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)

Sunday, June 08, 2003

"Ruth"
[from a memoir in progress, which began on 4/13/03]
“Ruth” was an actress who loved the new form of theater as much as I did. Acting in hyperdrama requires the ability to move from script to improvisation and back to script again at a moment’s notice, depending on the context of how a scene plays out. It’s not for everyone. Indeed, in every rehearsal of every hyperdrama I’ve been associated with, at least one actor has dropped out, unable to handle the special pressure.

But Ruth loved the challenge. She was in both Chateau de Mort and Bateau de Mort, and I cast her in a new hyperdrama I was writing, directing and producing myself called Cocktail Suite. I was trying out a new story strategy with this hyperdrama, three self-contained plays running simultaneously in a restaurant-bar environment, in which major characters in each play became minor characters in one of the other plays – but now the audience had the option of staying seated to watch either of three plays, rather than following actors around the performance space. I was trying to make hyperdrama a tad more traditional in order to educate the audience about the new form slowly.

Each of the three plays in Cocktail Suite was different in genre and tone. I cast Ruth, who also was a singer, in what was essentially a two-character romantic musical about a social worker and a homeless man. Playing the homeless man was a regular at one of my watering holes, a man with a lot of community theater experience, who hadn’t been in a play for a while. I more or less brought him out of retirement. They made a good pair, and this play became the most popular of the three.

Midway through rehearsal, however, a problem surfaced. Ruth came to me and said that “Carl,” as I’ll call him, was contacting her at home, asking her out, and generally harassing her. I went to Carl about it, and he confessed he was falling in love with her. Oh, my. Just the kind of problem an overworked director/producer needed a few weeks before opening night.

The tension between them was disastrous because now they couldn’t convincingly play the love scenes together. I worked overtime with them but without progress. Carl was in love with Ruth, and Ruth wanted nothing to do with him. Since Ruth was the more experienced actor, and she was the one looking most awkward in the romantic scenes, I concentrated on changing her attitude. I took time to spend with her alone, talking about the actor’s craft and the difference between art and life.

The gods are humorists. Unknown to me, Ruth had a great crush on me. Since I had no woman in my life at this time, I was receptive when Ruth made it clear she was interested in me. Suddenly Ruth and I became an item – and the hyperdrama hadn’t even opened yet! Now I had to tell Carl what was going on. He was heartbroken – the director had stolen his girl!

It was a big mess about to get bigger after Cocktail Suite closed. Not since marrying Dee in Reno did I make such a bad impulsive decision. Ruth, it turned out, was much like her character in the play, a “social worker,” a woman who decided that I was a playwright with a drinking problem and she was just the one who could save me from myself. As my wife, she could provide just the kind of support and stability I needed to do better writing than ever.

I have absolutely no memory of who proposed to whom, only a memory of waking up and realizing we were engaged. Amazingly enough, I actually went through with the wedding. We had a ceremony in the courthouse with Crooks standing up as my best man, raised eyebrows and all.

Only a few months later I returned home one afternoon after spending a typical day in my watering holes to find all of my belongings packed in boxes on the front steps. I didn’t need to go in to ask what was going on. Ruth’s experiment to save me from myself had failed. She was giving up on me. Marriage number three ended with all the sudden finality of waking up from a dream.

6/08/2003 11:53:00 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