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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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)

Thursday, May 22, 2003

Portland
[from a memoir in progress, which began 4/13/03]
In Portland Carol and I rented an apartment on Mississippi Avenue in North Portland, the city’s black community. Neither of us had lived in a black neighborhood before, which only increased our sense of adventure. As good liberals, we assumed we’d be fine.

Carol quickly found a shit job as a secretary. We’d decided that she would work full-time, I part-time, in order to give me leisure in which to learn my craft as a writer. I signed up with a temporary employment agency and soon was sent to interview for a writing job.

The job was to work on a biweekly trade newspaper for the mobile home industry, called The Northwest Mobile Home News. The publisher was a short, fat, graying, cigar-smoking character named Mel. We hit it off immediately, well enough that Mel suggested a deal. He would not offer me the job through the temp. agency. Instead he would hire me privately on his own at more salary than my share from the agency but less than what he would have had to pay them. We both would benefit. This sounded good to me.

As it turned out, Mel had doubled his staff. He had been the publisher, writer, editor and salesman all by himself. He wanted me to be the writer and editor so he could concentrate on sales.

Mel gave me a crash course in laying out and publishing a newspaper. I loved the job because I was learning so many useful new skills. I was a quick study, which pleased him. He gave me a raise and hit the road, traveling through the Northwest to sell ads for the newspaper, leaving me in Portland to assemble news releases, write stories, design and edit the paper, and deliver it to the printer. In the beginning this turned into a full-time job but I didn’t care. I was getting paid to write and learning a lot doing it.

I started writing under a variety of bylines. I created a column on mobile home living under one byline and a humorous column under another. Under a third name, I started writing a serial with a new installment each issue, several illustrated by Carol, a mystery in which the detective worked out of a mobile home. I started writing a feature page-one story under my own name, wanting to establish my writing credentials, and for these stories I interviewed major figures in the local mobile home business community. The paper gained respect, which attracted more readers, which sold more ads, which pleased Mel. He gave me another raise.

I was traveling across town to our office on 82nd avenue. After I had my work routine down, I suggested to Mel that we give up the office and let me assemble the paper in our apartment. I’d save traveling time, and he’d save rent. He loved the idea and split the savings with me with another raise.

In the meantime, we were hanging out at the local watering hole, The Overlook Tavern. Except for the white woman who owned the place, we usually were the only white customers there. We were accepted as neighbors by all the regulars.

As putting out the paper became more of a routine, I had time to write other things. I focused on writing short stories and articles for the Sunday supplement of the newspaper. Carol, as my editor, would read each manuscript carefully, marking small “x’s” in pencil in the margins, and we would go over my work meticulously, line by line. As time went on, I embraced fewer of Carol’s suggestions as I learned to defend my own voice and my own style of writing.

I started receiving so many rejection slips that I became depressed. A writer friend told me to do something positive with them. I began assembling a large collage of rejection slips. I still have it today.

Finally editors began accepting my work. Northwest Review accepted a short story, then The Colorado Quarterly, then The Literary Review. After a dozen rejections, Joe Bianco at Northwest, the Sunday supplement, accepted a piece about being on jury duty, paying me well. Moreover, he invited me to his office, and I walked out with an assignment. I was a professional writer! Soon I was a regular contributor to the supplement, eventually publishing over a hundred articles there.

I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven. Unfortunately, the euphoria wasn’t mutual. Without me being aware of it, Carol was going through changes. The better part of a decade would pass before these changes rose to the surface and altered our lives forever.

Before the changes, however, when even Carol must have thought she’d found her soul mate, we got married. We were going to drive to Salt Lake City, where I would meet her parents for the first time. At the last minute Carol decided she would be more comfortable introducing me as her husband rather than her live-in boyfriend. We went across the river to Vancouver, Washington, where we didn’t have to wait for the results of blood tests, and got married in an office while two secretaries looked on as witnesses. No one who knew us was there.

It wasn’t much of a wedding but it didn’t have to be. I already felt married in the deepest meaning of the term. I had found my soul mate.

5/22/2003 06:54:00 AM | 0 comments

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Sketch says, "Happiness is sunshine and a bone."

__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