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

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"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
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The Hive
The official blog of science fiction / horror author Terence West.

William Gibson Blog
Famed author of Neuromancer and Johnny Mnemonic: The Screenplay.

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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
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Bow. James Bow.
The journal of James Bow and his writing.

Ravenlike
Michael Montoure's weblog about writing, primarily horror and speculative fiction.

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Real Writers Bounce
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2020 Hindsight
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downWrite creative
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The literary weblog at the complete review.

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The rabbit writes on popular culture.

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Momoka writes short stories.

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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.

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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."

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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
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Venal Scene
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'Plaint of the Playwright
Rob Matsushita, a playwright from Wisconsin, "whines a lot."

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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?

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Not just a housewife!

Barry's Personal Blog
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Writer's Blog.
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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.

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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)

 
Saturday, October 07, 2006  
How screenwriting has changed for the worse
A nice phone chat yesterday afternoon with a producer in L.A. I've become phone pals with since we've talked so often in the past five or six years. He renewed his option on a script of mine, making it about five years he's been trying to get this film to happen. I was reminded of a similarly dedicated producer twenty years ago who also optioned a script of mine for five years -- and what a different practical situation it was for me then. Here's how the real world for screenwriters writing spec scripts has changed since the 1980s.

Twenty years ago, with a script based on my stage play Waitresses, the producer first gave me (paying me) on the job training in screenwriting because this was my first script. Everything changed in the story, which on stage had three characters and one setting. It was quite an education. The script ready, she then took it to market. No luck. She renewed the option, which was good money in those days. She had budgeted the movie at a million dollars, low but not bottom line then, which (by the 1-5% of budget) meant I'd get $30,000 for the script (she was generous, given my lack of credits in film then), or $3000 (10%) for the option. A nice check, which I got every time she renewed. Later she decided, with nothing happening otherwise, to direct it herself. At one point, she told me it was a done deal, the papers to be signed in Las Vegas over the coming weekend, and I emailed my wife, visiting in China, that it was a done deal. But it fell through at the last minute.

The point here is, at 3 grand a whack, an option was a lucrative event for a screenwriter. A prolific writer could make a living writing scripts that never made it to screen as long as s/he optioned them.

Now today. The market has totally changed. Maybe 100x more scripts are out there than 20 years ago. It's now a buyer's market. And the option as calculated above has disappeared and been replaced with "the grace option," which is more or less the free option. So that yesterday I agreed to a renewal for $100, 30x less than the same event earned me twenty years ago!

Of course, I could have refused this and demanded the ten grand I was due by the old rules. He would have said no, and the script would remain on my shelf. It's an old script, and I've forgotten it. It's a thriller. I might fight for a literary work myself but not an entertainment work, I don't have that much invested in it. He loves it. He loves it more than I do presently. So I wish him well, and let him have it at the current market price, which is more or less nothing. Of course, I still get the same money due in the end if the script goes to film; what has changed is that the screenwriter starts getting real money later in the development process.

20 years ago a playwright or poet could earn nice side money selling screenplay options. I made more selling options then than I was making in royalties for my produced plays. But no more. Those days are long gone. Today spec script writers have to wait a step -- until the producer with an option actually makes a deal, usually with a studio, sometimes with private investors -- before the real money begins to flow.

In the film industry, it seems changes always work against the screenwriter.

10/07/2006 06:49:00 AM | 0 comments

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