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)

Thursday, June 19, 2003

"Zeena"
[from a memoir in progress, which began on 4/13/03]
I’ve always wooed women with words. I’m a writer, what else am I supposed to do? In the movie Dead Poets Society, a teacher gets his students interested in poetry by telling them that men study poetry in order to woo women.

I wooed women with letters, even when they lived in the same neighborhood. My letters were full of energy and hyperbole and hope. Sometimes I’d write a poem, which varied in quality from poor to very bad. Most of the time I had the good sense to leave out the poetry, or to include poems written by actual poets, especially E. E. Cummings. How many men have sent women the poem that begins, “somewhere i have never traveled…?” Woody Allen even used this lover’s gesture in a movie.

The letters were always sincere. In the beginning of a relationship, I always believed that all things were possible. I always believed that this one wouldn’t end like the last one. Fooling myself, I had little trouble fooling someone else.

I don’t regret writing any of them. From a certain point of view, they may look naïve and silly, self-delusive and deceitful, manipulative and aggressive. To me they are a sincere expression of how I felt at the time. I own up to every one of them.

However, once I learned my craft, love, lust or infatuation never turned me into a better writer – with one possible exception.

"Zeena" was a regular at Seafood Mama’s. I first noticed her as the companion of a man I’ll call “Harry.” Because it’s not my nature to compete for women, I entertained no fantasy of connecting with her in any romantic way, even though she was tall, thin and very attractive.

The first time we spoke I told her she reminded me of Dorothy Parker. I meant this as a compliment. Zeena, however, confused Dorothy Parker with Dorothy Killgallen and thought I was comparing her to the regular panelist on “What’s My Line,” which she took as an insult. We didn’t talk much after that.

Some time later, after she had stopped going with Harry, I was drunk enough to need a ride home from Seafood’s one night near closing time. Another regular, “Cal,” had a jeep and offered me a lift to the room I rented downtown. We were halfway there before I noticed that Zeena was in the jeep as well.

I assumed that she was heading off with Cal after they dropped me off. To my surprise, Zeena hopped out of the jeep behind me and followed me to the door of my building. She decided she was going to spend the night with me.

I have little recollection of what kind of night it was. I remember waking up with the How did I get so lucky? feeling. Zeena, on the other hand, wasn’t acting as if she’d had such a great time. In fact, I got the impression this was one of those one-night stands she could have lived without.

Normally this would have been enough to discourage me. I’m not sure why I didn’t bid her sayonara on the spot and send her on her way. Instead I invited her out to breakfast at Nobby’s. Before breakfast was over, I’d convinced her to spend the night with me again.

On our second night together, on which I made sure I was sober enough to remember what was happening, I watched Zeena undress. She felt self-conscious and said, “I feel like a character in a John Updike story.” This, of course, was the perfect thing to say to a writer. I was smitten.

We kept seeing one another and kept sleeping together – but I soon learned I wasn’t the only man Zeena shared a bed with. She had a boyfriend I’ll call “Mike” who was considerably younger than either of us (and Zeena was ten years younger than I). As I saw it, I (who didn’t compete for women) suddenly was in competition for Zeena with a young stud.

This went on for months, with Zeena sometimes spending the night with me, sometimes with Mike, but mostly spending the night alone. Mike and I knew about one another, and each of us wanted Zeena to ourselves, but she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, choose between us.

But it’s more complicated than this. The complication is that my relationship with Zeena was developing in a way that broke the usual pattern of my relationships with women in two important ways.

First, the initial connection between us was not in the realm of Eros. Good sex usually initiated my relationships with women, but Zeena and I weren’t clicking in bed with any consistency, which of course made me feel even more threatened by the young stud in her life. Yet it wasn’t Fidelia that was keeping us together either. We were still getting to know one another. What kept me interested in Zeena was – in some mysterious, irrational, magical way – something close to Agape. I felt like I’d known this woman all my life. I felt we had some deeply rooted connection that I couldn’t explain. It was as if we’d been lovers, or mates, or twins, in a previous life.

Probably it was all alcoholic wishful thinking, a delusion raised on insecurity because I found her so attractive but didn’t think she found me attractive. If she did, why was she always running back to Mike?

On a more mundane level, Zeena and I shared opinions on issues about which women usually disagreed with me. She shared my disdain for the culture of victimization and its exaltation of the art of whining. She believed dirty laundry was best kept in the closet out of sight. She didn’t like to be around people who were always feeling sorry for themselves. She looked at the glass as half-full, not half-empty. She had a big heart, befriending and knowing many homeless people by name.

Zeena had two grown sons of which she was very proud. She also had a boy who was being raised by the father’s parents, a situation about which she felt some ambivalence. Should she be raising the boy herself? I once entertained the fantasy that Zeena and I would go to Michigan, pick up her son from his grandparents, and all sail together into a sunset that led to Ireland, where we’d live happily ever after. Fortunately Zeena had better sense than to go along with such a crazy plan.

Even though our relationship was rocky, on one erotic occasion I felt as connected to Zeena as I’ve ever felt to anyone. In the middle of making love, we made eye contact – and there was something so open and fragile and wondrous in Zeena’s expression, as if her eyes were a portal leading me to the very core of her being, that I’ve never forgotten the moment. In memory, it remains a vivid, mysterious image. But I don’t know if this moment was shared and, at any rate, it never happened again.

The second way in which Zeena changed the pattern of my relationships with women was that she inspired me to write in a way I’d never written before. She inspired me to write sonnets.

6/19/2003 02:50:00 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