writer.

Scratch is intended for aspiring authors, already published authors and leisure writers. The tips and advice are truly worth reading. It addresses writing and money, work and life, literature and commerce. You'll get inspiration in knowing you're not alone with writing struggles, learning monetization, handling advances, diversity in publishing, selling out, how to work hard and read dead. Scratch is not meant to discourage writers but to prepare you for the challenges.

Contributors include Roxane Gay, Alexander Chee, Emily Gould, Harmony Holiday, Yiyun Li, Daniel José Older and Jennifer Weiner. It is edited by Majula Martin. Some essays are better than others; some essays may not be relevant depending on the stage of writing you are. But still add Scratch to your bookshelves alongside Poynter's Publishing Manuals, Oxford's Essenial Guide to Writing and Stephen King's On Writing. Treat yourself to knowledge. Decide when, or if, to quit your day job.

LiteraryMarie

Necessary reading for anyone who calls themselves a writer. Full review on my blog.

I enjoyed this nonfiction collection of essays about making money (or not) as a writer. It was as an advance copy from netgalley.com. I chose it because I really liked Martin’s magazine, also called Scratch, which shut down last year. Some of the essays were more relatable to me than others. I especially liked the interviews with Cheryl Strayed, Roxane Gay, and Susan Orlean.

Fucking awful! Most of these hacks don't even talk about making money through writing, they just witter on about writing and their dumb process. Garbage.

Most writers write because they literally cannot help themselves; it's a compulsion. Knowing how to turn that compulsion into cash, however, takes a completely separate set of skills. SCRATCH helps guide writers toward that skill set in a compassionate, entertaining way. Talented and successful writers (Jennifer Weiner, Susan Orlean, Nick Hornby are a few) deliver essays that provide insight into the money-making side of being a writer and some of the moral dilemmas it sometimes created. Should be required reading in MFA programs!

This will be required reading for any writer wannabe or for any booklover who wants to see how their favorite authors do their thing!

Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living by Manjula Martin was published these days by Simon & Schuster.

So: what a messy world the one of writing. I am a freelance reporter and so I feel the problem so badly.

While I was reading the preface of the author, Manjula Martin I was also thinking at my condition.
I don't remember anymore when it was the last time I have been paid for my work.

Yes it is sadly true what written by the author: if we write for love and passion why other people should pay us? It's scaring more than sadly true, thinking better.

It's what it is happening with some contracts in fact in which it is specified that people are in love for writing (and so there is not the necessity to paying them for intellectual work - implied -)

And I ask to myself: but if I pay my mechanistic, if I pay the baker for the bread, if I pay the hydraulic, electrician, all people who read newsmagazines after all, in too many cases they will read our words for free? Why no one should pay all of us for our daily, weekly, monthly articles?

What the hell is wrong?

But I know: of course these thoughts won't bring us too far.

In part because of the net, a real devastation for communication and common media.

If you think that some newsmagazine are thinking of using Facebook as their main resources cutting out collaborators, it gives to you the idea of the real danger of the power of the net and the problems connected with it. Collaborators are the salt of a newsmagazines. We know how to work; a news posted by someone else can be wrong and anyway should always be verified by a reporter in the place before to be printed.

Of course maybe at a certain point the profession of reporter opened at too many people when places for giving dignity to everyone there weren't at all.
Simple but true.
And now we are in the sh...
Ahem: I meant, in miserable conditions.

Luck is another important factor in this profession. If you meet people of quality along your way, who believe in you, you will obtain a great guidance and of course you can develop your ambitions much better arriving at destination. Realities where you are treated with dignity, where your work is recognized. It says a lot to a person. It says all because she/he will be feel he/she is treated as every human being should be treated.

I found beautiful stories in this book and I cried a lot as well. I loved the one of the first author's essay who said she was a book addicted because in her family she was the only one who read.

In our family my dad, my dad's aunts read a lot.
My granny Marietta in fact was the only lady in our rural community to have completed all elementary studies because she lived previously in another rural area when still a girl where there was a great dignity: there were all elementary classes.
In our rural community all elementary classes arrived later.
She read, she wrote and during the Second World War when people received letters of their dear beloved dear ones from the various wars' places the person who replied to all these letters was granny Marietta. Our house for what they told me was very crowded during the last Second World War Conflict..

Dad loved to read my articles. He was so proud of me. Aunt Dina read 'til the day she died. They all transmitted me this great passion and desire for knowledge. Reading is a passion that, thanks also to my British and American friends I enlarged with a lot of books and author in most recent decades.

A friend of mine, American, Connie presented me wagons of books when she returned to the USA and before as well! She knows I love reading and she knew I would have loved to read that books :-)
Anyway she helped me to create a good library not just of italian books and to start to read in English in a daily base. It's important.

Other British ladies founded a dog association in a close city, Umbertide where they sell Books for Dogs (the name of the charity) and so I could discover every week new authors still unknown to me or known but still unread. In general I return home with 15-20 books per time. At the end I had some little problem of...space.
I buy used books online, I didn't want to forget to tell this.

