Sara Ryan

• Right now, you can read Orienteering, written by me, with art by Erika Moen, on this very Internet. Okay so technically that doesn’t count as me literally being somewhere, but. Go read. It is a short comic, but things happen in it.

• At 6 p.m. tonight, I’ll be at the Cedar Hills location of Powell’s for the Smart Chicks Kick It Tour 2.0. Why? Kelley Armstrong, Melissa Marr, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Ally Condie, Beth Revis, Margaret Stohl, and Sara Zarr, that’s why.

• Next weekend, I’ll be at Wordstock. On Sunday at 2 PM, I’ll moderate a panel about contemporary YA fiction with Lisa Schroeder, Lindsay Leavitt, and John Corey Whaley. When not empaneled I plan to generally lurk around.

• And in a few short weeks, on Monday, October 17th, I’ll be at Multnomah County Library’s tenth annual Teen Author Lecture with Matt de la Peña. It is FREE. You’ll be there too, right?

Today I saw this little dead bird on the sidewalk, and I tried very hard not to think that it Meant something.

When you’re in the business of imagining things, it’s easy to develop everyday conspiracy theories. See signs and portents. Be very superstitious.

Sometimes, in fact, you use magical thinking to psych yourself up. Let’s say, for instance, you get it into your head that the way you spend your birthday will set a pattern for the year to come.

So you’re like, okay, I am totally gonna spend that day writing!

You carefully construct an edifice of belief predicated on the notion that doing something in a ritualistic way —  like writing on your birthday to ensure that you’ll get a lot of writing done throughout the coming year — will have real-world effects. 

But sometimes, you construct this edifice, and then circumstances come along and smash it. It turns out that you can’t actually do the thing you just spent so much time convincing yourself was going to be A Deeply Significant Thing.

That’s when magical thinking becomes your enemy. Because those circumstances are not a Message From the Universe That You’re Doomed Not To Accomplish Your Goals As A Writer. They’re just stuff you have to deal with. They’re obstacles to get past, not ominous prophecies. 

Have I mentioned lately that all my advice here is advice to myself? Yeah. This too.

If you saw Amber Keyser and her Angel Punk colleagues’ talk on transmedia at Kidlitcon — and even if you didn’t — I commend to your attention The Art of Immersion: how the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue and the way we tell stories by Frank Rose. If you’re not sure the book is relevant to your interests, peruse this interview, where Rose talks with Professor Henry Jenkins about many of the ideas he covers at greater length in the book.

I am still catching up from the fabulously-organized Kidlitcon.

I was proud to share the podium (actually there was no podium, we were just in some chairs and we passed the mic around so it was less formal and thus better) during the Diversity panel with Sarah Stevenson, Justina Chen, and Brent Hartinger, and our immoderately excellent moderator Lee Wind. Here are a couple of things I recommended:

• Writing the Other, a practical guide by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.
• Microaggressions: power, privilege, and everyday life

Perhaps you’ve seen the post on Publishers Weekly, “Authors Say Agents Try to “Straighten” Gay Characters in YA.” If you haven’t, go read it. It says many important things, including this: “Forcing all major characters in YA novels into a straight white mold is a widespread, systemic problem which requires long-term, consistent action.” Acknowledging the problem is crucial. And I also appreciate the excellent What You Can Do section, with specific actions for editors, agents, readers, and writers.

I’d like to suggest another action for those in the position of recommending books to others — librarians, teachers, booksellers, bloggers, writers, agents, and anyone else who finds themselves regularly consulted about what to read – Consider multiple vectors of identification.

I talked about vectors of identification in one of my responses in Colleen Mondor’s What A Girl Wants blog series; #3: Representing All The Girls. Permit me to quote myself:

Some types I’ve identified with: smart kids, nerds, fat kids, queers, bohemians, tomboys, sophisticates, theater people, musicians, writers.

They could be different from me in any number of particulars, as long as there was one vector of identification. When I was in love for the first time, I identified with every fictional lover. And I remember reading a book about slavery in third grade, shortly after I’d dislocated my knee. When I learned that if you were a slave and you got injured, you’d still have to keep working, my knee throbbed. I can’t recall the book’s title, but I identified so strongly with that detail that to this day, I can make myself flinch just by thinking about it.

I was talking about it then in relation to characters, but vectors of identification — or to use a more common, market-y term, “appeal factors,” apply to plot, setting, and tone as well. So for instance if you happened to be recommending Empress of the World, instead of saying, as I often do, “It’s about two girls who fall in love at a summer gifted and talented program,” you could say “It’s about a bunch of nerds and the hijinks that ensue when they’re all cooped up together for the summer,” or “The main character overanalyzes everything,” or “It’s about the first time you make friends that aren’t connected to your hometown.” You get the idea.

And sure, you could call this approach bait and switch. But if the bait means a reader connects to a book they otherwise never would have opened, I say it’s okay.

ETA 9/16: Boy, did the reactions to that piece (not mine, but the one I was responding to) take a lot of swerve-type turns. I like this summary of the developments since I wrote the above.

There are words elsewhere. Inside a Scrivener folder, to be precise. And they’re accumulating, although not as fast as I’d like. But when has that ever not been true?

This thing, people, it is genius.

I am using it for devices and their accoutrements and also a toothbrush, because what? you never know when you might suddenly need to brush your teeth, right?

It is basically like having a bunch of super sturdy rubber bands mounted on a stiff board, except more fabric-y. You can use it in different configurations depending on what objects you need to corral. It is far superior to my previous bag-organizing approach, which consisted of questing endlessly for a bag that had interior pockets precisely sized for the things I’m most prone to lose inside bags, and never finding one.

And although I am not so much the sort of lady who frequently switches bags for style purposes, this would make it easier to do so.

It comes in different sizes and colors also. It is one of these.

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 they are, they’re only for a weekend. The retreats I was hearing about lasted at least a week, sometimes significantly longer.

And every time I heard about one of these longer retreats, I’d think: “Wow, I’m so glad they got so much done! That’s so great!”

Okay that’s a lie.

I mean, I did think that, because I’m supportive of any and all strategies that result in more writing from people whose work I like.

But I would also seethe with jealousy. ”No fair!” I would think. “How do they just get to take a big chunk of time and go somewhere secluded and lovely to write?”

2. Revelation

It took me an astonishingly long time to realize that they could do it because they planned to do it. They considered their schedules and other commitments, budgeted time and money, found a place, and carved out a block of time to focus on writing.

3. Decision

Huh. I guess I could do that, too. 

So, I’m gonna. Not immediately. But come November, I will spend ten days in an undisclosed location. If you’ve been reading for a while, this is not the Usual Undisclosed Location, but rather an unusual undisclosed location.  While I am there I will write.

4. Conclusion

Once I figured out that I was a grownup, and as such could actually exert a certain amount of control over my capacity to hermit myself up for an extended period of time to write, it wasn’t hard to plan exactly how, where, and when the hermiting would happen.

The hard part was giving myself permission to plan.