Podcast appearances and mentions of manjula martin

On this week's Terra Verde episode, host and producer Hannah Wilton interviews author Manjula Martin about her recently-published memoir, The Last Fire Season; A Personal and Pyronatural History, out now from Pantheon Books. Set during the catastrophic 2020 wildfire season and the compounding crises of the pandemic and political upheaval, Martin tells the story of evacuating from her home in West Sonoma County and her journey of healing from a personal health crisis. Tracing the contours of hope, healing, and despair, The Last Fire Season explores what it means to live on a dynamic, changing planet and how we might shift our relationship to the keystone process of fire. Manjula Martin is coauthor, with her father, Orin Martin, of Fruit Trees for Every Garden, which won the 2020 American Horticultural Society Book Award. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Cut, Pacific Standard, Modern Farmer, and Hazlitt. She edited the anthology Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living; was managing editor of Francis Ford Coppola's literary magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story; and has worked in varied editorial capacities in the nonprofit and publishing sectors. She lives in West Sonoma County, California. The post A Personal Chronicle of California's Wildfire Crisis appeared first on KPFA.

We talk with Amitav Ghosh about his masterful history of the opium trade, Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories. Then, Manjula Martin tells us about her personal and “pyro-natural” history of California wildfires — the ones she lived through in 2020 and the ones Indigenous people lived with before white settlers moved in and took … Continue reading Amitav Ghosh, SMOKE AND ASHES & Manjula Martin, THE LAST FIRE SEASON →

Host Jo Reed and AudioFile's Alan Minskoff discuss how Manjula Martin delivers her “personal and pyronatural history” as if reading to a friend. She captures the complications of living in proximity to wildfires in Sonoma County, California, which was devastated by conflagrations in 2020. Her story is part memoir of illness and part accounting of living with massive wildfires and the pandemic. Listeners will learn about the fire itself as well: how it works and how those who deal with it study it, combat it, and learn from it. Read the full review of the audiobook on AudioFile's website. Published by Random House Audio. Find more audiobook recommendations at audiofilemagazine.com Dreamscape Publishing, an independent audiobook publisher, produces and publishes award-winning and bestselling titles, including those from Lisa Jewell, Jeneva Rose, and Annie Ernaux. For more information and to see Dreamscape's entire catalog, visit dreamscapepublishing.com. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/AUDIOFILE and get on your way to being your best self. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, meet writer and editor Manjula Martin, stand-up comedian, writer, and actor Moshe Kasher, and entrepreneur and CEO of AppSumo Noah Kagan. Tune in to hear which passages were their favorites to record, and which author's book inspired them to take up DJing. The Last Fire Season by Manjula Martin https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/711111/the-last-fire-season-by-manjula-martin/9780593786154/ Subculture Vulture by Moshe Kasher https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/668961/subculture-vulture-by-moshe-kasher/9780593790045/ Million Dollar Weekend by Noah Kagan https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706238/million-dollar-weekend-by-noah-kagan-with-tahl-raz/9780593789346/

In this episode of Talk Nerdy, Cara is joined by writer and editor Manjula Martin to talk about her new book, "The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History." Follow Manjula: @manjulatm.

When Manjula Martin fled her West Sonoma home in the summer of 2020 with wildfire raging around her, she realized her go bag was packed for an apocalypse, not a sleepover. She had flashlights, but no toothbrush. Books, but no shampoo. In her debut memoir, “The Last Fire Season,” Martin reflects on how Californians are simultaneously preparing for the end of the world, while also going about their day-to-day lives. “I had little capacity to navigate the everyday experience of living inside a slow decline,” she writes. We talk to Martin about living life in the Pyrocene, the age of fire.

Manjula Martin reads from the opening of her memoir, The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History, published by Pantheon Books in January 2024.

"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear." –Joan Didion In Episode 73, Gen and Jette discuss the broad category of essay collections. From Joan Didion to Chuck Klosterman to Samantha Irby, essay collections cover a wide range of topics in a wide variety of forms. We love a good collection of essays, so we share a few of our favourites, discuss what works for us and what doesn't, and talk about a few on our TBR lists. Show Notes: We've covered a few essay collections on the podcast: Episode 9 – Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman, Episode 38 – Movies and Other Things by Shea Serrano, Episode 65 – Like Streams to the Ocean by Jedidiah Jenkins, Episode 68 – We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby Essay writing opens up so many possibilities that we'd both love to explore in our own writing. Check out Electric Lit for one off essays and sign up for their newsletter to get a curated list delivered to your inbox. Gen's Essay Collection Recommendation: anything Zadie Smith has written Jette's Essay Collection Recommendation: But What If We're Wrong by Chuck Klosterman Books and Authors Mentioned: Joan Didion – Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, South and West Chuck Klosterman – But What If We're Wrong, Eating the Dinosaur, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, I Wear the Black Hat, Killing Yourself to Live Samantha Irby – We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, Wow, No Thank You Zadie Smith – Intimations, Changing My Mind, Feel Free Like Streams to the Ocean by Jedidiah Jenkins Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living edited by Manjula Martin 101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think by Brianna Wiest Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

lovethylawyer.comA transcript of this podcast is easily available at lovethylawyer.com.Go to https://www.lovethylawyer.com/blog for transcripts. In collaboration with the Alameda County Bar Association, Love Thy Lawyer presents an interview with: Manjula Martinhttps://www.lamanolaw.com/attorneys/manjula-martin/MANJULA MARTIN is a criminal defense attorney at Lamano Law Office. She is licensed in both state and federal courts and serves on the Executive Committee of the Alameda County Bar Association where she helps influence the way law is practiced in our community through collaborations with the court, judges, and other leaders. Her knowledge, education, and expertise are what her reputation in the legal community is built on along with her beliefs that that diversity, compassion, and empathy are among our greatest strengths. She applies these values with our clients and believes that they not only deserve the best defense, but also the best treatment when going through a difficult and often traumatizing time in their life.Ms. Martin received the Cali Excellence Award for Criminal Litigation in 2008 and was nominated as a Lawyer of Distinction in 2018. She is a member of the National College for DUI Defense (NCDD) and the California DUI Lawyers Association. She has represented women seeking to leave abusive situations in family law court with the San Francisco Bar Association Legal Services Program and worked on a Habeas Corpus Petition for a man wrongfully convicted of murder and the case was ultimately heard by the California Supreme Court. She clerked for the San Francisco District Attorney’s office where she worked on domestic violence cases, sexual assault crimes, and felony preliminary hearings. Ms. Martin is an avid traveler and spends time outside of the office with her wife and family, and depending on the season, catching waves, surfing or playing soccer.If you need to get in touch with Ms. Martin, please email her at at attorney@lamanolaw.com.Alameda County Bar AssociationThe Alameda County Bar Association (ACBA) is a professional membership association for lawyers and other members of the legal profession. The ACBA provides access to ongoing legal education; and promotes diversity and civil rights in the Alameda County legal community. Our mission is to promote excellence in the legal profession and to facilitate equal access to justice. Louis Goodman www.louisgoodman.com louisgoodman2010@gmail.com 510.582.9090 Special thanks to ACBA staff and members: Cailin Dahlin, Saeed Randle, Hadassah Hayashi, Vincent Tong and Jason Leong. (https://www.acbanet.org/) Musical theme by Joel Katz, Seaside Recording, Maui Technical support: Bryan Matheson, Skyline Studios, Oakland We'd love to hear from you. Send us an email at louisgoodman2010@gmail.com. Please subscribe and listen. Then tell us who you want to hear and what areas of interest you’d like us to cover. Please rate us and review us on Apple Podcasts.

