Well Cold Waters Press fans, this begins the part of the series on the writing life, interviews with writers who have achieved some modicum of success, what I like to call working class writers. These are people who have published but are not brand names, no Stephen King’s or Amy Tan’s here. Rather, these writers, like normal people they work, maybe three or four different gigs, but they still publish. They still adhere to the artist life while maintaining a foot in the world of normal.

My first interview is with Scott Sparling. I sat down with Scott to find out about what makes him tick. Having had the pleasure of working with Scott in a writing group led by Joanna Rose and Stevan Allred I knew Scott was a great writer, but I also that he knew a lot about the writing life, the ups and downs and how to keep going. I mean after all, when your first book is as old as your first born, you got to have something more than faith to keep the dream going. A long time coming, Wire to Wire was labored on for over twenty years. Scott finally saw his dream come true and was published in 2012. Quite unlike anything you have read before, this book takes the traditional crime narrative and sets it on fire, or rather, it characters hop freight trains high on glue and then set it on fire. The action is watched and told through a series of reruns in their brains years afterwards. A tour de force of descriptive narration, Wire to Wire won a Michigan Notable Book award and Scott received a 2013 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission.

Scott is currently completing his second novel, Dogs Run Free. The book deals with Occupy, a kidney stolen from a banker, money laundering, and Jimi Hendrix's legendary last guitar, the Black Strat. He will be reading a chapter from it on Oct 2 as part of Wordstock's LitHop PDX.  

Scott also runs a website http://scottsparling.net

You can read an except from Wire to Wire here  http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/8105/excerpt-wire-to-wire.html

   

Signing books with Zane at Bayliss Public Library in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan  

 CWP: One of the things we have noticed here at Cold Waters Press is that every successful person has had a mentor or friend that has helped them along the way. Are there any out there you would like to talk about, how they shaped your writing or helped turn your life in a certain direction? 

I think success has a lot to do with luck, more than we like to admit. Part of being lucky is meeting the right people at the right time. I met Jack Cady, a writer from Port Townsend, on my 30th birthday. He was teaching a night class on fiction through the University of Washington extension program. Everything changed for me that night. When I walked into his class, I was interested in journalism. I walked out three hours later, not just wanting but needing to write fiction. I feel his influence every single day. Jack inspired me, but I had to meet a second teacher, Joyce Thompson, to learn all the things that go into writing a novel. Joyce’s students have included Karl Marlantes. Karen Karbo, and many others. I took her workshop over and over, and learned so much from her that I was finally able to produce a finished draft.

Jack and Joyce got me deep into it, this place I think of as the forest of fiction. But then I got a bit lost, and wandered around for years. I’d still be there, surviving on nuts and berries, if I hadn’t had the luck of meeting Stevan Allred and Joanna Rose, who teach at The Pinewood Table in Portland. They taught me to understand story in a very honest way. And they insisted that I finish. I’m still learning from them.

I met Jack Cady, a writer from Port Townsend, on my 30th birthday. He was teaching a night class on fiction through the University of Washington extension program. Everything changed for me that night. When I walked into his class, I was interested in journalism. I walked out three hours later, not just wanting but needing to write fiction. I feel his influence every single day.

Jack inspired me, but I had to meet a second teacher, Joyce Thompson, to learn all the things that go into writing a novel. Joyce’s students have included Karl Marlantes. Karen Karbo, and many others. I took her workshop over and over, and learned so much from her that I was finally able to produce a finished draft.

Jack and Joyce got me deep into it, this place I think of as the forest of fiction. But then I got a bit lost, and wandered around for years. I’d still be there, surviving on nuts and berries, if I hadn’t had the luck of meeting Stevan Allred and Joanna Rose, who teach at The Pinewood Table in Portland. They taught me to understand story in a very honest way. And they insisted that I finish. I’m still learning from them.

One other person, of course, is Iron Legs Burk, aka D.C. Jesse Burkhardt. He taught me how to hop freights.

Jack Cady is the author of The Jonah Watch, and many other books. Joyce’s latest book is How to Greet Strangers. Stevan Allred’s book, A Simplified Map of the Real World, is being published in September. Joanna Rose is the author of Little Miss Strange. D. C. Jesse Burkhardt is the author of The Crowbar Hotel and other books. All great reads.

CWP:  Many artists who have a successful first piece of work, but then have a hard time replicating that success. Do you think this is the result of arbitrary time lines set by the outside and if so, do you think the artistic schedule can be dictated or does it have its own rhythm? 

There’s certainly more time pressure for the second book. That’s a cause of stress, but I don’t think it affects the writing. For me the issue is going in deep enough to find something you can’t shut up about. In the first novel, that was freights and Northern Michigan. The struggle then was to weave a story through those topics that might interest a reader.

In the book I’m working on now, I’ve had to ask myself much more intentionally what I’m addicted to. And it turns out to be the politics of money and the power of music. It’s taken a while for that to coalesce. Once it did, the writing schedule began taking care of itself.

CWP: Setting is a very important theme for a writer; you set your first novel in Michigan. How important is the location to you as a writer and does the location help inform you about what to write or does the story come first? 

Northern Michigan was everything to me in the first book. I couldn’t have, and wouldn’t have, written a book set anywhere else. That’s another piece of luck – I knew from the first day where the book was set.

