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)

Wednesday, June 04, 2003

New Rose Theatre
[from a memoir in progress, which began on 4/13/03]
The offer was too good to pass up. Although I wouldn’t be on salary, the theater company would make a commitment to put a new play by me on its season each year. To begin and announce the relationship, they would revive The Pardon.

My first new play for the New Rose Theatre was The Half-Life Conspiracy, which remains my favorite play today. It is bold, reckless and highly theatrical. A reviewer called it “a taut and explosive comic drama that balances amusing soap-opera situations with serious reflections about maleness and aggression.” Another said the play reminds us “how good this Portland writer’s plays can be.” Steve Smith, my first director in Portland, was cast to play the lead.

The Half-Life Conspiracy was my Carol play, my way of coming to grips with losing my soul mate when she became a lesbian. In my story, an alcoholic TV writer and sometimes playwright wins a one-act play contest in Portland and flies up from Hollywood for the production. His play is an angry black comedy about a man whose wife leaves him for another woman. In Portland the playwright discovers that his winning play is being directed by his ex-wife, who also left him for another woman. In my play, as opposed to the play of my protagonist, the writer and ex-wife manage to make their peace. It was as if I wrote the resolution with Carol that should have happened in real life.

A central theme in The Half-Life Conspiracy is the incredible fragility of human existence. Olson, the TV writer, explains it this way:

OLSON: I have a theory. Behold the stars!, twinkling happily away. More than we can see in L.A., as a matter of fact.
WILLOW: Aren't they lovely?
OLSON: They don't exist.
WILLOW: Well, I certainly see them up there.
OLSON: They are not shining. Poof!, the stars have vanished, to the twinkle. However: since, to toast dear Albert once again, since their little twinkles take so long to get to our own untwinkling hunk of hot rock, we don't know they're dead yet. So here we are, writing love songs and poetry and fascist ballot measures in a universe that no longer exists. Cheers.
WILLOW: I see what you mean — some cosmic explosion may already have happened, for all we know.
OLSON: Precisely! In fact, there are no more stars anywhere, in any firmament. All gone! And like you say, we won't find out that cosmic fact for thousands of years. Or until tomorrow.
WILLOW: That's very pessimistic.
OLSON: On the contrary, I toast stars that don't exist! I'd say there's a bit of good will there.

The same conceit informs Olson’s curtain line that ends the play: “And it came to pass that all the stars in the firmament had ceased to shine. But how was anyone to know?” A cosmic explosion may have ended human life on this planet forever – but we haven’t gotten the news yet. Reason enough to live every day as your last.

I was on a roll. O’Brien commissioned a play from me for the new season, a play based on the life of Moliere. As part of my challenge, I could use only four actors – and he told me who they would be. This was playwriting the way it should be done – the way it had been done by Shakespeare and Chekhov and Moliere himself – in residency at a theater company, working with actors with whose work I became more and more familiar. I started research for the new project.

Meanwhile my grant money was beginning to run out. I was getting nervous about my future income sources – and lack thereof. Linda and I couldn’t live on the royalties from one play a year at the New Rose, and I was learning that a second production was more difficult to get than a first. I did have an ace in the hole, going to work for Shaw, but this was always a card I refused to play until I had nothing else left in the deck.

Then the gods sang their serendipitous song again. At least I thought that’s what they were singing. I missed the undertone that was crying, Danger, watch out!

Crooks had started a new business venture, and he wanted Linda and me to come to Bend to help him maintain it through the winter. He wanted us to housesit a resort he was building for skiers at nearby Mt. Bachelor. He offered free rent. I’d have a lot of time to write. It looked perfect.

So Linda and I packed up and headed for central Oregon. By the time we arrived, Crooks had changed the game plan.

Half the rooms in the sprawling project were livable, the hot tub and sauna were functional – why let them sit idle all winter? Linda and I learned we wouldn’t be housesitting, after all, we’d be managing a motel. When Crooks saw the expression on my face at the news, he told us we’d be getting a salary and free rent, of course. And it shouldn’t be all that much work.

This wasn’t the deal I’d left Portland for but we had little choice but to go along with it. We’d already given up our apartment and money was tight. I had my commission, of course, and some grant money left. But we’d need money for relocating again once the winter was over. An income in Bend would be helpful, so we decided to give it a try.

It ended up we could live on our manager’s salary. Feeling secure, I went out and did a financially reckless thing. I spent most of our money buying Linda a small piano.

She was overwhelmed – so overwhelmed, I learned later, that she felt pressured to put the piano to productive use and became frightened by it. I hadn’t meant to pressure her about anything. I thought she was a brilliant song writer, even though I’d written no play needing songs since Country Northwestern. A song writer needed a piano as much as a writer needed a typewriter. Besides, I had a new play in mind, one other than the commissioned work about Moliere, and it would need a song.

Despite our managerial duties, I got a lot of writing done in Bend. I finished my research on Moliere and began the first draft of the play. I finished the other new play I’d been working on, called Song of the Salmon, for which Linda wrote a fine song about the life cycle of the salmon (“You want me to write a song about a fish?” I remember her asking in disbelief when I gave her the assignment). And, out of nowhere, came an entirely different story, one that would go on to become the play for which I am best known.

6/04/2003 06:26:00 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