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)

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Letter to a Dead Soul Brother
Hey, Richard. Been a while since I've checked in with you in the nether world. Of course, I talk to you in my head often, especially when cruising or having a solo breakfast at Nobby's or some other spot we used to go to. I can't believe it's been five years since you left us.

I'm sure you want to know how your sons are doing. Brad calls every week or so, which I appreciate. Amazingly enough, he's kept your mortgage business afloat, though now and again he takes a second job when things are slow. Last summer he really enjoyed house painting -- liked seeing the evidence of a day's work -- and he might do the same again this summer. Kass is in Moscow now, sharing an apartment with Tim and doing music together. He relapsed after the very spendy treatment program that Bev paid for but he's again on track, hopefully, and finally he left Newport where all his drug cronies are. I'll be visiting them, and your mom, this summer. Your mom had a close call with the flu earlier but got through it. She's an amazing warrior.

I won't even get into politics and the state of the world. Even with your cynicism about politics, you wouldn't believe the shit coming down.

News on my end is headed by a new writing passion, opera libretti, writing them for a young (31) composer I met on the Internet. We work very well together, and his music really speaks to me. This is the best collaboration I've had since working with Steve Smith early in my playwriting career. Although I took an opera course as an undergrad at UCLA, that was 40 years ago, so I'm reading and listening to taped lectures, refreshing what I used to know, learning more, and generally trying to become more opera-literate than I am. Writing a libretto is a very different kind of writing but I enjoy it -- it shares the kind of rhetorical simplicity that screenwriting has. The music is really the subtext.

In the fall, I hope to begin a novel about us! Was bound to happen ha ha. Here's the premise: you live longer than you did, and this summer we decide to take a road trip across the country together to see the Kerouac scroll, which is touring the country. So on one level it's an old man's On the Road. Along the way, we tell stories to amuse ourselves ... on another level, it's a Canterbury Tales. Later we pick up a hitchhiker, a young Gothic lady, the epitome of a generation far distant from ours, and so on another level we have a generational conflict story. Moreover, each of us carries a secret: you have the cancer you ended up with, and I have a secret about my estranged daughter, which gets resolved after we see the scroll on the east coast. On the return trip, you will die, and I will collect your sons and spread your ashes at White Bird, just as we did. My working title is KEROUAC'S SCROLL.

Not much else to report. I'm getting social security now -- they should start it at 21! ha ha -- and who knows how long will pass before I join you. I can imagine living till 70 but it's real hard for me to imagine making it till 75, so I figure at best I have a decade left, no much considering how quickly these 5 yrs since your departure have passed ... I have fun, as long as I ignore the state of the world. I think we may be beginning the process that later historians will cal the end of western civilization. I think the civilizing process plants the seeds of a culture's own destruction: that is, we learn to hate to kill. Consequently when we encounter someone like the present Kamikazes of Kingdom Come, folks who love to become martyrs as long as they take infidels with them, folks who like to behead the enemy and desecrate bodies, well, we can't match their enthusiasm for destruction. In the long run, I think the "barbarians" win. So I think in fifty years, we may well have entered a new Dark Ages. The unknown and important quantity here are the Chinese. They are industrializing like crazy and now are our major competitors for oil (my o my, if only we had learned our lesson in the 60s and kicked our addiction to foreign oil) ... they should rule the roost soon enough, and it's hard to know what that will be like.

But I said I wasn't going to discuss politics. I try to think as little as possible about it since it's so damn depressing. It won't be hard to leave this world with regard to that. I'll miss the little personal things, and my work, not the rest.

Anyway, that's the report. Give my regards to the angels. C.

5/19/2004 08:44:00 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