Sara Ryan

I’ve been thinking a lot  about the sense, as you’re experiencing something, that you’re simultaneously outside of the experience, observing details, judging your own reactions and those of the people around you.
I’d always thought of it as being particular to writers, that quality of being an observer, and I’ve often found myself grateful for the [...]

…over at Holly Black’s journal, responding to the io9 article “A Guide to Fan Husbandry.” There’s a lot of good points there! I’ll add a few things that annoy me as a fan and invite y’all to add more:
1. When a character comes through unbelievable peril unscathed because that character is “too popular” to be [...]

These questions came to me from Carissa who needed the answers for her Careers class. I’ve included my answers, but I may well have left out some important stuff, or gotten something wrong. And you may have different ideas than I do about some of the questions. So please feel free to chime in via [...]

Describing the moment when a story first began to take shape:
“…then ensued in my mind what a student of chemistry would best understand from the addition of the tiniest little drop of the right kind, precipitating the process of crystallization in a test tube containing some colorless solution. It was at first for me a [...]

Handy Tip, courtesy of Shannon Hale and Libba Bray: If you’re in a restaurant and you are in a hurry because you have a signing to get to, use the ketchup bottle as a microphone and begin singing an improvised version of “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” with lyrics such as  “And I need to OR-DER [...]

I’ve been reading Nicola Griffith’s enticingly packaged and very enjoyable memoir, And Now We Are Going To Have A Party: Liner Notes on A Writer’s Early Life.
It’s making me think a lot about, among other things, how to optimize your life for writing. Not just in the obvious ways, like, you know, making time to [...]

Hey, everybody. It’s been a while.
Man.
You go away from easy Internet access for a week and somebody hacks your dang MySpace. For any of y’all who got bulletins from “me” alerting you to the latest horizontal hijinks of a young lady who I will not name, who is famous for being famous, please accept my [...]

I just stumbled on a great way to procrastinate combat writer’s block and kick-start your brain.
Bibliomancy is my favorite form of divination. Think of a question. Close your eyes, open a book at random, put your finger somewhere on the page, and the sentence your finger hits is the answer. But in case you’re tired [...]

Via Journalista, colleencoover and castellucci: “Now available from TCJ.com through the month of September: A podcast recording of the “Comics Are Not Literature” panel from the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con, featuring Douglas Wolk (moderator), publisher Dan Nadel, and writers Sara Ryan, Cecil Castellucci, Paul Tobin and Austin Grossman. Click here to download the 50.8MB MP3 [...]

I’m one of those people who, when going to a restaurant that I’ve been to before, almost always orders whatever I had the last time I was there. If it’s Cup and Saucer, it will be the World Famous Garden Scramble with seasoned tofu, no cheese, and a scone. When I think about that restaurant, [...]