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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Literary archive

The Sextant Press

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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, June 12, 2003

Hyperdrama on the Internet
[from a memoir in progress, which began on 4/13/03]
But there proved to be a fringe alternative to a playwriting career in New York: writing hyperdrama for the Internet. Here one had access to a worldwide audience with a new form of theater that fit the Internet perfectly because hyperdrama scripts were written in hypertext, the same language that created pages on the World Wide Web. Reading a hyperdrama script on the Internet became an interactive, engaging experience as it never could become within the linear restraints of the traditional book.

My first experience with hyperdrama on the Internet was in 1996 when I wrote a one-act hyperdrama for Andres Espejo and his theater group Prisma in Santiago, Chile. I’d met Andres after he sent me an email, asking for permission to translate one of my earlier hyperdramas into Spanish. As we exchanged ideas, we decided it would be better to collaborate on a new, short hyperdrama specifically written for his theater company.

Through the summer we met weekly in a chat room as I developed the story with Andres and Prisma. Espejo knew English well. When I finished the script, called The Last Song of Violeta Parra, he translated it into Spanish. Both versions were put on the Internet, where they remain today and often get accessed.

In the meantime, I had been working on my most ambitious hyperdrama project yet, the one I hoped would bring respect to the form. I decided to write a hyerdrama version of Chekhov’s The Seagull. To own the full rights, I first drew on my Russian background to translate the play, which took me several years. Then I began the very long process of writing all the new scenes for Chekhov’s actors when they were “off stage,” which is to say, off somewhere else in the estate when not on “Chekhov’s stage.”

I finished The Seagull Hyperdrama in summer, 2002, and put it online immediately. From start to finish, the project had taken me ten years.

Did I bring respect to the new theater form? I have no idea. Will I write another hyperdrama? I doubt it. I’m not sure I have the energy.

But from the moment Steve Smith commissioned my first hyperdrama, I became fascinated by, perhaps even addicted to, this layered, complex way of telling a story in live performance. Through most of the 1990s, this was the primary focus of my writing energy. I wouldn’t have missed the ride for anything in the world.

In retrospect, perhaps my fondest hyperdrama experience was not on the Internet at all but in the classroom. In the late 1980s I was a writer-in-residence at the prestigious private school Catlin Gabel in Portland, where I guided eight seniors through the process of conceiving, writing, and performing their own one-hour hyperdrama. These kids were brilliant. The form did not intimidate them at all. On the contrary, hyperdrama brought out their best writing, and they collaboratively created a layered play full of wit, surprises, intelligence and fun.

Their central story concerned a new headmaster at the school who was determined to make French the official language at Catlin Gabel. A group of students work to make sure this doesn’t happen. Within the play a short film was shown, which they wrote and shot themselves, a hilarious spoof on the school’s own recruiting film.

Catlin Gabel encourages individual, even eccentric, behavior, and one girl was so independent she chose not to participate in the collaboration of the script. Finally we found a way in which she agreed to participate. She was a poet, and we let her wander randomly through the action, reciting her poetry, costumed in a white sheet and looking very ethereal, representing the Spirit of Catlin Gabel.

The short hyperdrama was a great success with their classmates, although perhaps some of the parents were a little bewildered by the performance. When I saw the enthusiasm of the students in putting together the piece, and in their classmates in watching it, I knew that hyperdrama had a future.

This future may still belong to the Internet, given the fact that hyperdrama is so difficult to produce live. Or the Internet may be the holding cell where the new form can grow and win converts. I’ve never believed hyperdrama was just a fad. I still don’t.

6/12/2003 06:36:00 AM | 0 comments

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__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