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

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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)

Tuesday, August 03, 2004

Northwest Magazine
Interview Bianco early this morning, research for my intro to the anthology, which already has some shape in my thoughts. Joe took over the supplement Northwest Home and Garden in the fall of 1965 with a charge to turn it into a Sunday supplement with wide appeal. He took the bull by the horns and "appeal" quickly came to mean controversy when he published two articles, one in December, 1965, and the other in January, 1966, that attracted much attention.

The first was called "Kultur in Apathyville" (by Don Berry) and lambasted Portland for being the home of "oatmeal minds" -- not your run-of-the-mill Sunday supplement story! Excerpts:

"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.

"...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.

"...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.

"...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."

The next, by Rick Rubin, proclaimed that "real Portland" only existed downtown, that east of the river was a wasteland:

"True Portland, proper Portland, the essence of Portland, stretches in fact only from Willamette Heights south to Dunthorpe, from the river to the crest or perhaps slightly beyond of the West Hills.

"...Daily the Eastsiders swarm across our bridges, each evening their off-springs come to rap their noisy pipes west of the Willamette. We know them to be necessary to our continuing intellectual and cultural growth, much as the slaves of Greece in the Golden Age were necessary to support the more meaningful few.

"...We pity them even, their inferior climate, the gorge winds blowing hot and cold and always dusty about them. Our views are larger here, our streets more real, our lives richer.

"Defined by our river and our hills, sniped at by boosters and earthmovers, the Westside struggles onward and upward, humble and generous and filled with the knowledge that excellence must have its opposite, that every true city must be supported by its hinterland Eastside."

Rick Rubin became a regular contributor, a writer with style who set the tone of the magazine in its early years. Bianco established that he wasn't afraid of controversy, and Rubin took him up on it. Later in 1966 he announced his candidacy for governor (he called it "gubernator"), on a platform that included surrounding Oregon with barbed wire to keep the Californians out, and his humor and extravagance became an early mainstay of the magazine.

Throughout its history, Northwest Magazine took chances and many of its "special issues" (an entire issue focused on a single theme) continued to upset higher management at the newspaper. During the 1973 takeover of Wounded Knee by members of the American Indian Movement, for example, Bianco had a special issue that gave AIM a forum for its cause, this at a time when many, probably most, Americans dismissed them as hoodlums.

The interview this morning will be fun and also enlightening, I expect, and I look forward to the challenge of my introduction, which I am calling "Joe Bianco, Northwest Magazine and the Oatmeal Mind." Onward.

8/03/2004 07:21:00 AM | 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