Entomologists Doug Taron and Allen Lawrance from the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum stop by the studio to discuss monarch butterflies, dragonflies, spiders and more. Orin and Manjula Martin talk about the organic approach of their book Fruit Trees for Every Garden.

These short pep talks are designed to give you a little boost of motivation or inspiration and help you along with your day and your project. This pep talk is part of a series of talks designed to help you through the winter holidays or other busy season. This is a time of year -- and a time in history -- when things can feel very uncertain and risky, and it's easy to question even trying. This excerpt from our conversation with Manjula Martin in episode 48 is an antidote to feeling out of control. You can find more information and get in touch on our website, marginallypodcast.com.  Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast or Facebook. Meghan's on Twitter @meghanembee, and Olivia’s @roamingoliviaTheme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá

Today's guest is Manjula Martin, the creator of Who Pays Writers and the editor of Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living . Her writing has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, Aeon Magazine, Hazlitt Magazine, Nieman Storyboard, and The Awl, among other publications. Martin’s next nonfiction book will be Fruit Trees for Every Garden, cowritten with Orin Martin, forthcoming in Fall 2019 from Ten Speed Press. Martin is the managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story, the National Magazine Award–winning fiction and art magazine published by Francis Ford Coppola. She has previously worked in varied editorial and writing capacities with book and magazine publishers, nonprofit organizations, and arts organizations. She lives in San Francisco. You can find her at manjulamartin.com. We talk about: What Manjula has learned from many years of writing, blogging and editing about writers and money; Balancing (or not) many creative projects when you have a day job; The importance of prioritizing the work you consider to be your art; YOLO; Her gardening book coming out in 2019; Branding and genre-hopping As always, we'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review usin your podcast app, as this helps other listeners find the show.  Visit our website, marginallypodcast.com, for complete show notes and to get in touch. Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcastor Facebook. Meghan's on Twitter @meghanembee, and Olivia’s @roamingolivia Theme music is "It's Time" by Scaricá Ricascá 

Manjula Martin is fearless. She gets to the heart of the matter: why don't writers get paid like other professions? Why does everyone expect to read content for free or very little money these days? Why don't we value writing the same way we value other work? And why is making a decent living considered "selling out" in some arenas. Manjula has been exploring the topic of money and writing in numerous forums, from her blog "Who Pays Writers?" a collection of rates that writers can submit anonymously about writing jobs they have worked, to her anthology "Scratch" that collects thoughts from a who's who of today's writers on the topic. This has been a taboo conversation for ages. People were expected to feel grateful to get their work published at all, whether or not they got money for it. But why is writing a career that is so undervalued? Manjula and I dive in to some of these topics and hopefully get you excited to read her book, which collects essays and pieces from both prominent and new writers on the topic of making money from the written word. It's a must-read and this episode is a must-listen if you want writing to be a career, rather than just a fun hobby. Full episode with Show Notes See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What happens if you find yourself in a situation where practical financial advice doesn't apply? This week, Gaby explores a variety of money quandaries without easy answers: long-term freelance work (with Manjula Martin), identity theft (with Kathryn McCauley), bipolar disorder (with Julie Fast), and substance abuse recovery (with Wade Berstler). Find Manjula's work at http://manjulamartin.com, and Julie's writing at http://juliefast.com. Read more about Wade here: http://wahdaimelon.blogspot.com/2017/03/getting-lyft.html?zx=2ae7ea2c0ea28331. (TW: Discussion of bipolar disorder)Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What happens if you find yourself in a situation where practical financial advice doesn't apply? This week, Gaby explores a variety of money quandaries without easy answers: long-term freelance work (with Manjula Martin), identity theft (with Kathryn McCauley), bipolar disorder (with Julie Fast), and substance abuse recovery (with Wade Berstler). Find Manjula's work at http://manjulamartin.com, and Julie's writing at http://juliefast.com. Read more about Wade here: http://wahdaimelon.blogspot.com/2017/03/getting-lyft.html?zx=2ae7ea2c0ea28331. (TW: Discussion of bipolar disorder) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesOur Sponsors:* Check out Arena Club: arenaclub.com/badmoney* Check out Chime: chime.com/BADMONEY* Check out Claritin: www.claritin.com* Check out Indeed: indeed.com/BADWITHMONEY* Check out Monarch Money: monarchmoney.com/BADMONEY* Check out NetSuite: NetSuite.com/BADWITHMONEYAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