The current book is set in the Pacific Northwest, but the politics of wealth and the Occupy movement have become the landscape. I’m pretty sure when this one’s done, I’ll go back to writing about Detroit. I’m from Michigan. It’s in my blood.

CWP: You have stated you prefer third person both in reading and writing, what is your stance on first person versus third person narrative? As an author how do you choose, is it a personal choice, either you are or you aren’t one or the other, or does the story ever dictate which stance you choose? 

I happen to like third person. I know that’s a little contrarian, given all the great stuff being written in first. I’ve written a few short stories in first, and that’s been rewarding, but I’m just not as hooked by it.

Wire to Wire had six or seven POV characters, and the current book has four. That’s part of what’s fun about it for me, and it doesn’t come as naturally in first.

That said, I’m considering first for the next book, partly because it might be a stretch.

CWP: The standard format for success as a writer is to get an MFA, drink lots of espressos, send out well written, but meaningless short stores, get rejected. Then one goes out, people-watches, smokes cloves, writes more, gets something published, then they teach, all before they are forty. You on the other hand have no MFA, are over forty, and took like twenty years to get published. How do you explain your success in such a non-traditional way?    

I considered entering an MFA program for about a day. But by then I was already 30 and had just finished paying off my student loans. Plus, I was working with Jack Cady, and then Joyce Thompson, and I didn’t see how an MFA program could be any better than that. This was in the 1980s when MFA programs weren’t such an established path.

The fact that the book took 20 years is a different story. I thought it would take five. When I was 33, I quit my job, spent every penny I had, maxed out two credit cards and created a first draft in those five years. And nobody bought it. I’d gone from having $20,000 in the bank to owing $10,000 on credit.

In short I threw five years and $30,000 at my first draft. Jim Harrison said he liked it. Other people said they liked it. But the publishing world was looking for the next Bright Lights, Big City, the next Less Than Zero, the next Joy Luck Club. I did not come close to fitting into any of those categories. So maybe a period of bad luck had begun, or at least the absence of good luck for a while.

I kept working on the book. I also got married and started a family – two things that were and are every bit as important to me as becoming a novelist. We bought a house, I got a job.

Jack Cady told me that the thing I needed most was tenacity, and I had made a promise to myself that I would never quit. But the pace of writing slowed down for about a decade. I started a successful website and put Wire to Wire away for years at a time.

The manuscript that Tin House bought in 2009 isn’t that radically different from the one I had in 1999. It’s tighter, and the story is much stronger. But the bones were there for quite a while before anyone was interested. I think of it like waiting for a wave, which I know you understand. You have to be ready when the wave comes. But you also have to wait for it to come.

CWP: Authors are famous for having particular habits for their writing, you are somewhat famous for writing in a tree house. Can you tell us a little bit about that and other habits you have to get the creative juices flowing?   

I built this tree house for my son, imagining that he and his friends would spend a lot of time here. That never happened. As a kid growing up in Michigan, I climbed trees all the time, but Zane (my son) had other interests. The only time the tree house ever got used was when I’d sit up here reading Hank the Cowdog stories to him. Eventually I decided it would be a good place to write. I’m lucky to have such a space – it’s a world unto itself.

The other thing I need is music. For Wire to Wire, it was Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter, and Jon Dee Graham. For this book it’s Jimi Hendrix and the Black Angels.

CWP: Your first book, Wire to Wire, was published on a well-known and respected small press. Tell us a little about that experience and now that you have achieved what most writers only dream of, what are your next steps? 

Working with Tin House was an amazing experience. I remember having lunch with them the first time, having never met any of them. Afterward, I told my wife it was a dream come true. Tony Perez, who edited the book, made it much stronger. He made many, many great suggestions, which I took. Everyone I met, including Lee Montgomery, who bought the manuscript and who is no longer there, believed in the book and was wonderful to work with.

The next step is to finish the next manuscript.

CWP: Besides writing books you also do a website dedicated to Bob Seger. What’s the deal, I thought all ex-hippies were obsessed with the Dead?

The record industry has a term called “catalog album,” which refers to albums that are no longer current, but which stores still stock. Beatles albums, for example, are catalog albums. It would probably surprise a lot of people to know that the number one catalog artist of the last decade – 2000 through 2009 – was Bob Seger. Beating out The Beatles, Michael Jackson, the Stones, the Grateful Dead and everyone else.

But I didn’t start liking Seger because he was popular. I fell under his spell because he wasn’t. I’d follow Seger to clubs in Michigan and Ohio, and sometimes there’d be fewer than 50 people in the crowd. And Seger would just stun me. I knew he deserved to be playing in big arenas. He also became a role model for me, because he wouldn’t quit. He’d play 250 club dates in a year, and his records still weren’t selling, but he kept going.

In 1997, I was all tangled up in Wire to Wire and I needed to step away for a while. The web was new, so I started a website about Seger’s music. It’s still the biggest and most authoritative Seger site on the internet. It’s been one of the best experiences of my life, because of the friends I’ve made.

CWP:  It has been said you can’t go home again. Your work is set primarily in your home state, if its true you can’t go home to the place you thought existed, is that what the writer can do, go back to the home they want?

I’ve never been sure how to interpret the line, “you can’t go home again.” I think it’s the unwritten line that comes next that’s important. “But you can’t stop trying.” On one level, that’s kind of what Wire to Wire and the current book, are about.

CWP:  Any last words of advice for people who want to do what you do?

Tenacity. Luck. Tenacity.