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 25, 2003

Sobriety
[from a memoir in progress, which started on 4/13/03]
I loved sobriety. I loved waking up without a hangover. I loved how much better I felt physically and mentally. For a long time, I still missed a few things about drinking, especially its ability to distract myself from immediate stress, but one thing I didn’t miss was hanging out with my drinking buddies. Even what I missed about drinking was its private moments, not its social ones.

Dick Crooks’ adventure in sobriety was very different from mine. Dick behaved as if he hated sobriety. He said he loved it – but he was always grouchy and on edge about something. Drinking, he could be positive to a fault, but sober he became someone who would find something wrong with everything. He had loved jazz and blues all his life but went as cold turkey on music as he did on booze. He couldn’t listen to Billie Holiday or anyone else without it bringing along memories of drinking, and so he stopped listening to the music he loved.

Typical of this change was something he said during our last visit before he was diagnosed with cancer, passing away very quickly after that. We were driving somewhere or another and were stopped at a traffic light. A middle-aged man was crossing the street. There was nothing particularly noticeable about him that I could see. But Dick suddenly observed, “Look at that asshole. Who the fuck does he think he is? Jesus Christ. This fucking world, man.”

When I asked him what he meant, he either didn’t hear me or chose not to expound on the subject. I let it rest. But this was typical of his change in attitude, from a man who frequently laughed, who could crack a joke under the most stressful circumstances, to someone who verbally attacked strangers passing in front of his car.

Since Dick lived such a short time sober, I’ve often wondered if sobriety was even a gift to him at all. Then I remember what he told me about his last days of drinking, alone in his apartment, buying cheap wine because it’s all he could afford – this wasn’t much of a life either. I just wish he could have experienced more of the joy of sobriety.

As I write this, I am one month and two days away from ten years of sobriety. I don’t make a big deal of milestones like this because I know how fragile sobriety is. I hope I never forget. In treatment, I met a woman who had relapsed after almost eleven years of sobriety. She had remarried and built a new life. No one knew about her life as a drunk, except from her stories. They had never witnessed it.

One night, to celebrate something special, she had a single glass of wine with her husband at dinner. She turned down a second glass and didn’t miss it. This worked so well that she began to have a glass of wine with dinner more often. After a week without problems, she allowed herself to have a second glass of wine with dinner. This was all it took. Within a month, she was drinking a fifth of vodka a day again.

I hope I never forget the conversations I had with this woman. I hope I never forget the awe in her voice as she told her story, as if she had become possessed by some demon greater than herself. This is the sense in which the alcoholic becomes powerless over alcohol.

At the same time, I must go back to what I learned from my reading in the medical library. There are abusers of alcohol who have learned to drink responsibly. There is always the danger, therefore, of anyone aware of these studies deciding that s/he, too, is the exception.

Since I was a binge drinker, since I most enjoyed drinking when I was drinking to excess, I do not believe that I am one of those people who will ever enjoy a glass of wine with dinner. I assume alcohol is out of my life forever, and I remind myself of this as often as necessary.

6/25/2003 06:48:00 AM | 0 comments

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Sketch says, "Happiness is sunshine and a bone."

__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