SCRATCH: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living (Simon & Schuster) Based on the online magazine of the same name, SCRATCH: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living is a collection of honest and informative essays and interviews, addressing the relationships between writing and money, work and life, literature and commerce. In the literary world, we romanticize the image of the struggling artist, but pursuing a career as a creative also stirs a complicated discourse: either writers should be paid for everything they do or they should just pay their dues and count themselves lucky to be published. You should never quit your day job, but your ultimate goal should be to quit your day job. They are told by more-successful writers to “do it for the love,” but the advice gets quiet when it comes to how to make a living out of writing. It’s an endless, confusing, and often controversial conversation that, despite our bare-it- all culture, still remains taboo. For SCRATCH, editor Manjula Martin has gathered interviews and essays from established and rising authors to confront the age-old question: how do creative people make money? For the first time, these authors get down to the nitty gritty of money, MFA programs, freelancing, teaching fellowships, finally getting published, the bestseller list, and how they define “success”. They also tackle the penetrating questions on what living in the literary world is really like, including issues of diversity, female likeability, debt and credit, and having a family while managing an artists’ career. The result is an entertaining and inspiring book that helps readers and writers understand what it’s really like to make art in a world that runs on money—and why it matters. Essential reading for aspiring and experienced writers, and for anyone interested in the future of literature, SCRATCH is the go-to guide to doing the impossible: making a living by doing what you love. Praise for SCRATCH "Well-organized, fascinating anthology...highly recommended"-Kirkus Reviews "Solid counseling for aspirants on what it means to offer the labors of their heart for sale in the marketplace."-Publishers Weekly "Meaningful for those working in any discipline."-Booklist, Starred Review Manjula Martin created the blog Who Pays Writers? and was the founder and editor of Scratch magazine, an online periodical focused on the business of being a writer. Her writing has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, SF Weekly, The Billfold, The Toast, and other publications. She is the managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story. Scratch is her first book. Manjula Martin by Ted Weinsten Julia Fierro is the author of the novels Cutting Teeth and the forthcoming The Gypsy Moth Summer. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Julia’s work has been published in The Millions, Poets & Writers, Flavorwire, Buzzfeed, Glamour, TimeOut New York, Psychology Today, and other publications. She founded The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop in 2002, and it has since become a creative home to over three thousand writers. Sackett Street was named a “Best NYC Writing Workshop” by the Village Voice, TimeOut New York, and Brooklyn magazine, and a “Best MFA-Alternative” by Poets & Writers. She lives in Brooklyn and Los Angeles with her husband and their two children. Susan Orlean has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1992. She is the author of seven books, including Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night, and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. She lives with her family and her animals in Los Angeles and may be reached at SusanOrlean.com and Twitter.com/SusanOrlean. Susan Orlean photo by Gaspar Tringale  Kima Jones has received fellowships from PEN Center USA Emerging Voices, Kimbilio Fiction, Yaddo's 2016 Howard Moss Residency in poetry and was named the 2014-2015 Gerald Freund Fellow at The MacDowell Colony. She has been published at GQ, Guernica, NPR, PANK, Scratch Magazine and The Rumpus among others and in the anthologies Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, Her Own Accord: American Women on Identity, Culture, and Community and The New York Times Best Seller, The Fire this Time, edited by Jesmyn Ward. Her short story "Nine" received notable mention in Best American Science Fiction 2015. Kima is an MFA candidate in fiction and Rodney Jack Scholar in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is a founding board member of Makara Center for the Arts. Kima lives in Los Angeles where she operates Jack Jones Literary Arts, a book publicity company.  Harmony Holiday, poet and choreographer, is the author of Negro League Baseball (Fence Books, 2011), winner of the Motherwell Poetry Prize; Go Find Your Father/A Famous Blues (Ricochet, 2015), and Hollywood Forever (FenceBooks, 2016). Holiday curates the Afrosonics archive of Jazz Poetics and audio culture as well as a fantastic blog,nonstophome. She teaches at Otis College in Los Angeles and has a BA from the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA from Columbia University. She runs a boutique production house devoted to the crossing between archiving, improvisation, myth, and black music.

