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
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)

 
Wednesday, April 30, 2003  
Berkeley
[from a memoir in progress]
Moving from Pasadena to Berkeley in 1959 was like moving to another planet. The energy on the streets in this era, particularly around Sather Gate near an entrance to campus, and down Telegraph Avenue from the University, was electric, especially to a 19-year-old living away from home for the first time. Tables set up outside of Sather Gate were manned by representatives of more political positions and social ideas than I knew existed. Street musicians were everywhere, as were more beautiful young women than I’d ever seen in one place at one time. So much was going on I felt immobile, unable to choose what to do first. But suddenly the last thing I felt like doing was sitting in a classroom.

Quentin and I rented an apartment together and found a part-time job to help us make ends meet, “hashing” at a sorority near campus. We were dishwashers and servers to long tables of still more beautiful young women, and for this honor we received free meals and a small stipend to make up for the weekend meals when we didn’t work.

From the beginning I had little interest in school at Berkeley. My studies at Cal. Tech. put me far ahead of the sequential calculus courses I enrolled in, and I got bored by having to study things I already knew. Instead of using this advantage to ace the classes, improving my grade point average, I did the opposite and spent class hours hanging around Telegraph Avenue, soaking up the street life and becoming more and more influenced by it.

A high school friend, Eugene, had enrolled at Berkeley. He’d been a part of our nerd group in Pasadena until he transferred to another school for his last two years of high school. After I looked him up, Eugene ushered me into the Berkeley folk music scene, where I quickly renewed my interest in the guitar. I was introduced to the music of The Weavers, Barbara Dane, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, and others, many of whose records I bought, learning songs from them. My guitar style was a strange hybrid between the Carter lick and two-finger Travis picking, a personal style I’d developed on my own from self-instruction books and early informal tutelage from Merle Travis himself. This served my purposes well enough early on but would prove to be a handicap later, a collection of bad habits to unlearn if I wanted to graduate to more advanced finger picking techniques or the bluegrass flat picking style.

I began to think of myself less and less as a student and more and more as a street folk musician, although I still was too shy and unskilled to share the latter behavior with strangers. I performed mostly for myself. Quentin, who still was attending classes, somehow suffered through my practicing as I informally dropped out of school and spent my day practicing the guitar or just hanging around.

Despite working for most of our meals, we still had to come up with the rent, and our finances quickly proved to be tougher to manage than we’d calculated. We either needed to get another job or to find cheaper rent.

Many times in life, the gods have dropped wonderful accidents into my lap. They did so now. Just when we needed to hear it, the gods who care for reckless young men sang us their serendipitous song.

4/30/2003 06:46:00 AM | 0 comments

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