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.

Posts from past seven days. For others, see archives (below).

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A guide to publishers and publishing services for serious writers, including info on scam agents.

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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!

Links:

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 14, 2004

While listening to the Mariners walk in runs ...
Late afternoon, with the laptop, listening to the Mariners-Yankees game, just starting -- and already the M's are threatening, in this their dismal start of 2004. We have tickets for a Tues. day game in July against the Red Sox -- and paid for good seats, lower level near third base. Maybe we can break the jinx -- every time we go up to Seattle for a game, the M's lose.

Mariners 1-0, top of 1st.

Been in not-quite-a-funk but definitely not at full speed for a couple weeks now, a kind of premature end-of-term exhaustion. All I can do to keep ahead of my students in reading their scripts. But not long now -- and a long summer ahead! I have 3 summer projects to finish: first, the textbook I'm under contract to write; two, the draft of the novel, PATRIOTS; and three, the draft or even final libretto of VARMINTS.

I still haven't found time to go through all the midi files of DARK MISSION with the piano score in hand. My reading load is light this weekend -- maybe I can get that done, esp since the forecast is rain, which means no lawn work. With rain coming, I did some of that this afternoon. But I am eager to take the two hours to go through it. I should be able to do it this weekend unless something comes up.

This machine is great -- just checked battery level (4 AAs) and it's still at 95% capacity after over a year's use! One of the best features of this laptop, an AlphaSmart 3000. I love it! I definitely prefer it to machines costing 10x as much. Of course, all this does is write. Which is all I need it for.

Eager to finish PATRIOTS so I can move on to KEROUAC'S SCROLL, which I keep thinking about. It will be the most personal thing I've written since the memoir. Wonder what my students will say about all the dirty laundry in the memoir (if they happen across it). I best like the way I relate the personal life with relevant parts of my work, a good map of the life-art relationship, at least the way it has worked for me.

Well, the Yankees are coming back with a vengeance in bottom of 1st.

I miss the hell out of Dick and Ger. No one has replaced them, which means I have no breakfast partner, no bullshit buddy, nobody with whom I've shared a ton of history so we can communicate in code. Makes it a lot lonelier out here than it was when they were around. As I sometimes tell people, I've reached the age when my best friend is my dog. Hell, I've even started talking to him!

Meche just walked in the tying run. Great.

Meche just walked in the go-ahead run. Really great.

Meche just walked in his 3rd run ... and is being taken out. What a start. Today's paper had an article about how well Meche pitches against the Yankees. Yuk yuk.

Hey, a very fine jazz singer in town is singing one of my songs during her current gig. She ran into me and told me so -- it's a song I wrote for a short play (just the lyrics actually). I'm catching her gig later this month, will be fun to hear it.

Other than John, I've been working with two other composers but both have not been producing. One is in a very long funk and writer's block, and the other cites all kinds of computer troubles and business obligations. Just as well, I'm busy enough anyway. And the projects interest me less than working with John. John's the man! I think we have the possibility of doing something really extraordinary together. DM isn't it -- but it's a damn good start and shows us we work well together. When I say extraordinary, I mean just that, world class extraordinary. We'll see! (Too bad I'm not 30 yrs younger).

I'm going to see the new movie Troy just because I've read Homer recently, even though it doesn't stay close to the text. But one reviewer, who liked it a lot, argued that despite the liberties taken with Homer, it retained the important themes. I almost went today. Maybe soon.

The Univ magazine gave a nice blurb about my recent novel, LOVE AT GROUND ZERO, which otherwise has been universally ignored. I'm going to read it soon, from distance for the first time, and see what I think of it. I expect to like it a lot but we'll see. Sometimes I read things from a distance and am almost embarrassed to have written them. But I also can be amazed I wrote it -- am I really that good? Who the hell knows how "taste" works?

4th inning, by Zeus the M's have tied it! ... And take the lead! ... and add a run! 5-3, as we go to the Yankee 4th.

I don't believe this ... M's walked in their 4th run of the game. Amazing.

So it's 5-5 even though the M's have outhit the Y's 11-3. Typical of this year so far.

Well, end of rambling. Later.

5/14/2004 06:16:00 PM | 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