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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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
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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
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Modem Noise
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boynton
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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.

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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?

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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.

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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, March 04, 2003  
Office hour musings
Nothing like quiet office hours to inspire staring out the window. In two weeks and two days, I should have my grades in -- and then I'll be chomping at the bit to get down to Eugene for the basketball tournament. In the meantime, I got my papers read today and with a good night's sleep I can do the same thing tomorrow.

There was an interesting program on "Talk of the Nation" today about the intellectual life on campus today. Most professors who were on the show believed it to be less vibrant and exciting than in previous decades, that today there was too much of an emphasis on college as job ticket.

I share this opinion. When I transfered from Cal Tech to Berkeley in 1959, I couldn't believe how exciting an intellectual environment I'd entered -- even after Cal Tech, a considerable intellectual environment in its own right. But Bekeley, which had not been politicized yet (this is pre-free-speech movement), was gloriously chaotic and anarchistic with tables and speakers everywhere, spouting every opinion, esoteric and strange, known to man. It was so exciting that I immediately stopped going to classes and hung out on the streets, where all the real idea-swapping seemed to be going on. Berkeley at this time was anything but dull! It was crazy and challenging, and a large part of every day was reading some book or other so you could argue about it later.

Berkeley was a real turning point for me. I had my first significant love affair there, with a girl who broke my heart, and for a while I was "homeless" and surviving in a tree house (really a lean to within a fallen tree) in Strawberry Canyon near the Cyclotron. More than one ex-wife has commented that being so close to radiation had a permanent effect on my brain.

I joined the Army in Berkeley, which was a family scandal since I was a Navy brat. Only my dad understood (the Army was 3 yrs, the Navy 4 yrs) -- my mom thought it was the end of the world. I actually joined by default. I was living in the tree house, broke, and surviving on one meal a day I got with a meal ticket after hitchhiking into Oakland to talk to recruiters, timing this so I'd be done just before noon, when they gave you a meal ticket for a restaurant across the street. I talked to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard, taking every test available, and managed to stretch this survival strategy over several weeks before I ran out of options and it was put up or shut up time. An Army recruiter had a quota shortage in the Army Security Agency and since I had previous college, he wanted to fill it with me ... and I said, Why not? This easily spies are made.

This, of course, was a blessing because my military experience was spectacular, a year of it at the language school in Monterey studying Russian. August 3, 1959, I joined -- a date I'll never forget.

An interesting p.s. Later in Germany, in a PX, I ran into the first love affair woman who had a toddler with her that was the right age to be mine. She said she got married within months of our breakup, but I've often wondered if that kid was mine.

3/04/2003 02:53:00 PM | 0 comments

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