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)

 
Tuesday, April 15, 2003  
Letter to a Dead Friend
Dear Ger,

I had coffee this morning in the coffee shop where we met once or twice a week while you were alive. I haven't been there since your death -- it's on the other side of campus from my office. Naturally going back brought forth a rush of memories about you. I still can't get over how quickly you left us, only weeks between diagnosis and death. I think the celerity of it all gave me a kick in the butt to start writing my memoirs since we never know when our time will come -- and without warning.

I am busy as ever but have put on my schedule a volume of your writing to edit this summer. I was surprised to find as much of your writing as your sister and I recovered from your apartment. I'm not sure how much of it I'll include in your book -- but a good representation of your poetry will be there, in any case, including the volume, "Midnight Matinee," you were working on when you died, presented exactly as your latest revision had the material arranged.

You would have been pleased by how many people came out to pay their respects when we spread your ashes in the Shakespeare Garden, especially how many recent friends from your short employment at the IRS. You touched a lot of people there -- perhaps by the good form in which you resigned! I thought more of the old drinking crowd would have shown up but most of them probably died before you and those who hadn't were probably too drunk to make it. I still recall our boiler-maker evenings in the 1980s, drunkenly lamenting on the State of Literature, as if we were sober enough to do anything about it. Maybe neither one of us deserved to live as long as we have.

I have a ton of writing I want to do. If I never get another idea, I could keep myself busy for another twenty years, but I suspect I have closer to ten left. I hope I can finish the projects at hand ... and then the projects I start after that. Life will end when it ends. The last coherent thing you said to me in the hospital was, "It's all in the hands of the gods." Truer words were never spoken.

I'm 20 pages into the memoirs, enough to know how much fun it is to write and how difficult areas of it will be. I am going to be as ruthlessly honest as I can, which means I'm changing some names along the way, especially of women I've been involved with. I can't imagine why anyone would be interested in what I am writing actually -- I'm such small potatoes in the literary world, but I'm trying my best to tell a good story along the way. To this end, I'm not arranging the material chronologically -- first I did this and then I did that -- but thematically, hoping to reinforce that the theme of the book is about an education, the education of a marginal writer, and all that implies. Why did I become a writer and why did I never get discouraged enough to quit?

I remember mentioning a few years ago that I can outlined my memoirs -- I recall you gave me a look of suspicion, as if I were flirting with delusions of grandeur again. Famous people write memoirs -- or victims of child abuse and other horrid experiences so fashionable in this Age of Victims. What the hell can an unknown writer with a happy childhood have to say that is interesting? Well, if nothing else, I have a ton of wild drinking stories! Anyway, this project probably is mainly for an audience of myself, an exercise in making sense of my life.

Well, Ger, needless to say I miss you. I have your photograph on the door down to my office, so I see your image several times a day. I remain shocked at how one day we are having coffee together and the next week you tell me you have cancer, and the week after that you are dead. The Great Reaper doesn't mess around. It's in the hands of the gods. I hope they give me some years to write some things I need to write before they decide it's my turn.

4/15/2003 09:53:00 PM | 0 comments

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