There will always be such a wide range of what writers are paid, but at least we could give each other information. There’s no other job in the world where you get your master’s degree in that field and you’re like, Well, I might make zero or I might make $5 million! We don’t have any standards in that way, and we probably never will. Why is it important to you to talk about the financial side of being a writer?ĬS: I feel strongly that we’re only hurting ourselves as writers by being so secretive about money. You said that, even though you believe in talking openly about money, you were nervous about doing the interview. MM: Before this interview, we were talking a bit about how taboo it still is for writers to discuss income. “Faith, Hope, and Credit: Cheryl Strayed in conversation with Manjula Martin” Her interview with Strayed, reprinted in full below, was among them. Many of the sections in Martin’s book originally appeared in the magazine Scratch, which she founded and edited from 2013 to 2015. Strayed is just one of many notable authors - including Roxane Gay, Jonathan Franzen, Jennifer Weiner, and Susan Orlean - who opened up with Manjula Martin, the writer and editor of Scratch: Writers, Money and the Art of Making a Living, about success and attempting to make a living with words. Despite receiving a sizable-seeming advance for the book, she remained deeply in debt for years - even as Wild, her subsequent memoir, landed on the best-seller list, Strayed and her husband, documentary filmmaker Brian Lindstrom, struggled to pay the rent.

That was the disheartening lesson learned by Cheryl Strayed, the New York Times best-selling author of Wild, in 2003 with her debut novel, Torch. Photo-Illustration: Jonathan Leibson/Getty Imagesĭollar figures can be misleading.

Cheryl strayed