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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Literary archive

The Sextant Press

Personal home page

Electronic screenwriting tutorial

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Finalist, Oregon Book Award

Practical Screenwriting

Love At Ground Zero

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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.

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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)

 
Saturday, June 28, 2003  
Dick's death
[from a memoir in progress, which began on 4/13/03]
Each of my parents died instantly. There may be no better way to go.

Dick Crooks died within weeks after being diagnosed with cancer. Shortly before the diagnosis, he’d visited us in Portland, and he was in worse shape psychologically than I’d seen him before. Sobriety did not seem to be agreeing with him.

On the drive home to Idaho, one of his legs swelled. A doctor in Lewiston didn’t know what to make of it, so Dick went to the V.A. Hospital in Spokane. This is where he was diagnosed with cancer, which was in his pancreas and already was terminal. There was little to do but make him as comfortable as possible for the end.

I was very close to Dick’s mother, Esther. She was a short woman, under five feet, with red hair that turned silver as she aged. Feisty and funny, she’d grown up in logging camps and bars and took no shit from anyone. She was very active in Democratic politics in Clearwater County and for a time served as Orofino’s mayor.

The first time I met Esther, during a trip when Dee and I drove up to visit Dick in Moscow, where he was attending the University of Idaho after getting out of the Army, we’d gone to Esther’s house in Orofino for dinner. I found the address and knocked on the door. When it opened, I looked down to find this short woman grinning up at me. “So you’re fucking Deemer,” she said. This was Esther.

Esther took Dick’s death harder than anyone. She had been only a teenager when she’d had him. Dick was her only child. She talked about how it wasn’t right for a parent to outlive her children.

Dick was moved from the hospital to a hospice in Moscow. I visited him with his two sons, Brad and Kass, and it was clear he didn’t have long to live. He was rapidly losing coherence but while he was still able to communicate I told him I loved him and then kissed him on the cheek. Dick smiled and said, “Lovely.” This was the last thing he said to me.

I returned home and a few weeks later he died. I went back to spread his ashes with Esther, his two sons, and a cousin of Dick’s who was especially close to the family. We spread them at the top of the steep grade descending to White Bird, Idaho, above the Salmon River, where the Crooks family roots were.

Because Dick was a veteran, Esther had a simple memorial plaque made, which we set in cement in the White Bird cemetery just out of town. I like being able to visit it, not only to stop at the top of White Bird grade where we scattered the ashes in the summit wind that never seems to stop, but to drive down to the small town graveyard and stand at his plaque, reading his name, engaging his memory. Like most institutions that exist in this life, we have cemeteries because we need them.

Dick’s spirit lives on in his sons and in me. Brad has continued the mortgage business that his father started. Kass wrestles with the same demons that haunted Dick. I would not be who I am had Dick and I not become soul brothers. Each of us carries a little bit of Dick Crooks around with us every day.

Sometimes I wonder if my spirit will live on in anyone after I’m gone, but I can’t think of anyone so I think of something more pleasant.

6/28/2003 06:56:00 AM | 0 comments

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