Cris Mazza quotes:

In college, unable to be "special" - or in demand - as a girl, I made myself useful, even essential, in my microcosm - as a writer and photographer for the band, particularly for the band director. My "specialness" was to produce something of value, not to look like something (with that different kind of "value"), so I was still fundamentally invisible, but had a significant purpose.

Ambition is something you turn into a plan to create an online personality, a brand, a network.

Attention equals importance equals value equals ego. Or, more realistically, Attention equals success.

Sadly, too much has changed about publishing ... not only does attractiveness matter to agents and editors, but there's no room anymore for a reclusive writer.

What I was being told in my 20s in the close-quartered, male-ego-infused work space, was that I had to stop reacting with my emotions to sexual desire towards me. The change, in other words, had to be made in me.

Culture and society determined sexual desirability as what makes us important so long that it's part of our sensibility from birth.Little girls know. From around 2 or 3, the pretty ones already know how and why they get attention. And how quickly they learn to play it. Use it. And how quickly the rest of us figure out we don't have it.

Girls are not just put on earth for men's amusement while they do the important things.

Nobody sits alone accompanied only by a stewing ambition that won't see fruit for years. Ambition is something you turn into publicity before there's anything to publicize.

If sexuality is beginning in such a skewed way: that boys expect to receive sexual pleasure and girls are expected to give it without reciprocation, is that why young women, even unintentionally, turn to getting something else in return for sex? Whether it be popularity, career success, professional attention.

Everyone I know, men and women alike, would love to see the world changed so that boys and girls, men and women are valued equally for what we contribute, despite the differences in how our brains and bodies work.

Despite my belief that somehow my work would get me where I wanted to be, there was still some kind of fathomless yearning. My career aspirations were always goading me. But partially, I think I tried to let those dreams replace or become the other yearning, to have that other form of value.

I always expected my work to be what was noticed, appreciated or what would eventually succeed, not my sexuality.

If you can get sexual attention and then (or therefore) succeed as a writer - or fill in career blank - that means you're a writer worthy of literary respect?

I occasionally feel contempt for that attitude [degree of sexual desire towards me] when I perceive it, but maybe that's not fair. By our culture we've been taught who is most valued and who is not.

I think a certain kind of sexism is so matter-of-fact, and has been for so long, that young women feel less valuable or second-tier if their gender and attractiveness or sexual desirability are not being commented on in the workplace.

That's the difference between a real journal and one that's invented for a novel - a novel journal has to be manipulated so someone reading it can have enough comprehension, which means the person writing it would've had to have a sense of a someday-audience.