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

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)

Thursday, May 08, 2003

Baumholder
[from a memoir in progress]
My first assignment was to a German town that Confidential magazine had called “the sin city of Europe.” Take away the military, and Baumholder would have been a small farming village near the town of Kaiserslatern, not far from the French border. But tens of thousands of soldiers were stationed at a base on one end of town, most of them spending their time playing war games in the surrounding fields. They were waiting for Vietnam, as it turned out. On the opposite end of town, on a hill above an antennae field, was a smaller base housing two companies, one composed of Russian linguists and the other of cooks, maintenance workers, and other support troops. I was assigned to the company of linguists.

Dozens and dozens of G.I. bars had been established to serve so many soldiers, and they thrived when the Animals (as we called the “real” soldiers) were in town during a break from their war games. Much of the time, however, the Animals were in the field, leaving the bars mostly to the Monterey Marys, which is what the Animals called the linguists, and to other non-belligerent troops. Our favorite hangouts were the two bars closest to our end of town, a G.I. bar called the Family Club and a German gasthaus called Albert’s. If we weren’t drinking there, we probably were drinking at the Enlisted Men’s (E.M.) Club on post.

But if we weren’t working, you could be sure that most of us were drinking. I’d never seen more, nor participated in more, drinking than as a Monterey Mary stationed in Germany. I first developed a taste for alcohol while at the Language School, at age 20, which was relatively late. I didn’t drink at all in high school – with one notable exception.

The exception was the night of my high school senior prom. Without a date, I went out with some of my nerd friends and managed to get plastered. I was so drunk that I passed out. My friends brought me home, deposited me onto my front porch, rang the doorbell and got the hell out of there.

The next morning I woke up with a splitting headache, smelling like puke. I was a mess, and I remember listening at my closed bedroom door for what seemed like hours to make sure no one was in the hallway between me and the bathroom, so I could rush undetected to take a shower.

By the time I faced the world, it was afternoon. The first thing my dad did when he saw me was pour and offer me a water glass of straight bourbon. I almost threw up on the spot.

In the Army I learned that drinking could be pleasurable. It was something almost everyone did, and when I was high, I was considerably more social than when I was sober. I also learned that I actually had an abnormal capacity for alcohol, able to go drink for drink with just about anyone.

This talent did me well in Germany because I was several years younger than most of my fellow linguists. The typical Monterey Mary had a Masters degree in a subject within the humanities. He’d been working on a Ph.D. as he neared age 26, the limit of his draft eligibility, unable to get a deferment because he wasn’t studying in the sciences. Fearing he was about to be drafted before the deadline, he joined the Army in order to choose his specialty and avoid becoming a foot soldier.

Consequently I arrived in Baumholder to find myself one of the few linguists in the entire company who did not already have a college degree. Were it not for my drinking capacity, I think I would have been dismissed by my seniors as “a mere undergraduate.” As it turned out, I could keep up with them drink for drink, which was enough to be admitted to their club, albeit as something of a “little brother” to these graduate students.

My intellectual reputation also had preceded me. Several of my fellow students from R-12-80 had arrived in Baumholder ahead of me and started bragging about a “mathematical genius” who would be arriving any day now, who would be able to solve a work-related puzzle that seemed to everyone to be mathematical in nature.

However, I didn’t arrive right behind them. I’d been pulled off the train at the last military stop before my destination and told there was a problem with my security clearance, which would have to be resolved before I could report for work. Whatever the problem (I always thought it was joining with an address from Berkeley), I spent a month in limbo, a winter month during which I shoveled snow every morning and read in the warm base library the rest of the day, not bad duty at all. My absence gave my friends a month to hype my arrival.

5/08/2003 07:26:00 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