The Writing Life: reflections by a working writer. The Writing Life

Reflections of a working writer, a university screenwriting professor, and the editor of Oregon Literary Review.

Posts from past seven days. For others, see archives (below).

Video welcome (AVI, 9.8M)

Home.

Site Feed.


Looking for permalinks? Click on time after each post.

Search this blog:


Find any book

Project Gutenberg
Online Free Book Catalog (classics, world lit, etc.)

AA Independent Press Guide
A free online guide to 2000+ lit mags and publishers.

Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing and Tinseltown Too
Extraordinary free info useful to writers when marketing.

Preditors & Editors
A guide to publishers and publishing services for serious writers, including info on scam agents.

Free screenwriting software
Cinergy, a script editor, free from Mindstar Productions. Easily write your screenplay in correct format.

Recommended screenwriting books
Some important reading for serious students.

Spec Script Writing: An Annotated Example
Short guide to correct screenwriting format and writing style.

Today in Literature

The New Yorker

The New York Review of Books

NY Times Sunday Book Review

Make a post


























 

Looking for permalinks? Click on time after each post.

Technorati Profile












 
Charles Deemer

Editor,
Oregon Literary Review

MFA, Playwriting, University of Oregon

Writing faculty, Portland State University (part-time)

Retired playwright and screenwriter.
Active novelist, librettist and teacher.

Email: cdeemer(at)yahoo(dot)com

The eagle flies!

Links:

Literary archive

The Sextant Press

Personal home page

Electronic screenwriting tutorial

References

Bookstore
Highlights:

Finalist, Oregon Book Award

Practical Screenwriting

Love At Ground Zero

.

More books.


Blogs by (mostly) creative writers:

"Can We Talk About Me For A Change?"
Playwright Debra Neff Nathans

Inkygirl
Debbie Ridpath Ohi, a weblog for writers (resources)

Silliman's Blog
Ron Silliman, contemporary poetry and poetics

Maud Newton
literary links, amusements, politics, rants

Darren Barefoot
Technical and creative writing, theatre, Dublin

Rob's Writing Pains
Journey of a struggling writer.

Mad, Mad World
Cara Swann, fiction writer, journalist, "reflections on humanity, random news & my life."

Writeright
Random musings on a writer's life and times.

Flaskaland
Barbara Flaska's compilation of the best online articles about music and culture.

Write Of Way
Samantha Blackmon's written musings on writing (composition and rhetoric).

Alexander b. Craghead: blog
Writing, photography, and watercolors.

Rodney's Painted Pen
Rodney Bohen's daily commentary "on the wondrous two legged beast we fondly refer to as mankind." His pen runneth over.

Frustrated Writer
This one named Nicole.

scribble, scribble, scribble
Journalist Dale Keiger teaches nonfiction scribbling to undergraduate and graduate students at Johns Hopkins University.

The Unofficial Dave Barry Blog
The very one.

The Hive
The official blog of science fiction / horror author Terence West.

William Gibson Blog
Famed author of Neuromancer and Johnny Mnemonic: The Screenplay.

The Word Foundry
Joe Clifford Faust's "blog of a working writer: tracking writing projects, musings on the creative process, occasional side trips into music, media, politics, religion, etc."

A Writer's Diary
By Cynthia Harrison, who has the good sense to quote Virginia Woolf: "The truth is that writing is the profound pleasure and being read the superficial."

Bow. James Bow.
The journal of James Bow and his writing.

Ravenlike
Michael Montoure's weblog about writing, primarily horror and speculative fiction.

Globemix
By David Henry, "a poet's weblog from Aberdeen, Scotland."

Modem Noise
By Adrian Bedford, a "fledgling Pro SF Writer, living in Perth, Australia."

boynton
"A wry writerly blog named in honour of a minor character in a minor Shirley Temple film."

Real Writers Bounce
Holly Lisle's blog, "a novelist's roadmap through the art and ordeal of finding the damned words."

2020 Hindsight
By Susan.

downWrite creative
Phil Houtz's notes on the writing life.

Vivid: pieces from a writer's notebook
Blog of Canadian poet Erin Noteboom.

The Literary Saloon
The literary weblog at the complete review.

Rabbit Blog
The rabbit writes on popular culture.

This Girl's Calendar
Momoka writes short stories.

Twists & Turns
Musings by writer Michael Gates.

Plays and Musicals -- A Writer's Introspective
A blog by John D. Nugent - Composer, Playwright, and Artistic Director of the Johnson City Independent Theatre Company

The American Sentimentalist
"Never has any people endured its own tragedy with so little sense of the tragic." Essays by Mark W. Anderson.

Screenwriting By Blog
David C. Daniel writes a screenplay online. "I've decided to publish the process as a way to push myself through it. From concept to completion, it'll be here."

