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!

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)

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Southern California
[from a memoir in progress]
I have very few regrets in life. Those I do have get questioned once I realize that I like who I am today, both personally, professionally, and artistically. Surely all my experiences, bad as well as good, have contributed to the person I am, this person I like. Change anything and perhaps I would be someone different, someone not so likable.

So I can’t say I regret getting back together with Dee after the Army, even though I should have realized that our marriage already was doomed. Dee was a sweet and loving woman but she was a terrible match for a young man struggling to become a writer. She already was studying to become an elementary school teacher, and her interest in contemporary literature was negligible. To my dreams of becoming a writer she smiled sweetly, as if they were a temporary affliction from which I soon would be cured. What we shared was a history, an interest in folk music, and love of good food and wine. Dee was a great cook, and I was a great eater.

We also shared loneliness, which may have been what really brought us together again. Our meeting to discuss our future quickly moved to the bedroom. Once we’d made love, albeit in the same rhythm of release that had been our habit before I went overseas, our decision to stay in the marriage required little discussion at all. I simply moved in with her.

I got a job to put Dee through the rest of her schooling. Once she started teaching, I would return to college. This was our plan.

I was still drinking every day. I didn’t call it drinking through the week because all I was drinking was beer. A six- pack a day wasn’t drinking; it was just doing what I did. Real drinking happened on the weekend, when wine and bourbon would be consumed as well as beer, when I would drink long past midnight because I didn’t have to get up the next day to go to work.

Dee drank as well but never with the passion or in the quantity that I did. Her father was an alcoholic, however, and in her youth she’d experienced the trauma of hiding his bottles for him to keep her mother from finding them. I suspect Dee saw the signs of my alcoholism long before I did but didn’t know what to do about them.

We began a very active social life in Southern California, engaged in the work-hard, play-hard pattern that I had lived with in the Army. We gained some wonderful friends, and the more we surrounded ourselves with them, the less we had to deal with one another.

One night at The Ash Grove, a folk club in Los Angeles, we met the people with whom we would begin to do things almost weekly. I forget who was playing – probably Lightnin’ Hopkins or Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry. At the Ash Grove, you paid your cover and stayed for as many sets as you liked in a tavern setting. We’d arrived in the middle of a set, finding a table in the back. During the break, a large table near the stage was vacated, and we hustled to get it. Coming from the other direction were two black couples doing the same thing, whom I’ll call the Andersons and the Crows. We all arrived at the table together.

There were four of them and three of us, my brother being with us. The table was large enough for eight, and once we realized this we all sat down together. As it turned out, we got along great. Not only were they, like Dee and I, regulars at the Ash Grove but they played guitars and sang folk music and blues. Since we had a lot in common, we exchanged phone numbers.

Later Tom Anderson told me he never expected to hear from me again. But I called, and we were invited over to the Anderson house for a night of folk music. This solidified the beginning of what became a long friendship, one that continues to this day.

5/13/2003 06:14:00 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