The Writing Life: reflections by a working writer.

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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The Sextant Press

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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.

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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)

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

Can writing be taught?
Faulkner is alleged to have said that writing can't be taught but it can be learned. I think there's some truth to this. Many of the most important things a writer needs (like talent, like endurance) probably can't be taught directly. But there are matters of craft that can be taught, and this is especially true in screenwriting, which probably is the most "left brained" form of creative writing we have. Screenwriting is more about a certain kind of storytelling than about writing (in the sense we refer to "writing" when talking about fiction or poetry); screenwriting lends itself to brainstorming and collaboration in a way inappropriate, or less useful, to other narrative forms.

As a writing teacher, I see one of my more important tasks as creating an environment supportive of the act of writing. This means, first, creating an environment in which failure is possible without penalty -- up to a point (I still am required to give grades, at least at the University). A corollary of this is creating an environment in which rewriting is essential, in which the process of writing is clearly important and this process usually takes the form of failure followed by revision and improvement, as the writing product becomes more and more successful, both in the eyes of the writer and in the eyes of the audience.

My students who will become writers show themselves early by their understanding of this process. They don't give up just because a project starts off poorly. They stick with it and fix it. They keep rewriting and reworking it. They become absorbed in the process. Those students who will not become writers give up on the process. They act as if this is It, this draft is the best I can do, this draft is all I am interested in, I've told that story as well as I can and now I'm bored with it. These students see the need for change as a sign of failure, not as a sign of success.

What makes teaching writing fun for me is luck: I am lucky enough to get a few students who are serious about writing and who become very good at it. So far, each term this happens. I also am lucky enough to work with some of these students for several years before they move on in their studies to grad school or other environments. Some become writing teachers. I helped one obtain a recent position teaching screenwriting. Maybe she'll even get my job when I retire.

The classroom is a very artificial environment for a writer. In the real world, we don't have to share how bad we can be so early in the process. The best I can do to reduce the impact of such an artificial environment is to try and get students comfortable in it, letting them know that failure early on is expected, that it is nothing to worry about. In my online workshops, I don't give grades and I prefer this. At the University, I must give grades, and they matter to the students, so I grade their final projects, which they work on all term, letting them make mistakes without penalty up until the final moment.

An interesting observation: if talent and endurance are two things that probably can't be taught, but which every writer needs, the latter may be more important. My former students who go on to be successful writers have not been my more talented students. They've been the students who refuse to give up. Endurance seems to matter in a practical sense more than raw talent.

2/11/2003 03:51:00 PM | 0 comments

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Sketch says, "Happiness is sunshine and a bone."

__The Writing Life

After October 31, 2006, new posts are published at

The Writing Life II

After October 31, 2006,
new posts are published at