Lit Hub Daily: November 7, 2018

• “Write the book that you would want to read.” In which Rakesh Satyal offers some good writing advice, but more importantly, reveals the pick-up line that changed his life. | Lit Hub
• “Items don’t magically appear in the collection because Grumpert the Wily Library Elf came in the night.” Click here to see a picture of Kristen Arnett’s dog. | Lit Hub
• “What if we treat workers… well?” Oh look, Silicon Valley thinks it came up with another new idea. | Lit Hub
• “Without external demands on my time… I would get nothing done.” In praise of writing in the cracks of a busy day. | Lit Hub
• On the wartime lectures of Józef Czapski, the Polish army officer who conjured Proust in a Soviet prison camp. | Lit Hub
• For the Red Ink series, five women writers in conversation: Julie Buntin, Jessie Chaffee, and more talk about obsession. | Lit Hub
• “I’m pulling all the shredded lace down, quitting in the middle of the song.” New poetry by Ashley Toliver. | Lit Hub
• This week in Secrets of the Book Critics: Leena Soman Navani on writers on the margins and finding inspiration in other artforms. | Book Marks
• “People are dying right now in large numbers due to entirely foreseeable violence.” Sarah St. Vincent on how government surveillance ignores violence against women in favor of demonizing the other. | CrimeReads
• “Frankenstein is fundamentally not about the dangers of science, but of art; it’s not a warning about discovery, but about creation.” Rethinking Mary Shelley’s mad scientist. | Aeon
• Ottessa Moshfegh on Dead Man, grunge, and the thin line “between sensitivity and sentimentality.” | Guernica
• “Writing skills don’t always have to come from an MFA or out of how-to books. Sometimes they can be gathered together from the most unexpected places.” How writing fanfiction helped one editor hone her craft. | Uncanny Magazine
• “This generation will be remembered for having allowed for concentration camps for children“: an open letter from nearly 80 writers—including Jhumpa Lahiri, Margaret Atwood, and Deborah Eisenberg—condemning the government’s detention of migrant children. | NYRB
• “Love of books unites us!” The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers protests as Amazon’s second-hand book marketplace, AbeBooks, plans to discontinue services in four countries. | The Guardian
• Jane Austen’s unfinished novel, The Watsons, came to life on stage at the Chichester Festival Theatre in Sussex, England. | The New York Times
• “Analysis and that generosity in reading should be given to Black women and our stories across the canon.” Read an interview with Well-Read Black Girl founder and editor, Glory Edim. | Electric Lit

Also on Lit Hub: The editor who ushered in the Golden Age of science fiction • Meet National Book Award in Nonfiction finalists Colin G. Calloway and Victoria Johnson • Read from Ways to Hide in Winter