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!

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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, June 17, 2003

Good times, bad times
[from a memoir in progress, which began on 4/13/03]
In treatment, counselors reminded us that we had to come to think of our drinking days as “the bad old days,” not “the good old days.” They had a point. Every drunk has horror stories, and I have many of my own, some of which I’ve already shared here. But as I became confident in my sobriety, or as confident as one can become, I began to realize there were, in fact, things I liked about drinking, that I did have good times as well as bad while under the influence of alcohol. This is not to condone abuse of booze but to face reality squarely in the face. Sometimes it was just damn fun to get plastered.

The most fun I ever had drinking was when sitting around a table at Nobby’s or Seafood’s with three or more drinking buddies who also were in the arts, many of them writers, or wannabe writers. On these occasions, everyone would be talking at once, telling stories, cracking jokes, making puns, kidding one another about some past escapade – it was hard not to miss us when we were in gear and oiled with just enough liquor to be loose but still quick and coherent in our thoughts and speech.

As the night wore on, as we consumed more liquor, the mood would change as wit turned into repetition and quick repartee turned into loud arguments, until we were just a table of loud drunks all shouting at once. But the bartender and waitresses always indulged us – we were good, paying customers, after all. By the time we broke up and wandered off our separate ways, some to go home, others to hit another bar (as I usually did), the charm of the evening’s early hour or two, before our intelligence got washed away by the booze, was forgotten, another good time lost to memory.

There were many of these good times, many more than I remember. They were great fun in their own present tense, the best of drinking times. And what I remember most is laughter.

Most of my worst drinking times were private – either because I was alone in my apartment, drowning myself in some self-pitying ritual of personal or professional pain, almost entirely self-induced, or because I managed to slip away into the shadows before my personal atrocity was discovered. Let me give an example of each to represent all such bad times, many more than I have the stomach to recount.

When my first hyperdrama, Chateau de Mort, opened at the Pittock Mansion, it was a very big deal. What with one-hundred dollar opening night tickets, the affair was as formal as an event in Portland is likely to get. To celebrate the special occasion, I rented a white tuxedo, and it caused such a stir, including my one and only appearance in the newpaper’s society pages, that I decided to make this a trademark – to attend my opening nights in a white tuxedo. I didn’t do this all the time, for reasons soon to become obvious, but for a few years the white tux became my costume for the occasion.

Naturally I hit Nobby’s and Seafood’s to show off before going to my opening. This caused more of a stir than at the theater, where I was never the only formally attired man in the house. I always was wearing the only tuxedo at the bar.

On one such opening night, I hit the bars in my white tux earlier and to a more rowdy crowd of regulars than usual, with the result that I had more than usual to drink before the play began. Everyone was buying me drinks, it seemed. I ended up running late, so went to the theater in a cab instead of walking, as I usually did.

The cab stopped across the street from the theater, which ended up being the proverbial blessing in disguise. I paid the cabby, got out and started to step across the street. Without warning, I suddenly passed wind – and in the very next moment, I shit myself. The cab had pulled away by now, and by good fortune no other theater goers were near me, though a dozen or so were across the street, making their way inside. The stench was terrible and immediate, closely followed by discomfort as the not-quite-solid excrement started sliding down my legs.

Well, you get the picture. I missed my opening night. I managed to walk back to my northwest neighborhood without grossing people out by sticking to side streets and moving away from anyone who approached. But how to get into my apartment undetected? Somehow I accomplished this, too.

After I got cleaned up, I went to bed. But I woke up before the bars were closed and – you guessed it – made Seafood’s before the last round, and I lied to everyone that opening night had been a grand success.

I never did get the nerve to return the white tuxedo. It was ruined. I couldn’t figure out a story to tell them that would explain its condition, other than the embarrassing truth, so I just waited for them to bill me, which they did, and I paid the bill the same day. This was the last time I rented a white tuxedo for opening night.

My most extended period of wallowing in drunken self-pity was after Linda left me, taking her piano with her. For almost a week I did nothing but sit in my apartment and listen to records, mostly the Chess recording of “The Best of Little Walter,” drinking, in a trance of “the booze and the blues,” as a friend called it later.

My apartment was half-a-block from a supermarket, which is about as far as I ventured out, and then only when I had to buy more beer and wine. I was eating very little and drinking very much, and I must have played two particular songs by Little Walter a hundred times each: one with the line, “This is a mean old world, try living by yourself,” and the other with the verse and refrain, “There’s just but one thing, baby, that makes your daddy drink; I see you with another man, and I begin to think. I’m in love with you, baby; wonder do you ever think of me.”

The booze and the blues, endlessly – but not so endlessly, after all, because a week or so later, it was over. I showed up at Nobby’s and Seafood’s again and, yes, I’d been feeling under the weather, thanks for asking, but I feel just fine now, and why don’t you make that a round for the house while you’re at it?

6/17/2003 07:42:00 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