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).

Video welcome (AVI, 9.8M)

Home.

Site Feed.

Looking for permalinks? Click on time after each post.

Search this blog:

Find any book

Project Gutenberg
Online Free Book Catalog (classics, world lit, etc.)

AA Independent Press Guide
A free online guide to 2000+ lit mags and publishers.

Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing and Tinseltown Too
Extraordinary free info useful to writers when marketing.

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

Free screenwriting software
Cinergy, a script editor, free from Mindstar Productions. Easily write your screenplay in correct format.

Recommended screenwriting books
Some important reading for serious students.

Spec Script Writing: An Annotated Example
Short guide to correct screenwriting format and writing style.

Today in Literature

The New Yorker

The New York Review of Books

NY Times Sunday Book Review

Make a post

Looking for permalinks? Click on time after each post.

Technorati Profile

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)

Sunday, May 18, 2003

University of Oregon
[from a memoir in progress, which began 4/13/03]
The timing couldn’t have been better for me when I arrived on campus at the University of Oregon. The current issue of The New Republic magazine contained a book review by me, and the first thing the chair of the English Department said after shaking my hand was, “Very nice to see your article in the New Republic, Mr. Deemer!” I walked onto campus like a golden boy. What I didn’t realize was that, after an entrance like this, there was nowhere to go but down.

My first disappointment happened early on. By this time I had decided to write my Ph.D. thesis on Melville’s Pierre, arguing that the book was as good as Moby Dick, an opinion that no critic had offered before. Doing research in the library one afternoon, I learned that a recent Ph.D. thesis from the University of Michigan had made the same argument. Now my “original” interpretation was going to look derivative.

I was devastated. My advisor tried to call me down, telling me this was par for the course in graduate school. All I had to do was pick another subject matter for my thesis. He suggested something about the Transcendentalists, who in the cycle of literary fashion were due to become popular again just about the time I would get my doctorate. But I had come to Oregon to write about Melville’s Pierre, nothing else, and I began to question my entire motivation for being there. Should I really become a professor of literature? Or should I become a writer? This old, nagging question was far from being resolved.

If this weren’t enough complication in my life, there was another challenge ahead. Dee was eight months pregnant when we arrived in Eugene. Here the timing was good, too, because at least she hadn’t delivered early, at least I didn’t come onto campus burdened by the stress of fatherhood.

Dee’s pregnancy had not been an accident, however untimely it might seem to start a family at the beginning of graduate school studies. We’d decided that it was now or never for us. By having a child, we would solve all the problems in our marriage.
During my last year at UCLA, Dee had decided I was having an affair with the pretty wife of our apartment manager. In fact, I wasn’t – but we were flirting with one another rather outrageously. In fact, we might well have begun an affair had Dee not intervened. She put her foot down and informed me in no uncertain terms that it was time to have a real marriage or no marriage at all. She was sick and tired of living the way we were.

I can’t remember whose idea it was to have a child. I suspect it was Dee’s. I’m sure she wanted a family, and I’m sure this was the farthest thing from my mind since I had so many other issues to resolve, such as what to do with my life.

I don’t have any memory of alcohol being an issue at this time, although it clearly was. But Dee made no demands that I quit drinking (maybe she knew I would have left her if she had). What she wanted to know was whether or not I loved her, whether or not we were going to have a marriage, and whether or not we were going to have a family.

I answered yes to everything. I think I did this because I was scared to leave her at this time in my life when so many other things were unresolved. I’m sure I thought that I loved her, despite our differences. I don’t have a memory of being unhappily married until later when in the world of graduate school I met, for the first time, people who shared my passion for literature. At PCC and UCLA I was a commuting student, and my social life was with Dee and our circle of friends, none of whom were interested in literature. But we all were interested in folk music and in eating and drinking well, so it didn’t seem to matter that I had no literary friends. Only when I made such friends in graduate school would I realize how much I had been missing and how important these new friends were to me.

In my own mind at the time, I said yes to Dee to make the marriage work. For the summer before we moved to Eugene, it looked like the decision had been the right one.

5/18/2003 07:41:00 AM | 0 comments

Comments: Post a Comment

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