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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References

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Finalist, Oregon Book Award

Practical Screenwriting

Love At Ground Zero

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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.

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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)

Monday, June 16, 2003

Watering holes
[from a memoir in progress, which began on 4/13/03]
Throughout this time – working for Shaw, managing apartments, writing for Northwest Magazine, helping to create Oregon Business Magazine, getting plays produced and screenplays optioned, being in a brief relationship with one woman or another – I was drinking. I was drinking every day. From the summer of 1960 to the summer of 1993, I don’t believe there was a single day in which I didn’t drink at least three beers. I didn’t even consider drinking a six-pack a day drinking. It’s what I did when I wasn’t drinking because when I wanted to drink, I did – until the bars closed or I passed out, whichever came first. Most often it was the former.

From the time I moved back to Portland after leaving Carol to the day I entered the V.A. Treatment Center, I did most of my drinking at two watering holes in northwest Portland. One was a tavern called Nobby’s Bar & Grill, which is the only establishment in the neighborhood that hasn’t changed much in the past twenty-plus years. The other was a bar-restaurant that no longer exists, called Seafood Mama’s.

Here was my living room, den and kitchen for over ten years. I stopped by each bar every day. I knew everyone, and everyone knew me. I was friends with the owners. Most of the women I slept with I met at one bar or the other. My social life, such as it was, existed totally within the circle of regular customers who also hung out at Nobby’s and/or Seafood’s. This was my community, my extended family.

On holidays, like Thanksgiving, Greg at Nobby’s sometimes would host an open house for the regulars and anyone else in the neighborhood who didn’t have anywhere to go for turkey. Now and again I would help out, contributing oyster dressing or shrimp aspic to the sprawling food tables. These were large neighborhood affairs since there were many of us who had nowhere else to go.

Jack at Seafood’s built a magnificent patio behind the restaurant, beautifully designed with gardens and a pond, and in the four or five months a year when Oregon weather invited outside activity, the patio was a popular place to hang out.

I spent far more time at Nobby’s or Seafood Mama’s than I did in my apartment. I used my apartment for writing in the morning and for sleeping at night, but whatever social activity I did, I did in one of my two favorite watering holes. Sometimes, especially if finances were tight, I’d drink at home first before wandering into a bar. Near the end of my drinking life, I’d drink at home because I preferred to be alone.

There were many other drinking establishments in the neighborhood, and I stopped by most of them regularly. The Gypsy was the place to go if you wanted a drink at seven in the morning. When there wasn’t a writing deadline hovering over me, often I did. In fact, I preferred morning drinking to night drinking, partly because I’m a morning person by nature but also because there was something more demonstrative and unacceptable about being able to party when all the other poor slobs were dragging themselves to work. Since I made most of my income on a per-project basis most of the time, I had great flexibility in scheduling my days and weeks, leaving lots of time to hang out in bars. I was a binge drinker, carefully picking my party times between deadlines.

If you stood at the bar at the Gypsy at seven in the morning, or even better downtown at Kelly’s, you would see a surprising flow of upstanding citizens come in for a drink or two before going to the office. I saw judges, lawyers, CEOs, politicians and others belly up beside me at the bar on such occasions, the kind of people whose photographs got in the paper. Down the hatch, and they were off to become their admired responsible selves.

6/16/2003 07:22:00 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