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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A guide to publishers and publishing services for serious writers, including info on scam agents.

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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)

Sunday, June 01, 2003

Oregon Business Magazine
[from a memoir in progress, which began on 4/13/03]
An Oregon business magazine was the dream of a couple I’ll call “Mitch” and “Betty.” Betty was heir to a lumber fortune. She’d met Mitch at some kind of New Age seminar, at which you paid thousands of dollars in order to get in touch with your Inner Child or something. They married shortly thereafter and looked around for something to do, not because they needed the money (Mitch definitely had married up) but because they wanted to keep themselves busy.

Mitch had read an article in Fortune magazine that regional business magazines were the up-and-coming thing. Oregon didn’t have one. Barbara had done well in her English classes in school and always enjoyed writing. Mitch was a born salesman. When a local magazine went up for sale, they bought it in order to convert it into Oregon’s first business magazine.

The magazine they bought was a worthless assembly of press releases, exaggerated success stories, reborn Christian testimonials, and paeans to free enterprise, all stitched together with clip art, called Business Success News. The magazine was to journalism what one of those lawns filled with flamingos and other exotic plastic figures is to good garden design.

When Mitch and Betty hired me, the notion was that the three of us would be the only staff until we got the new magazine up and running. From the beginning I argued that we needed a fourth permanent staff member, an art director. Eventually I won them over, and we hired a bright young art director named Rob. The four of us then began the process of converting the godawful Business Success News into something entirely different.

From the beginning, Rob and I wanted to change the name of the magazine. Mitch refused to give his approval. He loved the sound of “business success news.” Isn’t that what business was really all about, being successful? Almost two years would pass before Rob and I convinced him that the magazine should be called Oregon Business Magazine. Actually we didn’t convince him at all. Our readers and advertisers did.

Rob and I made a great team. Barbara, to my surprise, ended up being a decent writer, so the three of us produced a magazine focused on and serving the statewide business community while Mitch went out on the road to sell advertising. In no time at all, Rob managed to give the magazine a professional look, cleverly designing a new logo so the “Business” on the magazine cover was paramount and the “Success News” small and almost lost. I convinced Mitch to give me a budget so I could hire some freelance writers to help Barbara and me fill the magazine with solid features and business news. We were on our way.

The magazine grew rapidly in size and began to gain respect. Mitch and Betty graciously shared the magazine’s growth with Rob and me, giving us raises. Soon Rob was able to hire an assistant art director. Mitch hired two more salesmen.

I did many stories for the magazine that I remain proud of. In order to give the magazine a statewide appeal, I convinced Mitch to send me on the road, so all my stories wouldn’t be about business in Portland. I began a series of small town business profiles, going to remote and not-so-remote Oregon towns to interview their business leaders, spending as much as a week away from the office at a time. I did profiles of Salem, Albany, Eugene, Medford, Grants Pass, Ashland, Astoria, Newport, Coos Bay, The Dalles, Pendleton, La Grande, Bend, Redmond.

Once we changed the magazine’s name to Oregon Business Magazine, we became firmly established as one of the important periodicals in the state. I was there from the beginning and contributed significantly to the birth. I interviewed the top C.E.O.s in the region. I am especially proud of an interview I did with the late Oregon governor, Tom McCall. I hired a freelance writer to do the first serious feature on the fledgling Oregon wine industry. I used my knowledge of Russian to advantage in writing a feature on changes in the Oregon fishing industry when fishermen began selling their catch to large Russian motherships.

I was proud of much of this writing – but it also was taking time and energy away from what should have been my primary focus, writing for the stage. The conflict between the commercial writer and the artistic writer grew with each new issue of the magazine. Finally I received a large grant from the Oregon Arts Commission (interestingly enough, for my past work in short fiction, not drama), and I used this income to support a new transition in my life. I resigned from the magazine and decided to see if I could survive as a full-time playwright.

6/01/2003 06:19:00 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