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)

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

New York
[from a memoir in progress, which began on 4/13/03]
Late in my career, over 20 years after I’d received my M.F.A. in playwriting, I decided to try once again to get my plays produced in the Big Apple. Very early in my career, you may remember, I had a New York producer interested in my political play, My Town, Your Town. But only a few years later, marketing from nearby Chesapeake, I couldn’t get anyone to give me the time of day.

When the first version of my play about Moliere, The Comedian In Spite Of Himself, opened at the New Rose Theatre in 1984, a New York actress in town to teach a workshop saw it and loved it. She asked the theater for a copy of the script, which she sent and recommended to her old friend … Hal Prince. I later received a letter from Prince, who called the play “first rate work” before saying he was already committed to a project that would take several years of his focus (this turned out to be Phantom of the Opera). His and the actress’ enthusiasm didn’t find the play a producer, however. A decade later I revised this three-act play into the two-act Sad Laughter, which remains a favorite of mine.

In the mid-1990s I found a New York director interested in my new play, Who Forgives? He had a small theater in SoHo. After putting the script through a few staged readings, and after a few rewrites from me, he decided to produce the play.

In rehearsal, he decided the script was lacking an important moment. The play is the story of Ed, a recovering sex offender, and the director decided we needed to see a flashback of Ed’s seduction of a young girl. This scene, played in the nude, would be very powerful.

I was communicating with the director by phone from Oregon and was shocked at his request for such a scene. The challenge of the play, it seemed to me, was to get the audience on Ed’s side, to make a pedophile sympathetic, not for his deeds but for the possibility of his recovery. I was creating Ed as Everyman, as the play’s closing monologue suggests:

ED: My name's Ed, and I'm a perp.
Cynthia once told me that the whole human race belongs in recovery. I think she has a point. Take denial, for example. The denial that people like me are, in so many ways, just like you.
Last week, when you looked out your kitchen window, that was me mowing the lawn next door. You waved, and I waved back.
Sometimes I bag your groceries at the supermarket. You tell me how your kids are doing in school. You tell me that corny joke you heard earlier in the week.

One summer I coached your boy's Little League team. Over the years, I taught both your daughters how to swim.
I've done many things in my life that I'm proud of. I won a Bronze Star on the battlefield. I was chosen Entrepreneur of the Year. Last Sunday I sang a solo in the church choir. Of course, I've also done things that horrify me. That's why "change" is the most important word in my vocabulary. "Change" is the first thing on my mind in the morning and the last thing on my mind at night. I don't expect you to understand me. I don't expect you to forgive me. I expect you to believe me when I say I'm in recovery, that I'm changing.
My name's Ed, and I'm a perp. Thanks for calling on me. Keep coming back.

But I don’t let too much optimism compromise the moral horror of Ed’s crime. One of his victims, now a hooker, gets the last word:

(LAUGHTER in the darkness: LIGHTS UP on Heather, the hooker.)

HEATHER: Keep coming back! You got that right, Mr. Music Man — the johns always come back!

(Ed looks at her in horror.)

HEATHER: Anybody want a date? Keep coming back!

(The THEME plays, rising. and BLACKOUT. The play is over.)

This is a difficult play, and my task was tricky enough to do without showing the audience a nude scene of child molestation! I refused to write the scene.

A power struggled ensued. The director refused to direct the play without the new scene. I refused to write it. Subsequently I withdrew the play entirely when it was clear to me that he wasn’t going to back down. It was like resigning before I got fired. I left with my head held high, but this experience didn’t endear me to New York.

Only a few years ago another company, The Theater Studio, accepted two of my scripts for their “script bank” from which directors chose new work to showcase. I was told it was an honor to have a script accepted into this program – and I had two, Bedrooms & Bars and Famililly, now available to directors looking for new work. It became quickly clear, however, that the club into which I was being admitted was closely knit. If I wanted anything to happen with these scripts, I should be in New York myself, perhaps even directing the plays myself. At this point in my life, I did not have the energy to move.

In fact, I decided to do the opposite – to retire as a playwright. The need to be in New York was abundantly clear now, and I should have gone there decades ago if I were serious about a playwriting career. I didn’t have the energy to deal with New York at my age.
In fact, I also didn’t have much interest in collaboration any more. Most of my creative life I’d been working in collaboration with directors and actors. What an audience sees in a play has more to do with the actors than with the playwright – look at the example of an amateur production of Shakespeare if you don’t believe this. I remembered a demonstration I’d seen once when skilled actors performed the local telephone book. They could turn the telephone book into any genre you wanted, from comedy to tragedy. What does this say about the relationship of the audience to the playwright (as opposed to its relationship with the actors)?

I’d begun my writing career in fiction, where no interpreter stood between the work and the audience. I decided to retire from playwriting and return to fiction.

6/11/2003 06:08:00 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