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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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,
new posts are published at

The Writing Life II

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

Thursday, August 05, 2004

For posterity
Here is Don Berry's article "Kultur in Apathyville" that set off such a firestorm in Portland in 1965. I'm including it in the anthology but post it here for the historical record and easier access in years to come.

Kultur in Apathyville

Don Berry

Dear gray Portland. last and finest bastion of the oatmeal mind, where the principal entertainment is sitting around in coffin-like solemnity telling each other what a shame it is that 'nothing ever goes on in this town.' It is our own private pleasure, our masochistic solace under leaden skies, a kind of ritual self-immolation to no discernible end. Not for us the flamboyant dramatic gesture. But we mutter quite a lot.
Occasionally, of course, the old cadaver gives a little twitch, a sort of involuntary spasm (there must be a medical term for this specious illusion of life), but it quickly subsides, to everyone’s great relief. A bit ago this newspaper examined the state of culture in the state of Oregon. What a disaster. Most of the writers – with a few marked exceptions – went at it with all the enthusiasm of men assigned to search out maggots in bad meat. They appeared to resent being snatched away from their contemplation of automobile accidents and Friday Surprise goodies merely to see if anything was actually happening in this state other than collisions, politics and other such familiar catastrophes. It was no wonder that the picture painted was of a dismal wasteland, broken only occasionally by a sulfurous bubble of fermentation, probably unsanitary in nature.
And if the newspapers do it badly, television and radio don’t even bother with the pretense. Their silence is so total you would think culture had become slightly controversial, perhaps upsetting to potential sponsors. The broadcast media, of course, have the inestimable advantage that their own sins are swept magically away when you turn the set off, while print remains.
In this the mass media faithfully reflect the general attitude of its audience.
Total indifference, tinged with faint revulsion and suspicion. (This, incidentally, can be regarded as an outline of the Portland mentality. Color it gray. Dark gray.)
In fact, it is not the local culture that is impoverished, but the local perception of it. There is an almost total lack of connection between the makers in Portland and the appreciators, with their low moans.
It is my contention that this enormous chasm has been deliberately bulldozed out of the oatmeal mentality in order to protect itself from undo stimulation. Portland determinedly insists that nothing goes on; activity is bad, per se. We resolutely peer at the world through dead-colored glasses which are donned at the least suspicion of a breaking ray of light. Our winters give us the photophobic vision of troglodytes – and apparently our minds, such as they are, are equally affected.
Examples come quickly. I have never met Mr. Don Zavin, but in my mind’s eye I picture him as being equal parts naiveté and bafflement. Naïve enough to believe all those nice people who tell him they want some theater in Portland, want someplace to go, something to do. And when he comes up with such – stay home. That’s where the bafflement part comes in.
For a while there were two poets in this city simultaneously, each of whom is generally regarded by critics as being among the most important of his generation. Jim Dickey was at Reed and William Stafford was, and is, at Lewis and Clark. San Francisco would have done some fancy feather-preening at such a happy coincidence. Portland? Not a ripple. A local columnist, who actively prides himself on searching out writing talent, had never even heard of them.
Where, comes the wistful cry, are the grand old days of Portland writers like Holbrook and Haycox? Where, indeed? How come nobody seems to notice that William Sanderson of this newspaper has as good an understanding of Oregon as Holbrook ever had, and writes as well? And I haven’t been deafened by bands playing welcome Janet Stevenson, a writer whose Civil War novel “Weep No More” is a classic, and whose biography of Fanny Kemble is the definitive one. And, if that kind of stuff is too “lit’ry” for the oatmeal mind, did you know that Rick Rubin was back in town? Who he? He’s published fifty-odd short stories in national magazines in the past five years, including Esquire and Playboy and others even a Portlander might recognize.
Of course, Mr. Rubin has a lot going against him in Portland. He has, I understand, both a beard and a beautiful wife, which is unseemly of him. Either, alone, is enough to make a good gray citizen uneasy. He must be a beatnik or something.
The list of people doing important work in this town is too long, I can’t get it into this space. And I don’t mean regional poets and Sunday painters. I’m talking about people of national stature like Lloyd Reynolds and Jacques Avshalomov and Tom Hardy and Manuel Izqulerdo and Carl and Hilda Morris and dozens of others who are so busy working they won’t even be insulted I didn’t mention their names.
The point I'm hacking away at is this: there is plenty going on in this town, plenty of real work. What is missing is the dilettante fringe, which is what passes for culture in most cities. And it is in fact the absence of the dilettantes that our appreciators complain of. Culture to the oatmeal mind means that they want somebody to talk arty over cocktails, and that's all it amounts to. Pure hypocrisy, which is another of the mainsprings of the Portland mentality.
It’s a no-connection city, where reporters talk only to other reporters and politicians to other politicians. It’s full of little social daisy chains, self-fertilizing and self-contained. Portland is the living refutation of the old biological principle that an organism cannot survive in an environment composed solely of its own waste products. Mentally, we do exactly that. Not only do it, but glory in it, and stubbornly resist any infusion of fresh air into our bleak atmosphere. If a magazine starts -- we kill it. If a theater group struggles up out of the mud -- we softly muffle it to death under pillows of leaden silence. The plain fact is that we don't want anything around that might stir up the mush.
I end this rash note to my city with a piece of advice on fitting in, being a true gray Portlander. I modestly call it 'Berry's Law of Survival in a Bowl of Cold Oatmeal.'
Don't make waves.

12-12-65

8/05/2004 03:46:00 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