Sara Ryan

Hey folks — So I know that “on hiatus” means less when your blog does not have an actual regular publishing schedule. Nevertheless, this is the entry in which I am telling you that I am not going to write another entry until I am done revising Bad Houses. Because, despite the empathy I demonstrated [...]

I get it. You’re mad that I didn’t meet my ambitious goal for the revision work I was gonna get done while folks were away at ComiCon. That was the whole point of not going! God! Slacker. Well, I did manage to get in four yoga classes, several miles of bicycling, a chunk of time [...]

If you are a creature of habit, as most of us are to varying degrees, you probably operate with a significant number of routines: your usual route to work, your standard hangout spots, the typical ways you spend a weekend day and/or evening. I realized earlier this summer that simply by tweaking one or more [...]

Saw it on the street, snapped photo in homage to Gorey.

So I am currently revising the script for Bad Houses, my forthcoming graphic novel for DC Vertigo that will (yay!) have art by the amazing Carla Speed McNeil. Ways in which it is like revising a prose novel: – I spend a lot of time staring into the middle distance, trying to figure out if [...]

Methland: the death and life of an American small town, by Nick Reding. The stories of several residents of Oelwein, Iowa affected by the meth epidemic in various ways ground a larger economic and sociological narrative that connects the rise of methamphetamines with agricultural and pharmaceutical industry consolidation and patterns of migration. Because I’m always [...]

My yoga teacher is thin, but he’s becoming a fat acceptance advocate, which is what he was talking about before class started the other day. He described being at a party where several guests were smack-talking fat people. Not, you know, specific fat people, but rather the Platonic Anti-Ideal — lazy, smelly, disgusting, etc. Apparently [...]

The last pages of the most excellent 1951 Writing to Sell brochure, from Writer’s Digest via the archive of my dad. (Earlier installments: one, two, three, four.) First up: student testimonials! An adorable critic, armed with pencil, cigarette, and star-shaped ashtray. “The good ones are pie.” My favorite from the Questions and Answers below: Q. [...]

Perhaps soon I will say a few things about ALA, or revising my graphic novel script, or some books I have been enjoying lately such as Reality Hunger: a manifesto. But first, there is more important information to be shared about how to succeed as a freelance writer sixty years ago! “Light, bright amusing, pretty [...]