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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The Sextant Press

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Electronic screenwriting tutorial

References

Bookstore
Highlights:

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,
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The Writing Life II

(Posts archived here are from 01/10/03 - 10/31/06)

Thursday, July 03, 2003

The Teacher
[from a memoir in progress, which began on 4/13/03]
When I became sober, I decided to remove as much stress as possible from my life. This meant giving up the writing life as I had been practicing it because much of my income came from freelance assignments, which is about as stressful employment as one can have. I decided to return to the more secure employment of teaching.

This was not an easy decision. Teaching has both advantages and disadvantages for a writer. I had focused on the disadvantages in my 1969 short story “The Teacher,” which had appeared in The Colorado Quarterly. The story ends this way:

Is gloom a consequence of power, the power I have at the precise moment I hold their collective attention? Their faces are more alert than mine for the weary hour. Even where the class's countenance is fatigued, it is expectant enough to reveal the waiting, the waiting for me to begin. And what, in God's name, do they expect me to say?

There is an irony in this question--one of your cherished absurdities--that brings a smile to my lips. Immediately the class breathes more easily. In my hesitation to begin, they had read an unannounced quiz and now they know they are safe. I glance outside through the window, to the lawn crossed with lengthening shadows. With what acceleration does that shadow creep across the lawn? A problem to put away for later, I note. Nothing so serious now. The mood of the hour, born in the class's visible sigh of relief, no quiz, is too relaxed to violate with talk of physical phenomena. I must work them into it. And so I ask, "Who's going to win the game this week?" to which the reply is unanimous, "We are" Then for as long as I am able, I ride with them, letting them carry me through the seconds of this closing hour even as they approach their own destinies, which will take them so far from where they sit today. I tell a joke and they laugh, laugh heartily, and their gaiety soothes me. There will be time later to talk about physics. We'll need to soon enough, for I'll have walked into the spider web again, that web of gloom, and while in it I will ask myself what it is that I am doing there, standing up before their young minds and young bodies; what is it that I am expected to do?

The inquiry will be brief. With a shrug I'll step to the blackboard, draw a trajectory, begin an equation and hear behind me the scratching sound of pens on paper. At which time, in the words you prefer, the lesson begins.

I hadn’t taught since the University of Oregon days except for occasional workshops at summer writing conferences like Fishtrap in eastern Oregon and Moonfish on the Oregon coast. I often had enjoyed teaching but also knew it took energy away from my own writing. A writing teacher also spends too much time reading bad writing instead of good writing. At the same time, I’d had some memorable experiences in the classroom.

One term at the University of Oregon I had a dozen Black Panthers in my English Composition class. They marched into the room in military formation, stood at attention beside their desks in black jackets and berets, then sat quickly down on command. They were a formidable bunch.

During a discussion one class session, a young woman said something that upset one of the Panthers. He blurted out, “Do you really believe that mother-fucking bullshit?” The class fell into a tense hush. Everyone stared at me, waiting to see what I would do. I calmly asked the woman, “Did you understand the question?” “I don’t think so,” she said, her voice cracking. The Panther yelled, “What you said is mother-fucking bullshit!” As calmly as I could, I said to the woman, “He asked if you really believe that mother-fucking bullshit.”

The class’ collective sigh was almost audible. I’d said the m-f word! Suddenly everyone wanted to say it. Hands shot up, and everyone I called on had to use the m-f word. Now it was my turn to be shocked. I steered the discussion to what had just happened, and we talked about the magic of language and obscenity. It was a good discussion.

Months later, I was called into the department office by the Chair of the English Department. He informed me that charges of moral turpitude were pending against me. All I could imagine is that some coed said I had raped her or something. The Chair said I was accused of saying “mother-fucking bullshit” in the classroom. It took me a moment to remember the Panthers and the incident. When I did, I explained the whole story.

It turns out one of the young woman in class that day later had used the m-f word in front of her mother. When her mother asked where she’d learned to talk like that, the student said, “Mr. Deemer says it in English class.” I got away with a slap on the wrist and a promise to be more careful in the future.

Harriet used her influence to get me my first teaching job after getting out of treatment, an English Composition course at Clark College. I didn’t like it much but it beat the alternatives.

When I got on the Internet in the early 1990s, I soon realized that here was a perfect vehicle for distance education. I put together an online college screenwriting class and then looked for an institution to sponsor it and give it accreditation.

I approached every college I could think of. No one was ready yet to approve of an online college screenwriting class. Most institutions told me they were studying the entire online education issue in various committees.

One afternoon I was having coffee with an old buddy from graduate school, who was in town on business from Eastern Oregon College in La Grande. When I bitched about my failure to find a home for my online class, he told me to contact the Distance Education people at Eastern. He was optimistic that they might be interested.

I sent an email to the D.E. head. The same day I got a reply that they, indeed, were very interested in my screenwriting class. Could I teach it on the World Wide Web? Of course, I replied. In less than two weeks, I was in business. I started teaching screenwriting online for Eastern Oregon College.

A year or two later, another blessing dropped into my lap. Portland State University was beginning a new Masters degree program in professional writing and were looking for a screenwriter to become part of the program. A faculty member knew about my screenwriting website and recommended contacting me to see if I were interested. I was. I began teaching undergraduate and graduate screenwriting classes at P.S.U.

An online writing workshop website went online about the same time, called Writers on the Web. I contacted them about teaching online screenwriting workshops. They were interested, and I signed up with them as well.

On the Internet, the London Screenwriting Workshop calls me the pioneer online screenwriting teacher, and I suppose I was. I still do it, and I probably will do it after I retire at P.S.U., online teaching being more flexible and therefore the last educational activity I will drop.

I like teaching screenwriting better than any other subject I’ve taught. Screenwriting is more about storytelling than writing, and storytelling is largely about dramatic structure – and dramatic structure is something that can be taught. Screenwriting, being so much about storytelling strategy, lends itself to brainstorming and collaboration, natural activities in the classroom. The close study of films reveals most principles of good (and bad) storytelling, another activity that lends itself to classroom use.

I’ve enjoyed teaching screenwriting at Portland State more than I thought I would. But interestingly enough, I believe I come to know my online students better than my “live” students at the university. I believe this is because I spend more time in one-on-one dialogue with them, albeit via email. I may not know what they look like or recognize the sound of their voice but I better learn how their minds work.

I expect to retire from Portland State before I retire from online teaching, which is more flexible. In fact, I have a fantasy: traveling and camping while I am teaching online, stopping by a cyber café every few days to catch up, then hitting the road again, teaching on the go. It is perfectly doable.

I’m had some excellent students along the way. The students, of course, are the major reward of teaching. What makes screenwriting unusual is that the best students can come from surprising backgrounds – and those having trouble can be the ones who expected most to succeed. Good fiction writers in particular can have trouble with screenwriting, where their rhetorical talent for description becomes a fault, not an advantage. They must learn to write more simply and more generally, writing a blueprint for a movie, not a literary document. They are not used to either the collaborative nature of screenwriting or its “junior high” level of language.

Some of my students have optioned the scripts they wrote for me in class or won prizes with them in screenwriting competitions. Others have gone on to become filmmakers. Others simply have kept in contact. I was pleased to recommend one former student for my online teaching position at Eastern Oregon University (formerly College) when I decided to retire from it – and even more pleased when she got the job.

Although I’m at the age where I can retire at any time, I expect I’ll continue teaching for as long as I enjoy it. The classroom, in fact, has become my primary social arena.

7/03/2003 06:28:00 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