lightning + lightning bugs

[Morrison] challenged her students to go after big, ambitious subjects in their work. “I used to tell them, ‘I know everyone is telling you to write what you know. But I don’t want to hear what you know because you don’t know anything,’” she said, laughing. “Please, write what you don’t know.”

- The Washingtonian

Via my client Leah Raeder.

I’m currently in the midst of three books:

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING

THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE

THE CHILD THIEF

If you have “the next <insert any of the three titles above>,” please send it my way. (Oh, the utter, utter genius they all possess.)

What are you currently reading?

It is rare for a work of non-fiction to reduce me to pure emotion — in the case of HALF THE SKY, a mix of disbelief, rage, helplessness, and passion.

In the book, journalists (and married couple) Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn — winners of the Pulitzer Prize — trace the current human rights status of women across the world. What they find — and what has been statistically proven over and over, across the globe — is that there exists a gender gap. Most horrifying is the oppression of girls and women in the developing world: instances of rape (from rape as a weapon of war, used to dehumanize and terrorize groups of people, to rape as a mechanism of punishment for various cultural norms); acid throwing; burning to the death; maternal mortality; sex trafficking; sex slavery; and more.

The results are horrifying.

I urge everyone, everyone, everyone to read the book.

Please read it.

You can buy used copies on Amazon for just under $5.00.

One interesting thing that Kristof and WuDunn found is that the sharing of statistics makes individuals less inclined to donate than the sharing of individual stories. I urge everyone, therefore, to read about and listen to this collection of women who have found avenues against the repression.

A modern anti-repression strategy is women’s economic empowerment. It has been found that the economic gender inequality is the single largest economic loss — a loss of billions of dollars — experienced across the globe, including within the United States.

The process of economic empowerment that responds to this scenario internationally begins via education.

In particular, there is strong evidence that educating girls boosts prosperity. It is probably the single best investment that can be made in the developing world. Not only are better educated women more productive, but they raise healthier, better educated children. There is huge potential to raise income per head in developing countries, where fewer girls go to school than boys. 

- The Economist

In the developing world especially, women are key:

Furthermore, the increase in female employment in the rich world has been the main driving force of growth in the past couple of decades. Those women have contributed more to global GDP growth than have either new technology or the new giants, China and India (see article). Add the value of housework and child-rearing, and women probably account for just over half of world output. It is true that women still get paid less and few make it to the top of companies, but, as prejudice fades over coming years, women will have great scope to boost their productivity—and incomes.

Governments, too, should embrace the potential of women. Women complain (rightly) of centuries of exploitation. Yet, to an economist, women are not exploited enough: they are the world’s most under-utilised resource; getting more of them into work is part of the solution to many economic woes, including shrinking populations and poverty.

- The Economist

I would like to urge everyone to find a way to offer economic assistance to the plight of these women internationally.

I’ve had the luck of corresponding with some employees at Vital Voices, which is an organization dedicated to the support of small- and medium-sized enterprises/businesses in the developing world. I hope to, in the near future, if I can make the possibility work alongside job demands, spend some time abroad working hands on with these communities by teaching English.

VV supports women corporations in employing others from their villages, etc. Per every 100 women employed, I believe the statistic is, up to 14,000 individuals within these communities can experience the positive effect of increased economic production. One cannot underestimate the positive economic effects.

There are two ways that you can help.

Donate.

Or, better yet, support these women directly by shopping in the Vital Voices store of items produced in developing countries — bags, decor, jewelry, art, etc.

If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all.

- Hillary Clinton

Read this story.

A snapshot:

John and Mary meet.

What happens next?

If you want a happy ending, try A.

A.

John and Mary fall in love and get married. They both have worthwhile and remunerative jobs which they find stimulating and challenging. They buy a charming house. Real estate values go up. Eventually, when they can afford live-in help, they have two children, to whom they are devoted. The children turn out well. John and Mary have a stimulating and challenging sex life and worthwhile friends. They go on fun vacations together. They retire. They both have hobbies which they find stimulating and challenging. Eventually they die. This is the end of the story.

B.

Mary falls in love with John but John doesn’t fall in love with Mary. (…)

This is great advice, and I wanted to pass it on.

Read the full entry here.

An excerpt: 

And if you’re getting multiple responses of “I like this but don’t know if it’s quite ready” from some agents but then one wants to go out with it immediately… take a long pause and really really think it through. I’m not necessarily advising giving up the bird in the hand, and don’t be paranoid, because this may just be the one agent who really gets your work and they might be completely right that it doesn’t need work. But as always, just really, really think it through and make sure it’s the right choice.

Having the wrong agent can be worse than having no agent. After working so long on your novel and wanting so badly to go out on submission, it’s tempting to want to leap into the arms of the first agent who will have you. But be sure and take your time, do your research, and make sure it’s the right fit before proceeding.

I love seeing the shortlist announced every year — though, I must be honest: I haven’t read any of this year’s shortlist (and only two from the longlist):

Julian Barnes: THE SENSE OF AN ENDING (Cape)
Carol Birch: JAMRACH’S MENAGERIE (Canongate)
Patrick deWitt: THE SISTERS BROTHERS (Granta)
Esi Edugyan: HALF BLOOD BLUES (Serpent’s Tail)
Stephen Kelman: PIGEON ENGLISH (Bloomsbury)
A.D. Miller: SNOWDROPS (Atlantic)

Has anyone read any of these? Any favorites?

Definitely check them out if you haven’t had the chance to. 

I began Ann Patchett’s (love her — zomg, have you read BEL CANTO? ah-mazing!) newest, STATE OF WONDER, yesterday evening, upon the urging of one of the foreign scouts working out of our office, and had to grin when I saw that Jane Dystel of Dystel & Goderich blogged yesterday about the very same writer.

I’ll take the easy way out and quote:

Ann Patchett, whose work I’m a big fan of, and who I’ve blogged about before, has written a short electronic book (it’s really more like a long article) with advice to writers that she is selling through Amazon, who was advertising it through an e-mail to its customers (or at least to me since I recently downloaded State of Wonder on my Kindle).

From the description, it sounds like a memoir about Patchett’s writing life, beginning in childhood, and offers a glimpse into the path of a talented and ultimately bestselling novelist. It’s only 45 pages, but I suspect for the aspiring writer, there is a lot of great advice to be found here. I found this brief and charming excerpt from the book(let?) at Byliner.com. Judging from the reviews on Amazon, the insight she shares is very valuable. I’m curious to know if it will be successful, and if we’ll be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing. I think it’s pretty cool that writers are expanding their oeuvre in unique ways that make their work in different formats more accessible to a wider audience.

I’d love to know what you think. Is this the kind of thing you’d be interested in reading, and do you think $2.99 is a fair price for it? And if anyone out there has downloaded it already and read it, please share your thoughts. Is it worth it? Is it too short? Should she consider expanding it into a full-length memoir? Maybe this is a way to test the market and see what the reaction is before she embarks on a much longer journey. Personally, I’d be happy to read anything she writes.

Find the full post and answer Jane’s questions here.