In Part Two of this file the writer and managing editor of Francis Ford Coppola’s award-winning magazine Zoetrope: All-Story, Manjula Martin, returns to the show this week to talk about her new book and “…the realities of making a living in the writing world.” Manjula is the founder of the website Who Pays Writers?, an invaluable service dedicated to helping freelance writers anonymously share current publication rates and their experiences getting paid. As managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story magazine, a title that has won every major story award including the National Magazine Award for Fiction, Ms. Martin sees to the quarterly publication of a stable of prominent contemporary writers and artists. In her first book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, the editor has collected interviews and “…essays from today’s most acclaimed authors–from Cheryl Strayed to Roxane Gay to Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chee, Nick Hornby, and Jonathan Franzen…” on the intersection of writing and commerce. The New Republic said of the writer, “Manjula Martin has done more than perhaps anyone else to shed light on the financial nitty-gritty of the writing profession.” Her writing has also appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, Aeon Magazine, Hazlitt Magazine, The Awl, SF Weekly, The Rumpus, and many others. If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews. If you missed the first half you can find it right here. In Part Two of this file Manjula Martin and I discuss: Productivity, irregular hours, and the 400 hats of a working editor and writer Why finding your writing flow is so important when you have a day job One great hack for beating writer’s block How creativity resists definition Why writers need to share info about making a living Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes If you’re ready to see for yourself why over 194,000 website owners trust StudioPress — the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins — just go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living ManjulaMartin.com How Publishing Consultant, Educator, and Author Jane Friedman Writes: Part One Who Pays Writers? Zoetrope: All-Story Magazine How Bestselling Author Austin Kleon Writes: Part One three cents newsletter by Manjula Martin Manjula Martin on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How the Editor of Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living Manjula Martin Writes: Part Two Voiceover: Rainmaker FM. Kelton Reid: Welcome back to The Writer Files, I am your host Kelton Reid, here to take you on yet another tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of renowned writers. In part two of this file, the writer and managing editor of Francis Ford Coppola’s award-winning magazine Zoetrope: All-Story, Manjula Martin, returns to talk about the realities of making a living in the writing world. Manjula is the founder of the website Who Pays Writers, an invaluable service dedicated helping freelance writers anonymously share current publication rates and their experiences getting paid. As managing editor of Zoetrope, a title that has won every major story award including the National Magazine Award for fiction, Ms. Martin sees to the quarterly publication of a stable of prominent contemporary writers and artists. In her first book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, the editor has collected interviews and essays from today’s most acclaimed authors from Cheryl Strayed to Roxane Gay, Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chi, Nick Hornby, Jonathan Franzen and many others, on the intersection of writing and commerce. The New Republic said of the writer, “Manjula has done more than perhaps anyone else to shed light on the financial nitty gritty of the writing profession.” Her writing has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, Aeon magazine, Hazlet, the Awl, SF Weekly, the Rumpus, and many others. In part two of this file, Manjula and I discuss productivity, irregular hours and the 400 hats of a working editor and writer, why finding your writing flow is so important when you have a day job, one great hack for beating writer’s block, how creativity resists definition and why writers need to share info about making a living. If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews as soon as they’re published. If you missed the first half of this show, you can find it in the archives on iTunes, on WriterFiles.FM, and in the show notes. Just a quick reminder that The Writer Files is brought to you by StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. Built on the Genesis Framework, StudioPress delivers state of the art SEO tools, beautiful and fully responsive designs, airtight security, instant updates, and much more. If you’re ready to take your WordPress site to the next level, see for yourself why over 194,000 website owners trust StudioPress. Go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress now. That’s Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress. Productivity, Irregular Hours, and the 400 Hats of a Working Editor and Writer Kelton Reid: I’d love to dig into your productivity. You wear a lot of hats, clearly, with all of the different projects you’re doing and do on a daily basis for your day job. Let’s talk about what does your day usually look like? How much time are you doing research? How much time are you actually sitting and clacking away? Manjula Martin: Yeah. I work 40 to 60 hours a week at my job. It varies depending on where we are in the production cycle. My day is busy. I am reading and researching in some form or another most of the day. In terms of whether I’m reading or researching for my own writing work, it’s a much smaller amount of the day. I read for pleasure, usually at night before bed. I’ll tell you right now I am sitting in my gym clothes because I just came from the gym. I’m in my living room because I am working from home today. I got up this morning at 7:00 and I sent a bunch of emails and corresponded with my layout designer and my co-editor and then also did a bunch of emails for the promotion of the Scratch book, and then I ran to the gym and worked out and then I ran home and ate some toast and got on the phone with you. I’m not sitting here writing beautiful prose all morning on my typewriter. I do a lot of email, and for me productivity, it’s all about figuring out a way to just find time to carve out that space to do my own writing. One thing I think that I have learned is that unfortunately, at this moment in my career, there isn’t a regular schedule to that. Because I work for a publication, the busyness of it ebbs and flows, we’re quarterly. There’s one month where things are ****ing crazy, we’re in production, and then right after we publish the magazine it’s a little bit mellower and I’m doing more dealing with circulation, and that sort of thing. I should add here that the entire staff of Zoetrope is two people. Kelton Reid: Holy cow. Manjula Martin: We manage circulation and marketing and everything. I think it’s identifying that ebb and flow in a larger sense in my life, not talking about the ebb and flow of the day, but talking about the ebb and flow of weeks or months or even seasons, and just being okay with that knowing that like, Right now things are crazy and I’m promoting this book and I’m also going into production on the magazine on Monday. So it’s going to be really crazy and I’m not going to write anything for probably two weeks. Then I’m going to have some time off and then I’m going to write all day for three days. Kelton Reid: That’s cool. Manjula Martin: I also happen to work better in long chunks. That’s actually somewhat conducive to the way that I write. Why Finding Your Writing Flow is So Important When You Have a Day Job Kelton Reid: That’s cool. Like a lot of writers who have day jobs, we kind of push our other projects to the margins, but finding that flow is so important, isn’t it? To find those longer deep flow days where you can just get into it. Manjula Martin: Yeah, and I think a lot of that psychologically has to do with being okay with the reality of your life. I would love to wake up every morning and write for three hours, but I don’t, because I’m exhausted and I need to sleep, and exercise is important to me and it keeps me from being depressed, so I need exercise. That’s what I do in the morning. Once I understood that, Okay, this is how it’s going to go, accepting that and not being too hard on myself for it, I think, is a huge part of that. You have to look at what actually your life and your work is like and not try and force yourself into habits or productivity hacks or anything like that that aren’t realistic and that aren’t actually applicable to your own situation. Kelton Reid: Totally. How do you feel about writer’s block? Manjula Martin: I didn’t believe in it until it happened to me. Writer’s block hasn’t been a big problem in my life, I think it can be a really big problem for people and I recognize that it is a huge psychological block for a lot of people. I have never had that feeling of staring at the blank page and being like, Ugh, what do I put on it? For me I just am like, I wish I could have time to have a blank page, is sort of how I feel sometimes. For me, it’s a lot about being busy and having 400 jobs. I do think that I have, I think, since November 8, 2016, had difficulty writing. The way that I found to work around it is to write, but maybe write other things. Kelton Reid: Yeah, something that Austin Kleon actually calls productive procrastination. He also contributes You interviewed Kleon for your book. Manjula Martin: He’s genius. One Great Hack for Beating Writer’s Block Kelton Reid: I love Kleon, he was on this show also. His hack is just work on something else until you’re- Manjula Martin: Yeah, do something else. The cool thing about being a writer is that “working” can mean reading a book or even maybe staring at the wall and thinking. There is a lot of process and internal stuff that goes into creating literature. That’s all part of the job. It’s important to give yourself time to do that stuff. It’s also important to know the difference between processing and procrastinating. Yeah, I think for me, for example, since the election I’ve had trouble working on my novel, because I’m sort of like, How is this ****ing relevant? I don’t know. I’m rethinking parts of it. I have found that I am writing letters, I’ve been writing letters to friends on paper with a pen, and it’s been amazing. It’s basically like a much easier way to write in your journal. Kelton Reid: Yeah, for sure. And you work through stuff as you’re doing it, don’t you? Manjula Martin: Yeah. Kelton Reid: It’s kind of like a therapy hack. Just write a letter to a friend- Manjula Martin: You don t even have to send them! You can just write them. Kelton Reid: You never do. That’s right, that’s a great trick. I think an author I had on recently, Dan Buettner, he s a journalist, said that very thing. He said, “When you get stuck you just write an email to someone,” and often times he doesn’t send it because he’s working the problem out in his head as he does it. Manjula Martin: Yeah, my fourth grade teacher used to make us do a free write, which thinking back on it, was awesome. She used to say, she would stand on her desk, she was a bit of a character, and she used to say, “You have to put your pen on the paper for 10 minutes, and if you don’t know what to write, just write over and over again the words, ‘I don’t know what to write. I don’t know what to write,’ and I guarantee you, at some point you’re going to stop writing that sentence and write something else.” Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: The fourth grade method, man. Kelton Reid: Fourth grade method, noted down. Get up on your desk. Let’s ask a couple workflow questions, these are easy ones. Mac or PC? Manjula Martin: Mac. Kelton Reid: Are you using Microsoft Word primarily or Scrivener or something crazy? Manjula Martin: I use Microsoft Word because I’m old. But, I should say I have recently started writing longhand and then typing it in at the end of the day. Kelton Reid: Okay, I like that. Manjula Martin: Which is a tip I picked up from Alexander Chee. Kelton Reid: Yes, and also appears in your collection, is that correct? Manjula Martin: He does. Kelton Reid: Do you have any procrastination beating tools or do you lean into it? Some writers turn off the internet, or- Manjula Martin: It depends. Yeah, I was going to say my number one procrastination tool is get off the damn internet, which includes your phone, hot tip. If you turn off your computer you also have to turn off your phone. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: People joke a lot about Jonathan Franzen‘s opinions on the internet, which he goes into in the book a bit, he’s in the book too. I gotta say I’m with him on this one, turn it off. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Again, that prosthetic brain is easy to use, and then I think your real brain just atrophies a little. Manjula Martin: Yeah, and especially if you’re on social media and you’re having a flood of spastic images and words being thrown at you, at your brain. Your brain is just like, What? Kelton Reid: It loves it. Manjula Martin: For me It loves it, but then it can’t come back from that, I feel like. For me, if I get up and I turn on Twitter first in the morning, there s no coming back from that. My whole day is different. How Creativity Resists Definition Kelton Reid: Yeah. All right, well I want to get into creativity before I lose you here. Can you define creativity? You rub up against all these amazing creatives in all these different fields. Do you have a definition of creativity floating around? Manjula Martin: Probably not. Creativity tends to resist definition and I would say that’s sort of its thing. Kelton Reid: Yeah. When do you personally feel most creative? Manjula Martin: When it’s foggy outside and I’m inside and it’s the morning and I have time. Kelton Reid: Yeah, time. Do you have a creative muse right now? Manjula Martin: Like a being? Kelton Reid: No, yeah, sure, it could be a deity, it could be other TV show, I don’t know. Manjula Martin: One thing that I often turn to is poetry, I read poetry. I don’t write poetry, but I read it. At the moment I’ve been rereading Anne Carson’s Sappho fragments. The book is called If Not, Winter. Loving those. Poetry, I think for me, serves as a bit of a muse, but it’s also more of a writing prompt. It helps get things flowing. Kelton Reid: Yeah. It does require a different part of your brain to probably both write and read, I think. Manjula Martin: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kelton Reid: Which is so great about poetry. What, in your estimation, makes a writer great? Manjula Martin: Great writing? Kelton Reid: Yes. The words, once again. Manjula Martin: Is this a trick question? Kelton Reid: It is. Manjula Martin: Yeah, man, I’ll just leave it at that. Kelton Reid: Okay, perfect. I like it. That’s the most succinct answer I’ve had to date. Before we go, I know that you are in a bit of a time crunch, but what do you think I’ll ask you one final fun one. If you could choose any author from any era for an all expense paid dinner to your favorite spot in the world, where would you go and who would you go with? Manjula Martin: Okay, let’s see, I’m going to start with I would love to see what would happen if I took Gertrude Stein to Chez Panisse. Kelton Reid: Hmmm. And what would you eat? Manjula Martin: Whatever Gertrude told me to eat. Kelton Reid: Okay, perfect. All right, as we wrap up here, before I ask you to offer advice to your fellow scribes, I want to point back to this fantastic book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living. It’s a fantastic book. It is a collection of essays, interviews, by writers at all different places in their careers. It’s broken up into three distinct sections: Early days, we talk about the earlier parts of the career, The daily grind, that every day grind, and then Someday, which has some more successful authors talking about the perception, at least, of success. It’s a great book, kudos on this collection. Your contribution to it also very inspiring, lots of inspiring and somewhat heartbreaking things in there. Yeah, I want to point writers to that and readers alike, it’s a great one. Congrats. Manjula Martin: Thank you. Why Writers Need to Share Info About Making a Living Kelton Reid: To wrap up here, in addition to Scratch, what other advice can you offer your fellow writers to keep going, keep the ink moving, keep the cursor moving and the ink flowing? Manjula Martin: A couple things, I guess. I would just say money and work are an intricate part of any art that an artist puts out into the world, whether or not you’re getting paid for that art, even. We all have to deal with money and we all are affected by it. So we need to share information and acknowledge that commerce is a part of literature. Whether or not you like it, it is. You don’t have to like it and you don’t have to be okay with it but you kind of have to do it. It might be a good idea to get educated about it and get comfy with it. My only other general advice tip for writers is to not listen too much to tips for writers. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: It’s useful and fun and we all love this, but make sure you’re spending more time writing than you are getting tips about writing. Kelton Reid: Yeah, I love that, that’s a great takeaway. Manjula Martin, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule. Manjula Martin: Thank you. Kelton Reid: Where can writers connect with you out there in the world? Manjula Martin: I’m on Twitter, for better or worse, it’s my full name, Manjula Martin. My other contact info is on my website, ManjulaMartin.com. I like getting new letters, so send me an email. Also, I have a newsletter, a tiny letter, it’s called 3 Cents, you can find that on my website as well. That goes out about once a month. Kelton Reid: Perfect. I will be signing up for that shortly. Thanks again, come back any time, we really appreciate your wisdom. Manjula Martin: Thanks for having me. Kelton Reid: Cheers. Thanks so much for joining me for this half of a tour through the writer’s process. If you enjoy The Writer’s File podcast, please subscribe to the show and leave us a rating or a review on iTunes to help other writers find us. For more episodes or to just leave a comment or a question, you can drop by WriterFiles.FM and you can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers. Talk to you next week.

