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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Oh yes, the Writer’s Digest “Writing to sell” brochure from 1951 goes on. (Parts one and two, in case you missed them.) “Do you enjoy words? Do you enjoy day dreaming about other people, imagining them in various unusual situations?” Esther Lamb will smile knowingly at you until you tell. If yes, one day you, [...]

More from the 1951 Writer’s Digest brochure! (If you missed the first installment, it is Writing to sell, part one.) “…acknowledged to be the best job on earth.” “you don’t have to be unusually bright, or quick.” Who, indeed? (Are there still 2,500 markets that pay from one-cent to one dollar a word?) My favorite [...]

So, pretty much every time I go to the Usual Undisclosed Location I find artifacts. It turns out that in 1951, my dad took the Writer’s Digest short story course. He saved the brochure. I have scanned it in its entirety for the edification of the Internet, and will be posting it here over the [...]

FOUR Pacific Northwest YA authors: Emily Whitman, author of Radiant Darkness, MJ Beaufrand, author of The River, Anne Osterlund, author of Academy Seven, and yours truly will converge upon A Children’s Place Bookstore on Saturday, 4/10, at 1 pm. We’ll all read briefly and then answer questions about writing. You’ll find out what the most [...]

(Not a post about werewolves.) In the U.S., we’re fond of defining people by their occupations. It’s a sort of shorthand; a job title comes with a set of expectations (and stereotypes) that (we like to think) provide some guidance for how we should interact with this person we’ve just met. In the publishing world, [...]