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.

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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!

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Finalist, Oregon Book Award

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Love At Ground Zero

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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
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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.

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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)

 
Monday, January 13, 2003  
Shopping a novel
Last summer I completed a novel, Emmett's Gift (synopsis). In the sixties I wrote two novels I couldn't place, which is part of the reason I began focusing on playwriting. Although I began publishing short stories regularly, these were in small literary journals -- the first play I wrote placed in a large national competition. I was flown to opening night and treated like a bigshot. I liked it.

In the 1980s I wrote a detective novel called The Deadly Doowop, which an editor at Bantam called a B+ novel in an A+ market. I didn't place it either, and it now is in my literary archive.

I found it very hard to return to long fiction after thirty years of scriptwriting. I had about 500 pages of false starts on Emmett's Gift, and I almost quit many times. But I stuck to it and once I found the right voice for the novel and the right point of view for the story, it went quickly.

As I neared completion, I started researching agents for marketing it. I had read the literary novel, which this is, was more difficult than ever to sell, so I was surprised to find over 100 agents who handled the genre (literature as genre!). When the novel was done, I began sending out my query letter, first to those who had email addresses. From this barrage I received 15 requests for the first several chapters of the novel, and one request for the entire manuscript. Thus far 12 have passed. A couple of rejections were encouraging, if rejections can be encouraging ("it was a difficult choice," from the agent who read the whole book; "send me your next book," from another); one was downright insulting. At any rate, there are four I'm still waiting to hear from.

I'm about to begin phase two of my marketing plan, querying agents who only accept snail mail. Phase three is to query small presses, the usual home for literary novels, where there are no advances and where agent representation is not required. Finally, the last resort, I can always put my novel in my archive at the University of North Carolina, making it available online. If it comes to that I'll likely bring out a print-on-demand paperback as well to stick in a few libraries.

Early in my career, getting a dozen rejections would have made me almost suicidal. I've been able to take it in stride. I'm seasoned, weathered, and -- let's say it -- more cynical now. I knew it would be a hard sell. At the moment I'm not interested in writing in a popular genre (the world of commerce) but sticking to the stories I need to tell (the world of art). If everything ends up in my archive, so be it, at least it's better than nothing.

My archive, in fact, gets more hits than I ever imagined it would when the University of North Carolina offered to host my writing. (The librarian was a fan of my work in hypertext.) I'm averaging over 200 visits a day! Who knows how much of this is browsing and how much actual reading ... I can get the breakdown on individual pieces in the archive (the Chekhov hyperdrama is recently the most popular item there) but again, does someone just browse or actually read something?

Ah, writers. Longing to find their audience!

1/13/2003 05:07:00 AM | 0 comments

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