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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References

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Finalist, Oregon Book Award

Practical Screenwriting

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
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)

Sunday, April 27, 2003

Sports (sort of)
[from a memoir in progress]
You didn’t really try out for sports at Cal. Tech. You showed up. Apparently there was little doubt in the coach’s mind that I was going to be his freshman quarterback. Only about 15 guys showed up for the team, and of these only one other wanted to try out for quarterback. Coach gave us each a football and told us to throw it long. I threw a zinger, about a forty-yard spiral. The other guy threw a soft, wobbly pass that went end-over-end for about fifteen yards before crashing like a ripe coconut. I was the quarterback. He was my backup.

This was an era in which players went both ways, playing offense and defense, which was fortunate since we had so few players. Eventually we browbeat others to join us so we at least could put 22 guys on the practice field and scrimmage. But we never had anything close to depth.

We had a four-game season, playing against the likes of Occidental College and Whittier College, small schools like ours but schools less concentrated in their curricula than Tech. They may even have had a physical education major.

Our first game was against Occidental, and the first half presented the most auspicious beginning in the history of Cal. Tech. freshman football. We scored two touchdowns! I scored the first, by running untouched around the right end after calling for a halfback sweep around left end. I noticed that our linemen were giving away the direction of the play by the way they lined up. In the huddle, therefore, I lied. I told them I was going to toss the ball out to the halfback running left but instead took the snap under center and, after faking left, suddenly sprinted around right end. The Occidental defense had gotten lazy by this time, also realizing that our linemen were telegraphing the play, so I took everyone by surprise and dashed into the end zone almost before anyone, including my own team, realized what was going on. Unfortunately, this was the kind of trick that only worked once.

Our second touchdown was more traditional, a halfback run off-tackle late in the second quarter, which somehow went for eighty-five yards and a score. The back who ran the ball was so exhausted afterwards he missed most of the third quarter , still trying to recuperate. My dad, who was at the game, told me later the halfback looked like a cartoon, running scared with his feet in front of him, leading the way.

We were behind 28-12 at the half, and this was the closest half we would play all season. Occidental ended up winning the game 52-12. Moreover, these two first half touchdowns ended up being the only points we scored all season! Our auspicious start fell flat on its face. Our worst game was losing 85-0 against Whittier in a driving rainstorm on a field that soon became a mud bath.

If ever sports was about playing the game for its own sake and not whether you won or lost, it was football at Cal. Tech. I loved playing and so did most of my teammates. Even losing 85-0 in a mud bath was fun – it fact, it was delirious fun! We were very good at amusing ourselves, cracking jokes in the huddle and pulling stunts that drove our coach crazy, such as trying a 90-yard field goal on first down. When your game plan is three plays and punt, creative play-calling becomes attractive.

As quarterback, I must have lost hundreds of yards by the end of the season. Despite the 85-yard run in our first game, we really didn’t have much of a running game. I could pass accurately if I was given time to get it off, so mostly I called passing plays, or plays with a pass option, and most of the time I got sacked before getting the throw off. I may have lost over five hundred yards by season’s end.

On defense, I played safety. The coach’s strategy behind this was to keep me from getting injured by keeping me far from the ball. As it turned out, I led the team in tackles!

I played every offensive and defensive down in the season except two. Once I had the wind knocked out of me on offense and had to come out. For two plays the backup quarterback ran the team, and he was a sight to behold. Not only did his passes go end over end, when he ran he waddled like a duck. It was hard not to laugh from the bench, and even the coach had a hard time keeping a straight face. I ran back in for fourth down, just in time to punt, and the backup came out with a great grin on his face, knowing that he had just won his letter.

Football was such a blast that Quentin talked me into going out for basketball, which was his sport. Quentin, at about six-two, made first string forward, and amazingly enough I played first string as the other forward even though I was only six even. Our center was about six-three.

The freshman basketball team actually won a few games, solely because we had a guard who could make almost half his shots taken from anywhere between the top of the key and mid-court. His job was to get free somewhere over the mid-court line, and our job was to get the ball to him. When he got hot, he was amazing to watch – I’ve not seen such a display of long-range accuracy since then. His shooting let us occasionally experience something that Cal. Tech. teams almost never experienced, the joy of winning.

After lettering in football and basketball, I decided to go out for track. My motivation was to build up my speed for football, but the track coach had other ideas. First he tried to make me a shot putter. I could never get the hang of it. Next he tried the javelin. I almost nailed him with an errant throw. Finally I ran the third leg on the mile relay team. Our freshman track team won one meet, a close victory over the House of David and its team of long-bearded preachers.

The best part of playing sports at Cal. Tech. was the camaraderie that developed among the athletes. Since much of the time we not only were losing our competitions but getting slaughtered in them, we depended on one another to keep our spirits up. We told jokes, we discussed homework problems, we horsed around. The coaches were forever trying to get us to behave like respectable athletes who took the competition at hand seriously, losing with grace, but we were built of difference stuff and were participating for different reasons. We were having so much fun an observer would think we were winning. Of course, we didn’t expect to win. We just made sure we had a hell of a lot of fun losing.

In the summer after my freshman year, before school started, I reported to early football practice. I was going to play for the varsity, which ran the single wing because its coach was a former UCLA coach whose teams had done the same. The coach wanted me to try out for two positions: quarterback, which in the single wing is primarily a blocking back, and tailback, who is the passer and runner.

I loved playing quarterback in the single wing because I got to call the plays and yell out the signals. Most of my blocks were traps, a pretty easy line of work. Since I could catch the ball as well as pass it, the coach even activated a couple of trick plays in which I became a primary receiver. At tailback I was not as good as the starter, a returning senior, but I thought I had a good shot at becoming the starting quarterback, even if I was only a sophomore.

The same summer the season preview issue of Street & Smith’s Football Digest came out – and miracle upon miracle, in the Southern California regional supplement my name was listed in the back as one of the promising new prospects for the Cal. Tech. varsity football team! In high school, I had bought this preview religiously to read about UCLA and the Fortyniners and find out what their seasons would be like. Now my name was listed between the same covers as the names of my past heroes. With my name in print, I felt like a football star!

Unfortunately, my prospects crashed as hard as those of the freshman football team the year before. I hurt my knee in a late summer scrimmage and quit the team. The coach wanted me to undergo rehabilitation, telling me I would be ready to play before the season ended, but I already was thinking of leaving school. Playing football, even for the varsity, no longer appealed to me. I was trying to figure out what to do with my life.

4/27/2003 04:39:00 AM | 0 comments

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__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