I thought I wouldn't never have read a fresh printed book in all my life but then I discovered NetGalley and I consider a privilege to read books with anticipation. It's stimulating, wonderful, seriously funny.

What it is remarked in this book is that not all of us have had a wonderful rich life plenty of books from the beginning and so we suffered more.

Let's also say that you can be the son or the daughter of the richest man of this world and you don't love to read and write or you do that pretty painfully.

Reading and writing are at first beautiful hobbies and passions.Sure, in a house in which everyone read it's more simple and less complicated to transmit this passion. You will read the newsmagazine at the beginning of the day and then various books during the day, but it's not said.
Money can be very very helpful for buying new books and magazines and newsmagazines. This is true.

Not everyone at 10 years read this world and the others thanks to the big libraries of their parents, very acculturated but really: it's not a fault to be born rich and it's not a fault to be born less rich and sometimes poor and to climb the mountain and to do the hard work on the road. Maybe at the end it will be more satisfying.

In my case every magazine bought and every book bought has meant a sacrifice in terms of costs. They still are a sacrifice!
Culture cost money and renounces and sometimes I prefer to buying culture than not a clothe, or a pair of jeans.
Something mom can't understand (she is a tailor) but I understand what I am doing. In the first case I give oxygen to my brain in the second case I would feed my vanity. Oh: I would also want to feed my vanity so badly of course, but...
Sacrifices...

Please read this book because in the diversified situations you will meet, in the different authors' essays and their different approach with the written words maybe you will find the best inspiration for going on in this sector.


I started to cry when I read the story of a writer who said: although no one paid me I wrote for free for a long time. Book reviews etc.
Her boyfriend said her that of course this behavior wouldn't have brought her bread to their table and she was very offended but you can't never know, she add. Writing mean also to keep our brain working and focused and active. If we should wait always for a paid occasion...

Now she is a published author.
You can't never know.

The net is not negative, it can also give the possibility to come out.

Very interesting book! The various essays include also Cheryl Strayed Roxane Gay, Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chee, Nick Hornby, and Jonathan Franzen.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster.

This book will sit on my desk as a reminder of the struggle, triumphs, and currency that writers face daily.

"Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living" is an eye-opening and refreshing look into the writing world. The essays and interviews that Manjula Martin uses from both well-known authors -such as Cheryl Strayed, Jennifer Weiner, and Jonathan Franzen- and up-and-coming authors, show the real life behind the writers. Their struggles, doubts, frustrations, as well as their motivation and triumphs are laid out for giving writers in all walks of life a glimpse into the business. From whether to ask for payment for your writing, getting into a MFA program, or ideas of financial success, this books is a great read for anyone, no matter what stage of the writing "game" they're in. Informative, serious, and fun all together.

Scratch: Writers, Money, And The Art Of Making A Living is authored by Manjula Martin founder of Scratch Magazine (2013-2015), explores the skilled innovation of writing for profit and self support. Included are over 30 essays by successful and highly acclaimed authors, as well as those who haven't yet reached that status. Regarding those "day jobs " it was Oscar Wilde that said "The best work is produced by those who do not depend on it for their daily bread."

"I write for pleasure, but publish for money. Vladimir Nabokov (1955) In these essays the writers used many means to write as much as possible, dealing with editors, literary agents, reviews good and bad, all forms of commerce--whether blogging, tweeting about books liked or disliked, talking about books at dinner parties, book events. These connections are necessary for a serious writer that wishes to publish. Many writers work under extreme stress anxiety and their writing doesn't always bring much satisfaction but can be somewhat disappointing. There are living expenses to be paid, student loans are due, and building a career in writing eats up every spare minute the writer has. According to Leslie Jamison talking about money forces the acknowledgement of aspects of the creative process that makes people uncomfortable. Writers are not only producers but produced.

Like it or not, money is present in the creative arts: an independent book vendor sells his books on the street, Zora Neale Hurston's death in a welfare hospital, Jean Rhys impoverished obscurity and alcoholism, Nellie Bly going undercover in a mental asylum with hopes of a staff writing position at the New York World. Raymond Carver openly discussed his dismay and resentment over the interference of his children and family responsibilities on his writing career. Not all tenured professors at prestigious universities found personal fulfillment, an example of David Foster Wallace was noted. Included were interviews with Cheryl Strayed, Jennifer Weiner, Jonathan Franzen, Nick Hornby and others.
Many writers had impressive credentials from assorted MFA writing programs including the Iowa Writers Workshop. Whether the writers taught as adjunct professors, teaching fellowships, or in MFA writing programs, the interesting process of professional writing, the honest and often ordinary life of a writer, also family life, friends and fans. This is an encouraging inspiring read for a better understanding of a life in writing. Many thanks to NetGalley for the e-ARC for the purpose of review.