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.

Posts from past seven days. For others, see archives (below).

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Extraordinary free info useful to writers when marketing.

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A guide to publishers and publishing services for serious writers, including info on scam agents.

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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)

Friday, May 16, 2003

Pasadena City College
[from a memoir in progress, which began 4/13/03]
My life has been filled with serendipity. I remind myself of this often. Despite having a dirty laundry list of drunken escapades, in the balance sheet of my life I feel lucky. More often than not, things happening to me that seemed unfortunate at the time have proved to be the opposite.

When I returned to school, I planned to enroll at UCLA – but there was a problem. Because Cal. Tech. was on the quarter system and UCLA on the semester system, my credits for the fall quarter of my sophomore year transferred at 2 credits, not the 3 that were the standard UCLA course (I had no credits from Berkeley). In other words, I had to take all my sophomore classes over again. Since this would be expensive, I decided to attend Pasadena City College for a year, where I could make up the work at considerably less expense, and go on to UCLA from there.

This was another one of those fortunate accidents. At PCC three things happened that had important consequences: I learned how to analyze and write about literature; I met a teacher who encouraged me to write (but prose, not poetry); and I published in the college literary magazine.

I was nervous about majoring in literature because at Cal. Tech. I showed no talent for writing about it. In a World Drama class I was lucky to get a C. In another survey course, I wrote an embarrassing analysis of E. A. Robinson’s poem, “Mr. Flood’s Party.” You may remember that in the poem “old Eben Flood” climbs a hill overlooking his town, drinks from a jug and reflects in self-dialogue on the failures of his life:

For soon amid the silver loneliness
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons listening,
Until the whole harmonious landscape rang --

"For auld lang syne." The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered; and the song being done,
He raised again the jug regretfully
And shook his head, and was again alone.

In my interpretation of this poem on a quiz, I was stumped by the image of “with only two moons listening” until I remembered … are you ready for this? … Mars had two moons! Believe it or not, I set my interpretation on the planet Mars. It never occurred to me that, being drunk, old Flood was seeing double. My professor told me it was the most unusual and creative reading of the poem he’d ever encountered. This response does not suggest a future in interpreting literature.

At PCC, thanks to excellent and encouraging teachers, I learned how to write about literature without making a fool of myself. One teacher, in particular, influenced me in several ways.

Bob Trevor began every class by reading a poem aloud. There was no discussion of it. He just told us to listen carefully. This was the first time I understood the importance of the lyrical line in poetry. In learning to analyze and discuss literature, I followed Trevor’s example, emulating the methodology he used in class. He approached literary interpretation as a marriage between mind and heart, moving from the mind’s understanding of the logic of the text to the heart’s understanding of the emotional meaning of the poem. The two always had to pull in the same direction.

Trevor encouraged my writing in several ways. First, he encouraged my critical writing and showed me how to improve it. Once he saw my creative writing, he discouraged me to pursue poetry and encouraged me to focus on fiction instead. My poems during this period, although better than the doggerel in my journals, still were too contrived and safe. My early talent in creative writing was in creating character and writing realistic dialogue. It would be some time yet before I discovered playwriting, so I used these skills in short stories.

The college literary magazine was called Pipes of Pan, and I contributed to several issues while I was at PCC. I published poems, a short story based on one of my hitchhiking adventures, and a critical essay about E. E. Cummings, to whose work Trevor introduced me.

I was a published writer! I think Dee felt relief, hoping that this might end my impossible quest to become a professional writer. Now I could settle down to becoming a literature professor. But seeing my name and work in print only whetted my appetite for more. I would take a growing internal conflict between creative writing and critical writing with me to UCLA.

5/16/2003 03:43:00 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