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)

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

More excerpts
More stuff I likely will use in the anthology:

The Traditional Family: Requiem or Revival?
by David Shetzline
5-10-81
"As Oregonians tighten expectations for the 1980s, is it wise to suspect that the traditional family will reappear? Certainly not. Gone with spruce shakes, backyard windmills, butter churns. And yet ...
"Take Beaver Creek in Lincoln County. Barely 15 miles from its headwaters in old and second-growth timber, this drainage is celebrated locally as watering one of the most picturesque of the coastal valleys. Although only three or four families make a living without drawing wages from their mailbox or working out, a third generation of homesteaders remembers when a dozen times that many folk hand-built their own places and nurtured families of five to seven children who shared chores, raised barns, milked cows and milled timber before resettling to city life in the decades between World War II and the last of Vietnam.
"...Unspoken things are remembered, too. Not because they were embarrassing or disgraceful or tragic. But they are pieces of a family's private traditions. Yet the steelhead still run, the bear peevishly feed on skunk cabbage, the coyote yet howl on the ridges -- if only once or twice a winter -- and new generations move in to build and raise their own families. Has the traditional life already returned with the challenge of self-help, alternative energy, backyard survival gardens, personal and moral reaffirmation?"

So Long, Woody: Woody Guthrie in the Northwest
by Ralph Friedman
5-8-66
"One thing for sure: among the dust bowl Okies, who were his soul kin, he was as much at home as turnips to greens. There was hardly a soul in those ditch weed camps who was second cousin to a dollar, so Woody settled for what the other Okies were eating, and maybe a pair of patched pants or a sweater two sizes too big or a couple of nickels to carry him on his way. Every once in a while our drifting paths would cross, like the smoke of two twig fires sieving through each other.
"Just before I entered the Army I heard Woody singing with The Weavers, the other fellows being Pete Seeger, Lee Hays and Millard Lampell, certainly the most gifted quartet of all folk singers. They were rousing out some of Woody's songs, with him staying mostly in the background, maybe just half a step behind the others, as was his way. A lot of young singers, on their way to the bank, could take a few lessons in humility from the way Woody performed."

The Way to Wounded Knee
by Art Raymond
4-15-73
"American Indian spokesmen, both great and small, have pleaded for action, for results. Talk, talk, talk and the words sound good. The words have sounded good from the BIA from the time of President Jackson to this day. But the talk and the words have not brought the Indian peoples out of the economic doldrums nor the social servitude in which they exist.
"That is why in February, 1973, members of the Indian Movement (AIM) occupied Wounded Knee. Settled in the large rolling foothills of the sacred Black Hills of the Sioux, Wounded Knee is in itself a symbol of the Sioux. Its big hills, and sweeping valleys, marked by tree- and brush-lined streams, stand as a symbol of the Sioux for all time.
"Regardless of the eventual outcome, Wounded Knee will not be brushed aside or forgotten. It will stand forever as a symbol of man's inhumanity to man."

A Boy and His Mitt
by Steve Erickson
9-7-75
"The mitt, the mitt. It is really a glove, but he'll call it a mitt to his grave.
"It is a Wilson Ball Hawk, manufactured only briefly before the company desisted in embarrassment. The two-fingered model confounds even its occasional admirers. On the little finger, which is bigger than the thumb, are the faded instructions, 'two fingers here.'
"The mitt used to have padding, but en route to the major leagues its owner removed it. Deeper pocket. This accentuated the pain from catching line drives, but big-leaguers, he believed then, don't cry.
"It is, incidentally, a righthanded mitt with a southpaw personality. On its wristband the boy emblazoned his initials with a woodburning set."

Bluegrass Is Booming In Oregon
by Charles Denight
7-24-77
"By Sunday morning the lawyers, accountants, musicians, et. al., who made up the bluegrass bands had begun showing beards. There was a relaxed joviality. The group on stage represented a mix of all the bands, and the feeling was fun. Between familiar gospel tunes the singers dropped country jokes and the crowd guffawed.
"The gospel crowd, the kids, the middle-class grown-ups all looked familiar. The scene resurrected memories of years in Southern Illinois, where on a Sunday morning the television dial flipped from a station in Kentucky, to a station in Southeastern Missouri, to one in Southern Illinois and they were all singing gospel tunes. The hair was shorter and the singers older, but the image was the same. Let's twang in the name of the Lord and have a little fun. Those were country people and so were some of these -- and a lot more were trying to get back there, to that togetherness spirit. Perhaps that's where the popularity of this music form is to be found, in the cultural hoopla that accompanies bluegrass. The open smiles, the Howdee greetings, the unamplified music (you can talk with your neighbor during a bluegrass concert) must appeal to a segment of the young and not so young, reviving, perhaps, a friendlier American spirit."

The Theater Workshop: Its Time Has Come
by Charles Deemer
12-17-78
"[Mildred Hughes] and Portland composer Richard Moffatt founded the workshop as a response to the early years of television. 'The talent shows then kept using the same performers over and over. They didn't have anyone else. There was a real need for a training facility and an opportunity to perform on television.'
"...'We thought there wasn't anything we couldn't do,' Ms. Hughes told me. 'We did original musicals, plays and operas on KGW-TV. This was all done live in those days, of course. Sometimes we'd be called in at the last minute to fill in for a program that was cancelled. We had no lack of energy, and we also had the encouragement of Dorothea Lensch, who headed the park bureau. She gave us magnificent support.'
"...The 1950s were a golden age for Portland television for those who would demand of local productions something more ambitious than a talk-show format. For Mildred Hughes and the workshop, original theater on TV was all part of a very busy schedule."

7/28/2004 08:34:00 PM | 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