Sara Ryan

Originally posted at the Wordstock blog. I have a Designated Writing Zone in my house. I’ve written many thousands of words in it, and I’ve even blogged about it. But sometimes I need other voices, other rooms. Fortunately Portland has many places where you can park yourself for extended periods of time to work on your [...]

I was trying to hunt down the date for an upcoming event I’d managed not to get into my calendar, and searched my email for the name of the person organizing it. The results went back to 2005 — my first year using Gmail. (Before that it was Pine, because I am exactly that old-school.) [...]

1. Confession Several times over the past few years, I’ve heard about writers — some of whom are my friends — going on extended writing retreats, being extremely productive, and generally feeling renewed, inspired, etc. I myself have been very lucky to be able to attend the annual BG Literary retreats. But as amazing as [...]

I’m indebted to the artist who put this up in my neighborhood. The gritted teeth, the grim expression — it’s like that, yeah. You want your writing to process, like with Pomp and Circumstance and fancy outfits. But sometimes what you get is more like processed, as in meat, and you’re trying to assemble ill-favored [...]

On Saturday, when #yasaves began to happen in response to the latest installment in the apparently endless series of articles decrying YA literature for being Too Dark, I was, appropriately enough, taking part in a YA-centric book event at Klindts. This amazing independent bookseller filled their store with twelve YA authors. They enlisted numerous zealously [...]

I’ve spent a lot of time lately attempting to form beneficial habits, hence the small flurry of cooking and gym-related posts. And I’ve been realizing that when you do something a lot, the activity, whatever it is, begins to fit into your life in a different way. It becomes both less of a big deal and [...]

Some writers, I am given to understand, struggle because they have SO many FABulous iDEas, they just don’t know WHICH one to write FIRST! I am not one of them. My inner critic, who resembles a very angry prosecuting attorney, starts second-guessing before my first guess is fully formed, doing her best to demolish the [...]

I’ve been rereading old journals. If you have old journals (or old blog entries!) yourself, you probably know that rereading them can be an excellent way to identify recurring behavior patterns. I often react by getting frustrated: Oh come on, Self. How many times do you have to LEARN before it sinks in? Seriously, AGAIN you’re [...]

I just sent a contribution to the Nathan Wolfson Trust. If you knew L.K. Madigan, if you were a fan of her work, that is a thing you could do as well. I’m glad I had the chance to meet her through her friend and agent Jennifer Laughran, and glad, too, that we spent some [...]

Ten years ago, I was part of a group planning an event that I couldn’t believe was going to happen until it did: Susan Cooper’s 2001 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture at the Scottish Rite Center here in Portland. It seemed impossible that the person who’d written my beloved, frequently-reread The Dark Is Rising sequence [...]