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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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)

 
Wednesday, October 18, 2006  
Need any help?
A few years back a grad student of mine needed some extra credits, and so she became my "research assistant." What a joy it was to have one! I sent her out to do the messy searching for obscure details that I often need to add verisimilitude to a scene. At the moment, for example, for the new "wild west" project I'm doing, I need to know something about gangsters in Chicago in the 1890s. I looked around the net but couldn't find what I needed, so I reserved several histories of Chicago at the library, which I just picked up. Hopefully one of them will have what I need.

I'm always having to find out obscure things like that. A few weeks back, thus, when JM asked if she could help me on anything, it was tempting to say Yes indeed! and send her off to the library. But I hesitated -- just long enough to ask myself, Why in hell is this young writer asking to help me when she should be helping herself? Because, in typical young writer fashion, she's scared shitless and avoiding the inevitable reality of "put up or shut up," either be a writer or not, but if you are, then goddamn it, do things that most help your writing career. So I scolded her instead of saying yes ha ha. And she's writing a novel that isn't one to dash off in three days.

But research assistants are cool. Wish I had one again.

Pulling into the library, I encountered a dark cat that was a dead ringer for Mahalia, one of the cats in the family I shared with "Sally." Sally who has disowned all that past. How can people pretend the past doesn't exist? Sure, bad things can erase good things, especially in the short run, but shouldn't we outgrow grudges and be able to look back and appreciate good things that happened with someone, even if the relationship changed? How can Sally hear the Beatles Sgt Pepper album and not remember it in context, which happened to be a context with me there? Do you stop listening to the Beatles because you hate your ex? Do you pretend you never made discoveries together? Sally, as it turns out, was the first important editor in my writing career, so I can't deny that, no matter what came later. I mean, what's the deal? Does she blame me for not becoming a lesbian sooner than she did ha ha? "People are more interesting than anybody," ma always said, and man was she right about that. Sally is much more interesting than Sketch, my dog -- and Sketch is pretty damn interesting!

Little flashes of the past happen all the time -- I see a cat that reminds me of Mahalia. I hear a song by Canned Heat and remember when I first heard it, and guess who was there. You can't escape the past. Embrace it. Embrace the good times and chalk the bad ones up to experience. Good if you learned something from them.

These are the themes in Sally's novel, of course. A challenge to work them all out. But I think I have a good start -- and I'm a clever little devil ha ha by using a play within a novel to layer interpretations of what is truth and what is fact and what is art. And have none of it show because that stuff is boring as hell.

Well, well and my, my. Onward.

10/18/2006 01:20:00 PM | 0 comments

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Sketch says, "Happiness is sunshine and a bone." Posted by Hello


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