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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.

cdeemer@yahoo.com.

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Eric Myers
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Highlights:

Practical Screenwriting

Dress Rehearsals
A memoir

Love At Ground Zero

Seven Plays

Oregon Book Award finalist

More books.

My work in Books in Print.

• My two short novels Love At Ground Zero and Patriots bundled together. I'll begin marketing this before mid-January.
• Continue work on Kerouac's Scroll. Going well so far. I might finish a draft by summer, certainly by the end of summer.
• Varmints, the libretto, is proving harder than I thought but I believe I've made significant progress with my new structure. I hope to finish a showable draft in January and send it to John.
• Sunset, the musical I'm writing with Robin. Low priority but I need to finish act one and structure act two so Robin has music composing to do. Matter of getting off my butt to do it.
• The mystery series. I have a good sense of where the first book is going. Time to begin, maybe get a draft done right behind the road story.
• Two 2004 projects that spill into 2005: Oregon Fever, the marketing really begins in the new year. Practical Screenwriting, due to be published in the new year. If it happens before May, I can use it next fall.

The American mind is not even close to being amenable to the ideogram principle as yet. The reason is simply this. America is 100% 18th Century. The 18th century had chucked out the principle of metaphor and analogy - the basic fact that as A is to B so is C to D. AB:CD. It can see AB relations. But relations in four terms are still verboten. This amounts to deep occultation of nearly all human thought for the U.S.A.

I am trying to devise a way of stating this difficulty as it exists. Until stated and publicly recognized for what it is, poetry and the arts can't exist in America. Mere exposure to the arts does nothing for a mentality which is incorrigibly dialectical. The vital tensions and nutritive action of ideogram remain inaccessible to this state of mind.

--Marshall McLuhan

Several years ago your notes and observations were some of the first I took to heart and used in evaluating my screenwriting.

In October of 2004 I was awarded the Virginia Governor's Screenwriting Award at the Virginia Film Festival.

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower
who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly
i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid
look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,
put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy
then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud
and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

I'm really just writing to let you know I've found your book on scriptwriting here at the Central Library in Hong Kong. It gave me such a buzz.

I don't think I told you, but my script UMBULALI won a screenplay contest (Words from Here) and placed in Scriptapalooza and the International Screenwriting Awards contests this year. Thanks for inspiring me to turn The Diamond War into a horror script.

I received Screenwright last week. I was hesitant to order it since I already have so many screenwriting books at home, but now I’m glad I have it. I LOVE it! The explanations and examples are simple, clear and enjoyable. I haven’t had quite this much fun studying screenwriting before. I’m only part way through my first “run through” of the material and I already have a clearer understanding of screenplays. I still have a long way to go, but I wanted to take the time to thank you. I highly recommend your program to anyone who is interested in screenwriting. Even people who aren’t interested in screenwriting, but simply love movies should get this program. Thanks again.

• Removed the "literary device" from the road story. Since my protagonist was a retired screenwriter, I"d added inter-chapter notes on a screenplay based on the experience depicted in the novel. Too much head, not enough heart.
  
• I started rewriting Patriots and in reworking chapter one, added a new ending to serve as a kind of frame action from material at the beginning. I think it will work.
  
• Restructured act one of the libretto, adding my new organizing device. I think this will work. However, as elegant as the device strikes me from a narrative point of view, I think it makes the musical conception more complex -- though in the end, presumably more interesting as well. At any rate, I think I've given John a new challenge.
  

A number of things makes rewriting such a pleasure:

• you are working with concrete text on the page, not nebulous ideas in the mind
• interruptions matter less because the quotient of fragility is less (concrete text again)
• you get to focus on the small stuff, at the level of vocabulary, even of syllable
• you have the perspective of the whole for the first time -- everything starts to "fit"
• the work is less stressful because less fragile
• the sense of accomplishment is great as the text improves with each rewrite

I'll probably start rewriting the novel this week.
 

I'm glad I got my writing done first thing in the morning today. The rest of the day has been pretty much of a waste and without the morning session I'd be feeling grouchy, as I often do when ending a writing-less day. But I got a lot done in a short time this morning. Made the day.
 

SALINAS, Calif. -- The community that spawned some of John Steinbeck's most popular tales is closing all its libraries.

The City Council of Salinas, also notorious for burning the books of its most famous resident, voted 6-1 on Tuesday to use $2.3 million from the state's vehicle license fee reimbursement program as a loan to cover $1 million of the city's debt.

It left no money for libraries.

"I received a call from Bloomingdale, Alabama, and they said, 'Oh, you live in Steinbeck Country, the city that's closing its libraries,"' resident Parker Watwood told the council. "You people have let us down. I think it's a national disgrace."

The city was already forced to make $7.1 million in budget cuts in September, bringing the city's budget-slicing total to $8 million out of the city's $60 million budget for the 2005-2006 fiscal year.

Library services will be phased out beginning in January and they will be shuttered on July 1. Thirty-three employees will lose their jobs.

"In this country, we need to decide what's important, and it just seems that libraries get the short end of the stick," Mayor Anna Caballero said before the vote.

Iceland says it has offered a residency visa to former US chess champion Bobby Fischer.

Mr Fischer is detained in Japan and is wanted in the United States for violating international sanctions against Yugoslavia in 1992.

Mr Fischer's 1972 match against Russian Boris Spassky took place in Iceland.

However, Mr Fischer currently has no valid passport and is awaiting a German decision on whether to grant him one, on the grounds he had a German father.

At present, he remains in detention, after being stopped at Tokyo international airport on 13 July.

Mr Fischer has argued that his US passport had been cancelled without due process.

He is also applying to have his deportation order reversed, and is applying for asylum in Japan.