Hey there word nerds! Today I’m thrilled to welcome Manjula Martin on the show. Manjula is editor of Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living from Simon & Schuster. She’s the creator of the blog Who Pays Writers? And was the founder and editor of Scratch magazine, an online periodical focused on the business of being a writer. Her work has appeared in various publications like the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, SF Weekly, The Billfold, and The Toast, plus, she is the managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story. Today, Manjula and I will be talking about writers and money, how to make ends meet, and generate revenue from your writing. In this episode we discuss: Why it’s so difficult—but so important—for writers to talk about money. Also why it doesn’t have to be difficult. Different options and strategies for how writers can make a living beyond a book deal. The pros and cons of working for free, and the broader implications this has on the publishing landscape. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses and leveraging them to help you make a living. Plus, her #1 tip for writers. About the Author Manjula Martin is editor of Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living (Simon & Schuster, January 2017). She created the blog Who Pays Writers? and was the founder and editor of Scratch magazine, an online periodical that focused on the business of being a writer. Her writing has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, SF Weekly, The Billfold, The Toast, and other publications. She is the managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story and lives in San Francisco. You can learn more about Manjula Martin at her website: https://manjulamartin.com/. Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living A collection of essays from today’s most acclaimed authors—from Cheryl Strayed to Roxane Gay to Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chee, Nick Hornby, and Jonathan Franzen—on the realities of making a living in the writing world. In the literary world, the debate around writing and commerce often begs us to take sides: either writers should be paid for everything they do or writers should just pay their dues and count themselves lucky to be published. You should never quit your day job, but your ultimate goal should be to quit your day job. It’s an endless, confusing, and often controversial conversation that, despite our bare-it-all culture, still remains taboo. In Scratch, Manjula Martin has gathered interviews and essays from established and rising authors to confront the age-old question: how do creative people make money? For more info and show notes: DIYMFA.com/129

