What’s better than being a writer? A writer who gets paid. Manjula Martin and Jane Friedman have launched the new digital magazine Scratch, which gives writers information on how to advocate for their work. The preview issue is free and contains essays on what freelancers can learn from street vendors, Cord Jefferson on outgrowing his materialism, and an interview with Jonathan Franzen. You can subscribe here.
Up to Scratch
Tuesday New Release Day: Tinti; Enard; Shattuck; Matthews; Sontag
Out this week: The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti; Compass by Mathias Enard; The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck; Simulacra by Airea D. Matthews; and the Later Essays of Susan Sontag. For more on these and other new titles, go read our most recent book preview.
Hate: Is It In You?
Meghan Daum’s written the longest and best article on “Haterade” you’ll read this month. I guarantee it.
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The Opposite of #AmWriting
Writing a novel is an all-consuming project, so can you imagine not telling anyone? At The New York Times, Alice Mattison discusses keeping her novels secrets until at least the third draft. “If I talk about the book, I believe — I cannot help believing — my characters will be angry, and will no longer confide in me about their embarrassing, troubled lives.” On another side of the secrecy spectrum, Emma Straub writes about what it’s like to keep a personal secret even as her literary life was booming.
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Sleeping in the Stacks
It’s not surprising when a graduate student claims to “live in the library,” but an NYU student really does live in the university’s Elmer Holmes Bobst Library. For only $225 a semester, the student rents library cubbies instead of an apartment. The idea isn’t as crazy as it sounds, though, but is a response to the skyrocketing rent in the neighborhood.
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Tragedians
As part of their Literary Ladies Cage Fight series, The Butter pitted two of Shakespeare’s most well-known characters against each other, staging contests between Hamlet’s Ophelia and Romeo and Juliet’s Juliet. Who won, you ask? Only one way to find out. You could also read Stefanie Peters on women and Shakespeare’s plays.
While I think Franzen is a fine, fine writer, and there is much to be emulated in how he conducts himself, I can’t think of anyone worse to get advice from re: how to make it as a writer. Franzen has never had a day job, has no idea what it means to struggle, and has been a relative success since he was in his mid-20s. That’s like asking Ryan Gosling for tips on how to make it when you’re struggling as an actor. They know not of what they speak.