Authors aren't born, they are made

"Just sit down and do it," is the philosophy of my every undertaking. After all, history is not only to be read – it is also written… by people who are not afraid to follow their dreams."

Martin was turned on by knowledge. In the 21st century, such people have been termed "sapiosexuals": those who consider intelligence the most sexually attractive feature. That was exactly what I was to Martin; this was what Martin Eden was.

On the one hand, passion is a bright flame, which inspires and nourishes us with an infinite amount of energy. At the same time, passion is directly related to scrupulous work, serious contemplation and active work of the brain. It is always a good thing when you know how to point passion in the right direction.

I continued, regardless: "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another, with no loss of enthusiasm."
"What does that mean?"
"It takes real strength and ability to experience repeated failure and keep moving toward your goal, even when nothing appears to be coming of it, without losing enthusiasm. It signifies a desire for self-improvement; a need to constantly learn from your mistakes..."

Until the age of 20, Masha Manko could not even imagine that she would become a writer. She lived like the vast majority of her contemporaries. She finished school, went to medical university, was planning to become a dentist while manifesting her creative talents by writing poems; however, she showed them only to people close to her because she was very shy and scared of literary rejection. Literary rejection is like a romantic rejection. All her poems were about unhappy love, which is typical for teenagers. At some point, she wanted for her poems to be appreciated by as many people as possible - a normal dream for a young girl. Masha took these poems to the Odessa newspaper "Porto Franco", because that newspaper periodically published a "Literary Page" with poems by young writers. But then Masha's ego received a fatal blow: she was told that she had no poetic gift and was advised to give up poetry and pay more attention to her studies. "Treating one's teeth is more beneficial than trying to heal one's soul with poems."

Masha was shocked, but to soften the blow, the editorial office offered her to write notes about life around her. At first, Masha's pride wanted to refuse the offer, but then she remembered that she had several short stories on hand. The editorial board liked one of them and decided to publish it.

And then Masha discovered that it's much more interesting to write about what she sees around her than to fantasize in rhyme. That was the end of her love affair with poetry, but a start to a serious and long-term relationship with prose.

Passion gripped her. She could sit in her favorite cafe all day long, filling her laptop screen with the projections of her observations and fantasies. What could a 20-year-old girl write about? Love, of course! They were stories about her infatuations and the love adventures of her female friends and classmates. Those, to whom she showed her creations, noted that she was especially good at descriptions of kissing. As a Dentist Masha has studied the anatomy of the oral cavity, this is her specialty area[1] . And since she not only wrote but also read a lot, she suddenly discovered that world literature had not yet known such an approach. Masha was both surprised and inspired. Having selected the most striking stories of the ones she wrote, she combines them into a book, which she expressively called: "The Night of Kisses or The Odessa's Decameron". It is clear from the title that it was a kind of remake of Boccaccio's famous novel. Not yet confident in her abilities, the girl published the book under the creative pseudonym "Masha M".

At the book launch, the author was inundated with questions as to why she defined the genre of her novel as "romantic erotica". In newspaper reviews, opinions were divided roughly equally: some liked the novel very much, while others categorically did not accept it. But in online publications and social networks, Masha's debut sparked a heated discussion. On a popular site appeared more than 300 responses, many of which were simply coarse. And they focused their feedback not so much on the novel but at the author. It got to the point that Masha was called a "sex maniac", although there were hardly any sex scenes in the book.

The girl, unaccustomed to such brutal literary and personal attack , was so shocked that she wept five years of tears in two days. But she quickly got herself together. Now nothing could restrain her writing impulse. And as if in retaliation for the offenders, the next novel she wrote, she made sure that sex was one of the primary topics of the book. The title itself sounded like a challenge: "Sex, Food, and Cities". It was a true story of her friend, who had a complicated relationship with a rich and married Muslim man. In order to hide their relationship, the lovers were forced to meet in different places around the world. By that time, Masha had solid experience of traveling through cities and countries and filled the new novel to the brim with personal impressions of visiting these places, including restaurants and clubs.

Everything seemed to bode well. There was an interesting plot, a trendy entourage, and an unexpected ending , but the final version lacked something. After re-reading the book and going through her notes, Masha realized - it was someone else's story. There was no author's soul in the outwardly spectacular composition; Masha was already well aware that without it there was no point in counting on the reader's interest. And the girl decided to make a truly heroic decision: she refused to publish. Very few would dare to come to this dramatic decision. Masha progression as a writer was through self-discipline and sacrifice, and through this she developed a keen sense of writer instinct.

Having recovered from the shock, Masha made the only right decision for herself. She went on a trip to Europe. An attractive, bright, and well-read young woman could not help attracting men's attention. A couple of years ago, Masha probably would have willingly flirted, maybe even started a relationship, but since she got "the writer's virus", she listened carefully and peered into everything she faced on her way, storing away in her memory all the stories shared by casual interlocutors. Different countries – different people. But there was something in common with many of those whom she crossed paths with. That common ground was the feeling of loneliness that many people living in big cities experienced. Thus, Masha's third book, "Bitter Smell of Men's Loneliness" was born out of short meetings and long conversations. It did not cause such a stir as her first book, but Masha took it calmly. For her, evaluations of those who read books for mental food, rather than just entertainment, were more important.

Three novels, written one after the other, exhausted her stock of personal impressions and experiences for a while. As she contemplated her further work, she knew one thing for sure: Masha M. was in the past. It was time to be herself - Mariia Manko. That meant that the creation of her new compositions should be approached professionally. For starters, she had to expand the genre range, it was time to reach an international audience.

Mariia has long been attracted to adventure fiction. Sharp situations, unexpected plot twists, catchy characters – books with such things are loved by readers of any country. This time, the writer made up a story, although the traits of the characters she took from life. Action plus a bit of mysticism - and an online novel "Through the Magic Sunglasses" came out. Moreover, she took lessons from experienced professional artists to create all the colorful illustrations herself.

The new work attracted attention in the West, the novel was soon translated into English and posted on Amazon. The success inspired the writer and the second part of the adventure soon followed: "Magic Sunglasses 2".

After that, Maria was silent for a long time. She still continued to write, but was resolutely dissatisfied with what she wrote during this period. Her self-discipline came from constant reading of the classics, studying and assimilation of techniques of great writers.

One of Mariia's favorite books is "Martin Eden" by Jack London. Difficult story of becoming a writer kept her confident in the path she chose and inspired new creative pursuits. One day, while rereading the book, Maria thought that if she had been in Ruth Morse's shoes, she would by no means have dissuaded Martin from studying literature. On the contrary, she would have supported him in his endeavor in every possible way, would have helped him acting based on her experience. Of course, this is in the realm of fantasy, but isn't fantasy a quality necessary for every creative person?

This thought flashed through her mind like many others but did not vanish with them; then occurred something that happens to every writer. Once you sit down and write the first paragraphs, thoughts arise one after another, and you just have to keep on writing them down. This time around, the process of creating a new novel dragged on for a year and a half. After all, the author had to study and understand the historical period to truly feel its characters in a completely unfamiliar situation. None of the previous works was such a continuous struggle to Maria[2] as the novel "Finding Martin Eden". Even so, she feels that this helped her grow as a writer; this was also confirmed by her regular readers. The novel has recently appeared on Amazon in English version and published in Russian in Ukraine.

Authors aren't born, they are made