I came to writing late. I didn't start writing seriously until after I was discharged from the Army. My first success was as a short story writer and by the end of the 1960s I was publishing regularly in literary magazines. In 3 of 4 consecutive years during this period, I placed a story on the Roll of Honor in the annual
Best American Short Stories anthology, a list of the best 100 stories of the year. This put me in very heady company indeed. Agents used this list as a clearing house and I had several in NY waiting for my first novel. At this very moment, in one of two changes of focus that likely hurt my career, at least as usually defined, I abandoned fiction for writing for the stage. The agents were left waiting. My best stories are collected in
The Man Who Shot Elvis And Other Stories.
I received my MFA in Playwriting from the University of Oregon in the early 70s, went east for a while, and in the late 70s returned west to settle in Portland. I was in the right place at the right time, Portland about to explode into a vibrant theater center. I was lucky to find three directors excited about my work: Steve Smith at Theatre Workshop, Gary O'Brien at New Rose Theatre and Peter Fornara at Cubiculo Theatre. For a decade from the late 70s to late 80s, they were my champions. The best of this work is collected in
Seven Plays, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award.
I had an agent in NY excited about my work. And once again, just when it looked like things might go my way on the national scene, I changed focus. This time to what is now called hyperdrama. Smith commissioned me to write one for the Pittock Mansion and I was hooked. Over the next decade I wrote and had 7 hyperdramas produced. As near as I can tell, this is more than any other writer in the world. Indeed, one history credits me with coining the term "hyperdrama," but I have no recollection of this. I started using hyperdrama because I was involved with hypertext. At any rate, my most ambitious hyperdrama was a retelling of Chekhov's
The Seagull in the form.
In the 1990s I returned to fiction. Primarily I did this to take advantage of the new print-on-demand technology. I decided to abandon the commercial world of writing, where I was something of an outcast from the start, and now I had a new home for my work. A librarian at the University of North Carolina was so impressed with my online work in hypertext that she offered to host my archive in their electronic Ibiblio collection. I took her up on it. About the same time, I made arrangements with Special Collections in the University of Oregon Library to host my hard copy archive. I decided to complete my journey by writing for myself and my archives. This freed me to be even less commercial than I normally would be. Interestingly enough, the first work with this focus were rather traditional novels,
Love At Ground Zero and
Kerouac's Scroll. I made no attempt to find a traditional publisher for these. They would make little money even if marketed this way, and I had no desire whatever to go on a book tour. I was increasingly a stay-at-home kind of guy, practically a recluse after I quit drinking in 1993. My job now was to write something, put it in my archives, and write something else. I no longer belonged to the Portland writing community; I was invisible in this regard.
In the summer of 2007 I discovered digital film technology and started shooting films with a Flip minicam. I found myself working largely with the same group of actors, calling ourselves Small Screen Video. The best of these efforts is probably
Deconstructing Sally. I just finished a first feature,
The Farewell Wake
Once again I find myself changing direction. I plan to make a series of Art Song Music Videos, composing the songs myself. If I stay healthy, I hope to do a short animated chamber opera. From wordsmith to notesmith, as I end my journey.
The adventure never ends and, as Camus wrote, the struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart.
I like being invisible but I wish my work was more visible. When I reach the final invisibility, I embrace the common writer's fantasy that it will be. I'll never know.
Ibiblio Literary Archive
University of Oregon Archive
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