The writer and managing editor of Francis Ford Coppola’s award-winning magazine Zoetrope: All-Story, Manjula Martin, paid a visit to the show this week to talk about her new book and “…the realities of making a living in the writing world.” Manjula is the founder of the website Who Pays Writers?, an invaluable service dedicated to helping freelance writers anonymously share current publication rates and their experiences getting paid. As managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story magazine, a title that has won every major story award including the National Magazine Award for Fiction, Ms. Martin sees to the quarterly publication of a stable of prominent contemporary writers and artists. In her first book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, the editor has collected interviews and “…essays from today’s most acclaimed authors–from Cheryl Strayed to Roxane Gay to Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chee, Nick Hornby, and Jonathan Franzen…” on the intersection of writing and commerce. The New Republic said of the writer, “Manjula Martin has done more than perhaps anyone else to shed light on the financial nitty-gritty of the writing profession.” Her writing has also appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, Aeon Magazine, Hazlitt Magazine, The Awl, SF Weekly, The Rumpus, and many others. If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews. In Part One of this file Manjula Martin and I discuss: Why the school of real life is so valuable to writers How an unpaid internship led to a dream job The revenge of analog and print magazines How a Tumblr became an inspiring collection of stories on the writing life Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ... Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes The Show Notes If you’re ready to see for yourself why over 194,000 website owners trust StudioPress — the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins — just go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress How the Editor of ‘Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living’ Manjula Martin Writes: Part Two Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living ManjulaMartin.com How Publishing Consultant, Educator, and Author Jane Friedman Writes: Part One Who Pays Writers? Zoetrope: All-Story Magazine three cents newsletter by Manjula Martin Manjula Martin on Twitter Kelton Reid on Twitter The Transcript How the Editor of Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living Manjula Martin Writes: Part One Voiceover: Rainmaker FM. Kelton Reid: Welcome back to The Writer Files. I am your host, Kelton Reid, here to take you on yet another tour of the habits, habitats, and brains of renowned writers to learn their secrets. The writer and managing editor of Francis Ford Coppola’s award winning magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story, Manjula Martin, paid a visit to the show this week to talk about her new book and the realities of making a living in the writing world. Manjula is the founder of the website, Who Pays Writers, an invaluable service dedicated to helping freelance writers anonymously share current publication rates and their experiences getting paid. As managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story Magazine, a title that has won every major story award including the National Magazine Award for Fiction, Miss Martin sees to the quarterly publication of a stable of prominent contemporary writers and artists. In her first book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, the editor has collected interviews and essays from today’s most acclaimed authors from Cheryl Strayed to Roxane Gay, Jennifer Weiner, Alexander Chee, Nick Hornby, Jonathan Franzen, and many others on the intersection of writing and commerce. The New Republic said of the writer, “Manjula Martin has done more than perhaps anyone else to shed light on the financial nitty-gritty of the writing profession.” Her writing has also appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Pacific Standard, Aeon Magazine, Hazlitt, The Awl, SF Weekly, The Rumpus, and many others. In part one of this file, Manjula and I discuss why the school of real life is so valuable to writers, how an unpaid internship led to her dream job, the revenge of analog and print magazines, and how a Tumblr became an inspiring collection of stories on the writing life. If you’re a fan of The Writer Files, please click subscribe to automatically see new interviews as soon as they’re published. A quick note to subscribers that the show will be moving to Tuesdays for 2017 so look for part 2 of this file January 17th. Thanks for listening. Just a quick reminder that The Writer Files is brought to you by StudioPress, the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins. Built on the Genesis Framework, StudioPress delivers state of the art SEO tools, beautiful and fully responsive designs, airtight security, instant updates, and much more. If you’re ready to take your WordPress site to the next level, see for yourself why over 194,000 website owners trust StudioPress. Go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress now. That’s Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress. We are back on The Writer Files with a special guest. Manjula Martin is joining us today. Writer, editor, managing editor of Zoetrope magazine, a fantastic magazine that I’m a big fan of, and also the editor of a brand new book, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, a fantastic new edition. Thanks for joining us. Manjula Martin: Thanks, it’s great to be here. Why the School of Real Life is So Valuable to Writers Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah, so I’d love to talk about the book itself, which I think is an important one, at least an inspiring one for writers of every level out there in the world. But, let’s talk a little bit about kind of your origins as a writer. You contribute to the book itself and it’s a fantastic, inspiring story about your own journey, but let’s talk a little bit about that kind of, maybe for listeners who don’t know you or are familiar with your journey, kind of where you’ve been and a little bit of that story of where you’re going, maybe, too. Manjula Martin: Do you have any tips? Yeah, my journey is somewhat meandering, but also rather direct in its way. I’ve always been into writing in some way or another. I wrote poetry and letters and a zine when I was young. From there I worked in journalism. I was a receptionist at a magazine. Then I was a reporter at a magazine. I also worked outside of journalism a lot. I’ve worked a lot of service jobs. I’ve worked a lot of day jobs where I’m a writer in addition to doing creative writing on my own. I’ve done copywriting. I’ve been a marketing editor at nonprofits and art organizations. I’ve been a full-time freelancer for many, many years. I write fiction and nonfiction and I edit. About a year ago I got the job as managing editor of Zoetrope: All-Story, so that’s, at the moment, a proper day job that I have. I think, I guess, I would say my path has been somewhat meandering but a cool part of that is that I have gotten to do all kinds of stuff and I’ve gotten to experience what it’s like to be a writer in many different situations. As your job, not as your job, different types of writing, different environments, different goals, and so I tend to describe myself as sort of a generalist, I guess, in that way. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah, but it’s a fascinating path and you write about it. You’ve written about it quite extensively. It seems like it’s led you to this, some great epiphanies, and you have some amazing advice for writers. The book obviously is an extension of that, and it’s this beautiful collection of essays and interviews that you yourself have done and some others have done. Congrats on the book. Manjula Martin: Thank you. Kelton Reid: By the way. Once this is published the book will have just come out so writers and readers can find it. Manjula Martin: At Readscratch.com. Kelton Reid: Yes, yes, Readscratch.com. That is the official website for the book. Where else can we find your writing? You’ve written for quite a few kind of high profile magazines and literary What Manjula is Working on Now Manjula Martin: Yeah, yeah, what I’ve mostly published up to this point is I’ve done a lot of like essay writing, personal essay and mix of reported and personal essay. Yeah, I’ve done stuff. The essay that is in the book was first assigned by the VQR, the Virginia Quarterly Review. I’ve written for Pacific Standard and Aeon, which is a really cool British publication online, a bunch of The Awl family websites. I used to write for The Toast (R.I.P), so those are some of the places where my work lives online still. If folks want to actually read stories I’ve written, you can just go to my personal website and I have clips there. You can click on all the links you want. Then I’m also working on a novel, which you cannot yet read but will at some point. Kelton Reid: Cool. Manjula Martin: Hopefully. Then I’m also, you know, I’ve been working on this project with Scratch for several years now. It started out of Who Pays Writers, the website, and then it sort of became it’s own online magazine, and then that became a book. But I’m actually, right now, just starting to work on my next project, which is a bit of a pivot. I am co-authoring a gardening book with my father. Kelton Reid: That’s cool. Manjula Martin: Who is a somewhat acclaimed organic gardening instructor. Kelton Reid: That’s fantastic. Manjula Martin: We’re writing a book for Ten Speed Press about how to grow fruit trees. Kelton Reid: Amazing. Manjula Martin: But that will be a different kind of project, yeah. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah, well it’s kind of hard to keep track of all the stuff you’re getting into, but it’s Manjula Martin: I thought, as you were listing it out, I sound like a crazy person. Kelton Reid: No, but it’s inspiring. As I’m looking at your bio, there’s like the short version in there and then you start to dig into it a little bit and it’s like, wow, you’ve done so many cool things, so kudos. Manjula Martin: Part of that is that I’ve had about 4,000 jobs. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: Because I didn’t graduate from college around the time that most people graduate from college. I dropped out of college after a year and just went to work. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: A lot of that experience comes from school of real life. Kelton Reid: Right. Manjula Martin: I did eventually go back and get my Bachelor’s Degree just a few years ago, which was a really interesting experience being a grown-up and going back to school in that way. That’s part of, I think, what is an important sort of approach that I took to the book too, is like I think there’s a perception that there’s some sort of divide behind like schmancy literary world and more commercial or other types of writing or journalism. That has not been the case in my life. I have done everything and continue to do everything. I love everything and I’m interested in everything. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: I can totally read a chick-lit book and I can totally read a fancy literary novel. Each of those have value in their own way to me in my life. I’ve really experienced that, I think, through my winding career path. Part of what I did with the book, with Scratch, was try to bring together writers who you might not normally find in the same place under the umbrella of the book. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah, well, the book has so much wisdom. There are heartbreaking pieces and there are truly inspiring pieces. Manjula Martin: It’s so good to hear that because my great fear with the book is that it will be depressing. Kelton Reid: No, I didn’t take it that way at all. In fact, there’s just so much. There’s so much to unpack that it’s, I think, it is one of those that you’re just going to want to keep around and keep getting nuggets from. It’ll be one that people will keep on their desks as just kind of inspiration; open it up, read a section. But you know, as you kind of are talking about your own journey, it’s like, I think it’s obviously given you kind of the vision that everybody’s financial situation is different, right? Everyone has different goals. You talk about their different backgrounds and emotional hangups. It’s really cool that you’ve done work to help writers to kind of at least bring some transparency to these age-old questions of, you know Manjula Martin: Yeah. Kelton Reid: Should you quit your day job? Which you talk about extensively. How do creators make money and why aren’t we talking more about how everybody’s journey is different and everybody’s needs are different? Anyway, I think it’s all really great. Manjula Martin: Thank you. Kelton Reid: Writers especially will love this one, Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living. Kudos on that. It’s exciting to see. Manjula Martin: Thank you so much. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah, and now you are a managing editor at Zoetrope, which has been around for what, almost 20 years now, this magazine. Manjula Martin: Next year is our 20th birthday. Kelton Reid: It’s a kind of a storied institution. I have been reading it since probably around the turn of the millennium. Manjula Martin: Cool. Kelton Reid: There’s just been some great authors, David Mamet for instance, Don DeLillo, Margaret Atwood, Murakami and then some art editors including David Bowie, is that right? Manjula Martin: Yes. Kelton Reid: Who worked on the magazine. I remember the David Burn issue. Manjula Martin: That was a good one, yeah. How an Unpaid Internship Led to a Dream Job Kelton Reid: Yeah. That must be a challenging job. Then you’re also kind of rubbing elbows with all these newer, exciting authors and older, established authors. Manjula Martin: Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I won’t lie. All-Story is a magazine that I have also been a huge fan of for many, many years. I will be very honest and tell you that the path that led me to getting this job was that I did an unpaid internship there about 10 years ago. Kelton Reid: Wow, wow. Manjula Martin: I’m generally not pro unpaid internships but I am also pro transparency, so that’s how that works. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah. Manjula Martin: I was an adult. I was going back to college and I was like, “Ooh, I could do an internship. This is like my chance to do an internship,” because normally I am working all the time and could never do that. I actually took out extra loans so that I would be able to not work as much because I was working the whole time I was in school. I was like, If there was one magazine where I would want to be an intern, what would it be? It’s All-Story and it’s here in San Francisco where I live. I miraculously was able to do that for a short period of time. Then I just stayed in touch with the editor. We have coffee every once in awhile. He’s a wonderful, brilliant editor named Michael Ray and he’s been at the magazine for probably about 15 years I think, a very long time. Kelton Reid: Wow. Manjula Martin: Most of the amazing, amazing short fiction you see in the magazine has had his touch in some way on it. Kelton Reid: Yeah, yeah. Manjula Martin: It’s really cool. It’s also really cool to see sort of it is a very, you know, we’ve won some awards. We have a pretty nice reputation. We get to publish amazing authors. As the managing editor, I am deeply involved in the process with the guest designers. We have a different artist guest design each issue of the magazine and they contribute all the imagery for the magazine as well as dictate the look and feel of it, so every issue looks entirely different, like different mastheads. Sometimes it’s a different shape, different paper, you know Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: That sort of thing. That’s sort of an extra amazing part of it is sort of being able to make the connections between like visual storytelling and storytelling through fiction. Then, obviously, the magazine is owned by Francis Ford Coppola and he’s very interested in the connections between different kinds of storytelling. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: Every issue we also reprint a story that has been made into a film. It’s along the lines of some of the other work I’ve done, like it is somewhat interdisciplinary. I’ve only been there for a short period of time, so I don’t really have any good stories from the trenches yet, but Michael and I often joke that we have an impossible … a job that basically shouldn’t exist now and is maybe a job from the 1960s where we work in an office in an old building and put out a print magazine. The Revenge of Analog and Print Magazines Kelton Reid: It’s cool to see. It’s great to see, as David Sax, my previous guest called it, the revenge of paper and a new return to analog. Manjula Martin: Yeah, I’m a fan. Kelton Reid: Yeah and especially print magazines and the resurgence of people’s love for those. Manjula Martin: Well and that I think is not necessarily unrelated to the economics of it, you know? It has been difficult for publications, whether they be fiction magazines or the New York Times, to find sustainable profit models online. While print advertising is not exactly a perfect beast, we all know how it works, you know? It’s somewhat clear as far as, as clear as advertising could ever be in terms of metrics. I experienced that putting out Scratch as a digital publication. It was wonderful and we had a pretty great subscriber base who were paying money to read this magazine on the internet, and it just wasn’t enough. Kelton Reid: That was the one you collaborated with Jane Friedman on, is that correct? Manjula Martin: Yeah, yeah. Kelton Reid: Cool. Manjula Martin: Jane Friedman, who is an awesome blogger and educator about the business of publishing, and I launched that magazine together. Kelton Reid: She was on this show also so I’ll link to that episode. Manjula Martin: I want to listen to that one, yeah. How a Tumblr Became an Inspiring Collection of Stories on the Writing Life Kelton Reid: Yeah, and then the Who Pays Writers is a fantastic tool also, which I will link to, which seemed like it was a kind of an offshoot or connected with Scratch. Manjula Martin: Who Pays Writers actually came first. Kelton Reid: Okay. Manjula Martin: Then Scratch followed because there was a need for more context, basically. Kelton Reid: Yeah. Manjula Martin: Who Pays Writers is just a list of rates that people have been paid to do freelance writing. Kelton Reid: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Manjula Martin: People submit their rates anonymously and then I post them. It started as a Tumblr, actually, in 2012 and then I sort of turned it into its own site. Through that people were sort of asking for more context around the numbers and that was sort of one of the ideas behind Scratch, was to sort of tell the stories behind the numbers. Kelton Reid: Thanks so much for joining me for this half of a tour through the writer’s process. If you enjoy The Writer’s File podcast, please subscribe to the show and leave us a rating or a review on iTunes to help other writers find us. For more episodes or to just leave a comment or a question, you can drop by WriterFiles.FM and you can always chat with me on Twitter @KeltonReid. Cheers. Talk to you next week.

