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!

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

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, March 17, 2003

War
This must be on everyone's mind. I'm not against war with Iraq, which puts me in the minority in arts communities, at least around here, but I'm not happy with the Bush war strategy of "shock and awe." I would rather see an emphasis on ground troops, combing the entire country for Hussein's hidden weaponry -- and I mean the entire country. At the same time, I would like us to make it clear we are after him and his weapons, not the Iraqi people, and so offer political asylum to anyone who wants to turn against the regime. I would like the air war to be held in reserve as backup, rather than as an over-powering first kill. In other words, rather than "shock and awe" -- going after surrender from fear -- I would like to see us invite surrender and rebellion against the regime by the Iraqi people themselves, with a longer more focused ground war, the goal being to find and destroy his weaponry. This is a higher risk policy in terms of American lives in the short run but I think it has political advantages in the long run.

But this isn't what is going to be done, so talking about it is an exercise in wishful thinking. I've never approved of letting Saddam Hussein endlessly drag his feet and make fools of the U.N., and the righteousness of France is laughable, considering all their economic ties to the Iraqi regime. Politics is dirty any way you cut it, and nations are selfish by nature. At the same time, this war likely will be a disaster (but a smaller disaster now, perhaps, than the later disaster if we sat around while more rogue nations got nuclear arms).

Here is my cynical take on things: civilizations fall when they become too fat and lazy to defend themselves against the "barbarians" knocking at the door. This is what happens. World history tells us that. So maybe the west has now become too fat and lazy to defend itself.

Maybe the lack of consensus at the U.N. is the first note of this tragic opera, The Fall of the West. What John Leonard called "the Kamikazes of Kingdom Come" seem to believe in their cause of Muslim extremism more than the West believes in our principles of the Enlightenment. They commit suicide for their cause, getting to Heaven for their night with a dozen virgins, while we can't even round up an international army, instead bickering and hemming-and-hawing and doing anything to avoid war, which is the arena where these conflicts get resolved in the real world. Or at least that has been the history of the species. I don't see anyone making a convincing argument that human nature has changed recently.

Maybe if 250,000 civilians stand in front of approaching armies the way that young woman in Palestine did, willing to put their lives on the line, to die for a cause ... but on second thought, that number probably falls way short. War has a very long tradition. It might take millions of "human shields" to appease the gods of war -- and voluntary ones, not those ordered into service by Saddam Hussein.

Given the reality of the situation, I hope Bush is completely right. I hope it's a quick, clean war, and the Iraqi people shower us with candy kisses as liberators. But I'm not taking any bets. There's that overture I hear, an opera, Wagnerian in its tragic notes, The Fall of the West, history once again repeating itself ad infinitum ... no wonder Joyce called history a nightmare.

It's times like this, frankly, when I am glad I am too old to hang around for the final act. And on this happy note, back to grading student scripts!

And I'm going to enjoy the hell out of March Madness on the basketball court, to hell with madness in the world.

3/17/2003 11:31:00 AM | 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