He gained an injunction in September preventing him being deported while his case is being decided.

While in detention, he has become engaged to the head of the Japan Chess Association, Miyoko Watai, but the authorities are still studying their marriage application.

Icelandic hope

Mr Fischer gave an interview to Icelandic television earlier this week, stating "I hope the Icelandic government grants me political asylum".

Fischer's troubles began after his Yugoslav rematch with Spassky
After the Icelandic decision was announced, his supporters were in a buoyant move.

"We're in a happy mood today," said John Bosnitch, head of the Committee to Free Bobby Fischer.

"If Bobby Fischer has a passport in hand and a country invitation, then we expect the Japanese government to release him, to drop this procedure against him and to allow him to go to Iceland," Bosnitch said.

An immigration bureau official confirmed that Mr Fischer might in the end leave for Iceland.

"The possibility is not zero," said spokesman Shoichiro Okabe.

On the run

Mr Fischer has been on the run from the US authorities for more than a decade, after being accused of breaking international sanctions by visiting Yugoslavia to take part in a chess match in 1992.

Before his detention, he had managed to live undetected in Japan for three years, sometimes travelling abroad.

A brilliant but mercurial player, Mr Fischer became a grandmaster at 15 and shot to fame in 1972 when he beat Boris Spassky of the then Soviet Union.

He held the title of world chess champion until 1975, and resurfaced in Yugoslavia for the dramatic 1992 rematch against Mr Spassky.

He won the game, but disappeared when the US authorities announced they wanted to prosecute him over the $3m he earned for playing, which Washington said violated US and United Nations bans on doing business in the country.

He could face 10 years in jail if prosecuted in the US.

At the same time, he is nothing if not eccentric. There's an excellent book out on the 1972 match, came out a few years ago.
 

Very curious how it does in the Oscars now that it is virtually sweeping the earlier awards so far.
 

Getting organized and reintroducing myself to the various projects in progress. I think I'll attack the libretto first since I've been away from it the longest.

I'll attack the screenwriting text with more leisure -- plus I now have four screenwriting books to review.

But damn, I am still wrestling with this not-quite-a cold.
 

As you noted, 30,000 copies out the door is significant. I'd go further: It's astonishing. Only the teensiest fraction of books go out with these numbers, unless we're talking about the Grishams of the world. (I remember how shocked I was when I looked at the numbers for some novels from a prestigious literary house--the kind that got full-page raves in the NYTBR--and saw that they'd shipped fewer than 2000 copies.)

I share the derision at the IMPAC longlist, but let me add the missing perspective. I'm one of the writers on this 2005 longlist and i'm trying to come to terms with a kind of gratitude while retaining my long held disgust at the domination of literary prizes in contemporary fiction. I'm a mid-list author of lit fiction with very low sales and zero publicity. There are thousands like me and we're the rank outsiders for prizes we never usually get entered for. Our publishers don't give a toss about us, we're just in the catalogue as token quality, something to remainder next year. We're like child labour sewing footballs together. Fair trade has yet to enter publishing. We're unpromoted, therefore unreviewed, thus unsold, unread. Publishers are the only multi-national conglomerates who don't promote the bulk of their products. My books don't even get into bookshops.

Our editors tell us, in all seriousness, that nothing will change unless we "win a prize". They want something for nothing. Publishers are limited to submitting 2 novels, which usually adds up to a total number of submissions equivalent to the IMPAC longlist. My publisher alone turns out over 200 novels a year, therefore mid-list losers like me never get entered for the Booker. This makes the Booker the literary prize least qualified to reflect the actual state of contemporary fiction, and yet for many readers, the media, and all bookshops it defines it. In fact, the Booker is a conspiracy against fiction and all publishers are implicated. For instance, my publisher, Fourth Estate/Harper Collins, buys in, for huge advances, big names just for the prize lists. A tactic which rarely works, but conglomerates are desperate gamblers. Editors take all the credit for success but blame failure on the writer. They're self-obsessed and need to be seen on prize-giving night, pissed and gloating on TV, or in Vogue or Hello magazine throwing money away in self-promotion which in the past would've financed a first novel.

The Booker leads where others follow. The prize winners are then bought and sold like footballers in time for the next prize. The shortlists are generally rented out from one prize to another because these prizes need the publicity. There are too many, They're in competition, and they're sponsored by corporate money from the advertising fund. Orange is a phone, Whitbread is a beer, Man Booker is something to do with junk food. I don't know what IMPAC is but I doubt it bears scrutiny with a bag of loot as big as 60 grand sterling. You just have to look at the headlines around the IMPAC longlist anyway. Only the prizewinners from the Orange, Booker, Whitbread, Guardian, etc., are mentioned. Us unknowns on the list probably won't sell one single extra copy. My own publisher has just dumped me for low sales anyway, so I'm on the longlist without a publisher or an agent, actually enjoying my liberty.

147 books on a longlist chosen from all the fiction published worldwide in English for 2003 works out at about 1 novel in 1000, a better statistic than the Booker. I don't, therefore, feel insulted by my inclusion, just depressed by the comments, and not a little disappointed at the organisers of the prize themselves for playing into the conspiracy. The nomination structure is the only good thing about it all.

“whether publishers like to admit it or not, an author’s telegenicity, promotability, and age enter increasingly into the acquisition equation, particularly for new authors whose careers need to be ‘made.’” Feldman herself, who wrote a family history of cancer, was asked at one of her meetings with potential publishing houses if she would be willing to cry on camera.

Every kid should have the experience of having his dad's dad for a bunk mate (I was on the top of bunk beds, granddad below -- I fell out of bed during one of the big earthquakes of the era but didn't break anything). I learned how wild my dad was in his youth, getting him from a very different perspective. Granddad was great.