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

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)

Friday, May 21, 2004

Holywood
This new novel by Michael Hollister is set in Hollywood in the 1930s and early 1940s, the first of a trilogy of novels that together (according to the blurb) depict a social history of Hollywood. Here the story focuses on two couples: Sarah, an Oregon farm girl who follows her boyfriend to Southern California after he goes there looking for work during the depression; and Eisley, a wanna-be actor turned screenwriter turned director, who falls in love with and marries a wanna-be actress. Both relationships end in heartache or tragedy, and there is a hint that Sarah and Eisley (both single parents by then) may be getting together in the next volume of the trilogy.

Holywood has great strengths. Indeed, the only thing that doesn't work for me is the novel's ending. Hollister masterfully creates a sense of time and place here, and Sarah and Eisley are characters we care about, as are their mates. The book is filled with strong scenes and strong writing. Given the subject matter, I was not surprised to find considerable satire of LaLaLand. Here is Eisley pitching an idea for a biopic based on the Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards:

"Now after the wedding," said Devlin [a producer], "we need a scene with his wife that gives him some juice. You know what I mean, old boy. They had three nippers, now didn't they. Give us a bit of juice here."

"You mean just make something up?"

Annie got up for another drink.

"Maybe his wife is shy." Devlin sucked his cigarette and blew. "You know, the bloke is frustrated sexually. They're puritans, aren't they. So we have this montage of conversion orgies. All that rolling in the aisles, you know. Lots of camera angles, inter-cuts and zoom close-ups. Bloomers and petticoats. Young girls squirming around on the floors of churches all over New England. Same as the witch trials. Like an orgy, really. Edwards had to fancy these sexually deprived girls just a bit, now didn't he, mate. Close-ups of his face in torment. Maybe he molests one."

"Jonathan Edwards?"

Hollister is especially good at describing rituals no longer common in everyday life, like a taffy pull:

Walt Ferguson and other men joined in with buttered hands and together they stretched the taffy into a sticky thick yellow snake. They pulled it through the kitchen and out into the parlor, then the women helped Nelly Ferguson and the oldest kids to grab ahold and some kids yelled and screamed and shook their hands and everybody laughed with them. The taffy cooled as it thinned out. When it cooled enough, by the time they reached the living room, mothers helped the smaller tots to grasp the tail of the candy. Davin trembled with anticipation as Sarah took the end and helped him get a buttery grip on it. Now everybody pulled together. Everybody leaned back gently and pulled in a tug of peace between generations that united them by extending sweetness, kids squealing in excitement and adults calling out. All of them pulling together with care stretched it looping into the front room and all the way to the entry without breaking their connection.

What disappoints me about the ending of this novel is its jarring shift of focus. After Pearl Harbor, everything naturally changes. But our story changes so much that we follow Burke, Sarah's estranged husband by now, to the front and Hollister gives us a long chapter that belongs in a war novel. Meanwhile Eisley is shoved into the background. This departure of focus from Hollywood and the home front reshapes the novel at the very moment when attention to "Holywood" should be most intense as the novel delivers its closing images and meanings. Consequently the novel's final two chapters disappointed me, and if I had been Hollister's editor, I would have urged him to end Sarah's story with her train ride back to L.A. after visiting her child in Oregon (cared for by her parents during the war), and add a closing chapter focusing on Eisley.

But this is a small complaint given the many strengths of this novel. I look forward to the rest of the trilogy.

Here is the official blurb:

Love, patriotism, moviemaking and the influence of popular culture on religion during WWII. Spirituality in Hollywood when the stars were bright. An idealistic farm girl from Oregon follows her boyfriend to Los Angeles and copes with challenges of both family and career when he goes to war. A young man from Ohio loses his first love while rising from gas pump attendant to movie director at the Fox studio through his relationships with actresses, in particular star Bette Davis. His work includes a comical biopic of theologian Jonathan Edwards and adaptations of classics--Wieland, Modern Chivalry and "Rappaccini's Daughter." His adventures take him to a brothel of imitation stars and to an orgy hosted by horror actor Lionel Atwill. Hollywood parties reflect the decadence of Europe while American lives converge to an inspirational ending. Stars in uniform appear at a huge reception to honor troops as the nation rallies after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the horrific battle of Tarawa, evoking a spirit of personal sacrifice, a time when Americans felt more united as a nation than at any time since. First in a trilogy about Hollywood social history, to include Follywood (2004) and Hollyworld (2005).

Purchasing info about Holywood

5/21/2004 03:27:00 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