On the last episode of 2016, Jill and Adam discuss the books coming out in January that they can't wait to read. The books discussed come from an overdrive.com list that you can look through and sample titles right here: https://www.overdrive.com/collections/22345/january-2017-new-releases-and-must-reads    Books discussed on this episode:   Difficult Women by Roxane Gay   Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth   The Fifth Petal by Brunonia Barry   Little Deaths by Emma Flint   My Life, My Love, My Legacy by Coretta Scott King   RoseBlood by A. G. Howard   Wires and Nerve, Volume One by Marissa Meyer   The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett by Chelsea Sedoti   Caraval by Stephanie Garber   4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster   The Girl Before by JP Delaney   Scratch by Manjula Martin   The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden   The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston   Once We Were Sisters by Sheila Kohler   Huck Out West by Robert Coover   Freeks by Amanda Hocking   Three Days in January by Bret Baier   Say Hello! Find OverDrive on Facebook at OverDriveforLibraries and Twitter at @OverDriveLibs. Email us directly at feedback@overdrive.com    Music "Buddy" provided royalty free from www.bensound.com   Podcast Overview We're not just book nerds: we're professional book nerds and the staff librarians who work at OverDrive, the leading app for eBooks and audiobooks available through public libraries and schools. Hear about the best books we've read, get personalized recommendations, and learn about the hottest books coming out that we can't wait to dive into. For more great reads, find OverDrive on Facebook and Twitter.  

