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!

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, August 25, 2004

Letter to a Dead Soul Brother
Hey, Dick. Remember how you used to say that the days of political statesmen were long gone? Well, you wouldn't believe how ugly the presidential campaign is this year on both sides. "I don't want to encourage them," your old lady friend said about her decision late in life to stop voting. It gets easier all the time to understand what she meant. Politics has become corrupting by its very nature, it seems. When Thoreau didn't pay his taxes he said he refused to participate in something immoral. Are we at a time when voting is to participate in something immoral?

I suppose all "senior generations" don't understand the changes they see in the world, nor do they see them as "progress." I think our generation was truly blessed to be the last one in the U.S. not to be raised by television. Well, I'll stop, it's very easy for me to become a broken record on this particular subject.

I'm editing an anthology of writing from the 60s and 70s, mostly, and even there I see more contemplation, more heart, than I see in most writing today. Contemporary novels are full of easy and cheap shots. Ah, me! Wish you were here so we could turn into disgruntled old farts together.

Speaking of which -- my novel about our "road trip" is going to be a hoot. Part On the Road, part Tuesdays With Morrie, part mystery story and revenge story. I hope to be able to start it in earnest -- I've toyed with first pages as I searched for the right voice and tone -- shortly after school starts, as soon as I finish a good draft of Patriots, the current novel, which also is going well again. It's a kind of companion piece to Love At Ground Zero. In fact, I'm going to bundle them and try to market them under the title After 9/11: Two Short Novels.

The best thing I've done recently may be inspiring, in the sense that a libretto inspires a composer, John Nugent to write Dark Mission. It's a fine piece of music. The next one, Varmints, will be fun and Galileo after that. And Dixieland after that. So I need to hang around for three more operas anyway!

Life is not as simple as I'd prefer -- Harriet has a complicated life, which rubs off on me of course -- but it definitely could be worse. Not sure how long I'll keep teaching at PSU. I'm signed up for another year, one at a time. We'll see how it goes. I should hang around long enough to use my next textbook ... maybe spring 2005, but more likely fall, which would mean committing to another year after this one. I do still enjoy it.

With you gone, with Ger gone, I have no more coffee buddies and haven't found a replacement (not that I've looked very hard). I'm tired of living in Portland but no one way I convince H to move. I'd like to move to the southwest -- Albuquerque, NM, for example. I just read there are actually more coffee houses per person there than in Seattle! I'd go for the weather and because a VA hospital is there. If by some miracle I outlived H, I'd go in a flash.

Watching the Iraq soccer game -- they are outclassed by Paraguay but still would have a shot at bronze -- after which I get to crawl around in the basement applying band-aids to a leak problem that needs to be fixed right and professionally before we sell the house. Not looking forward to it.

School starts in a tad over a month! The summer has rushed by much too quickly.

Well, that's the skinny here. Had a chance to talk to Bev after the death of Ray Charles and reminisce about the many hours we all spent listening to him together when we were in Germany in the Army. Sweet memories. So many of them.

8/25/2004 08:12:00 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