SeanAlonzo.com
Official site of occult fiction author Sean-Alonzo, exploring symbolism, alternative history, philosophy, secret societies and other areas of the esoteric tradition.

Crafty Screenwriting
Maunderings of Alex Epstein, tv scribe, about life, politics, and the tv show I'm co-creating.

Letters From The Home Front
The life of a writer, 21, home schooled, rural living.

Venal Scene
The blog of bite-sized plays inspired by the news (by Dan Trujillo).

'Plaint of the Playwright
Rob Matsushita, a playwright from Wisconsin, "whines a lot."

I Pity Da Fool!
Glenn's adventures in screenwriting.

Time In Tel-Aviv
Hebrew modern literature at its best, by Corinna Hasofferett.

Big Window
Robin Reagler's poetry blog.

John Baker's Blog
Author of the Sam Turner and Stone Lewis novels.

The Writing Life With Dorothy Thompson
What goes on during a writer's busy day?

The Rebel Housewife
Not just a housewife!

Barry's Personal Blog
A running commentary on writing and the writing life.

Bonnie Blog
Maintained by Bonnie Burton of grrl.com.

Writer's Blog.
By easywriter. "From the walls of caves to cyberspace."

Flogging the Quill
Pursuing the art and craft of compelling storytelling, by an editor, Ray Rhamey.

Man Bytes Hollywood
Sharing tools, strategies and resources for the screenwriter's journey.

Mad for the smell of paper
A writing journal.

The Writing Life
A blog by Katey Schultz.

It Beats Working 9-5
A screenwriting blog by a young Canadian screenwriter.

Stealing Heaven From The Lips Of God
Writer & Artist, Dee Rimbaud reflects upon politics, religion, art, poetry, the meaning of life, the nature of God and why toast always lands butter side down on carpets.

Robert Peake
Heart and Mind, Fully Engage ... a poet's website.

Sidestepping Real
By Ren Powell, poet, children’s writer, essayist and editor.

Suggest a writer's blog

plagiarism blog



























The Writing Life...
"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."
J.D. Salinger

"All my best friends are writers and are dead."
A friend over beer, Berkeley, winter, 1959

"And it came to pass that all the stars in the firmament had ceased to shine. But how was anyone to know?"
The Half-Life Conspiracy

After October 31, 2006,
new posts are published at


The Writing Life II

(Posts archived here are from 01/10/03 - 10/31/06)

 
Thursday, January 16, 2003  
Keeping the faith
A lot of writers quit. Some of my best writing students end up quitting. Sometimes, though, I think they quit for the wrong reasons.

It makes sense to quit if your goal is to become rich and famous. Damn few writers become rich and famous. Most of the writers who make their living writing are people you've never heard of. This culture is wedded to stardom and hype, which means only a few headliners are available at any given time. Sometimes a writer becomes a headliner for a while, then disappears from view.

One of my college courses that had an impact on me was at UCLA: 19th C. Popular Literature. We read the best-sellers of the 1800s. I'd never heard of any of these authors! I bet you haven't either. They were superstars in their time, then disappeared. Meanwhile the "giants" of the era, whom we read today, were quietly doing their work in the shadows.

I had the honor and great pleasure of meeting Robert Sheckley, a giant science-fiction writer from the Golden Age (1950s), for coffee recently and was shocked to learn what a hard time he has surviving as a writer today. He's as prolific as ever but seems to have passed out of fashion. But he keeps writing.

Why do writers write anyway, with such odds against them? In the world of commerce, writers only invite rejection. In the world of art, writers only invite frustration. Most likely they won't become rich and famous, and they won't become as good as they want to be. Why keep writing?

Writers who stick to it, who are really writers, learn other, more valuable things about "the writing life." The writing life is a way of being. It's like a word-filled form of meditation, a trancelike state into which one enters to create imaginary worlds that make more sense than the world at large. Writing becomes a way to respond to the world, to live in the world, to make sense of the world and to dream about better worlds. And this becomes engaging enough, enjoyable even as it is challenging, to stick to it. So we end up writing for ourselves.

This is the part of writing that young writers need to learn. In the beginning probably all of us have visions (delusions) of grandeur. I did. One needs a very strong ego just to get going in the context of overwhelming rejection and invisibility. But finally an individual writer finds one's place in the world of writing, as I did. A writer with integrity continues to honor this place, and the unique voice that comes with it. Writing becomes an existential act. I write, therefore I am.

1/16/2003 09:33:00 AM | 0 comments

Comments: Post a Comment
 


Sketch says, "Happiness is sunshine and a bone." Posted by Hello


This page is powered by Blogger. __The Writing Life