Susie Cagle is a journalist and illustrator. “I don’t really know what it was that made me not quit. I still kind of wonder that. There have been many times over the last couple of years even, as things are taking off in my career, things are going well, I’m writing about wonderful things that are interesting to me, and I still wonder—should I be doing this? What the hell is next year gonna look like?” Thanks to MailChimp, FreshBooks, and AlarmGrid for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @susie_c susie-c.tumblr.com [10:00] Cagle’s Curbed San Francisco Archive [21:00] "The Free and the Antifree" (n+1 Editors • n+1 • Fall 2014) [21:00] "Freedom Isn’t Antifree; Responding to Privilege"(with Manjula Martin • n+1 • Winter 2015) [22:00] Who Pays Writers? [30:00] "Is Wall Street Making a Killing off Cities’ Debt?" (Next City • Oct 2014) [34:00] "Cartoonist Susie Cagle on Her Tear Gassing and Arrest While Covering Occupy Oakland" (Laura Hudson • Comics Alliance • Nov 2011) [36:00] "Ledger #1: Spreadsheets > WORK > 2015 > By Gig" (Tiny Letter • Nov 2015)

Jane Friedman and Manjula Martin founded Scratch Magazine, a born-digital publication that tells writers what they're worth and how the publishing industry sausage-making factory actually works. Jane has an extensive background as an editor, and may be best known for her decade at Writer's Digest. Manjula is a freelance writer, whose work has appeared widely in places like Modern Farmer, San Francisco Weekly, and our own The Magazine, in which she wrote about musician and producer John Vanderslice. Sponsored by: TypeEngine: From the passionate indie publisher to the multi-publication agency, TypeEngine is the beautifully simple publishing platform to deliver your works digitally. Publish long-form content, photos, and rich media. Media Temple: Web hosting for artists, designers, and Web developers since 1998. World-class support available 24x7 through phone and chat—and even Twitter. Sign up with coupon code "tnd" to get 25% off your first month of hosting.