Scott Sparling

Three Clippings

Posted on Jan 14th, 2011

I haven’t read my book yet. The advance review copy of Wire to Wire sits on my desk glowing sedately, like a night light, only more golden. “It’s not for reading,” I tell people, “it’s just for looking at.” Some of my friends have disregarded this advice and read it anyway.

I guess the reason I haven’t read it yet – in book form, anyway – is that it’s the last step in a long process, and I’m not quite ready to take it. But being near the end has made me think about beginnings, which in this case includes three clippings.

The first is an interview with Dylan from the early 1980s, of which I saved only the last few paragraphs, now on very yellowed newsprint. In it, Dylan says:

“You can only pull out of the times what the times will give you…Everything happened so quick in the ‘60s. There was an electricity in the air. It’s hard to explain – I mean, you didn’t ever want to go to sleep because you didn’t want to miss anything. It wasn’t there in the ‘70s and it ain’t there now.

“If you really want to be an artist and not just be successful, you’ll go and find the electricity. It’s somewhere…”

When I first read this, I was working for the electric utility in Seattle. I dealt with electricity all day long, but it was obviously the wrong kind. I needed to find Dylan’s electricity.

Not too much later, I quit my job, drained my small retirement account, and started writing the book. This explains why I am not retired and living in a big house off Green Lake Park.

The second clipping is from the mid-1970s. My mom sent it to me. She never overtly tried to stop me from hopping trains – knowing her efforts would be futile – but she sent me a news story about some kids who climbed on top of a moving boxcar and got hit by a power line.

I scoffed at this story. Those kids were partying, I told her; they weren't serious freight-riders. But I saved the clip, and it inspired the prologue of Wire to Wire.

I found the third clipping on a sad day. My father had died, and my mom was in poor health. Eventually, and not entirely of her own will, she came out to Oregon to be closer to my sister and me. Our family house in Michigan sat closed up, but essentially as she left it. After a while we had to sell the house, and I flew back to clean it up.

It’s a strange thing to be alone in a house that no one has touched for almost a year, especially if it’s a house you’ve spent a lot of time in with other people around. When I walked in, the floors creaked like ice cracking on a lake.

I made a tour of the house, then sat on the couch. My mom saved newspapers and there was a small stack on the coffee table. A headline on the top one read: “Harsh fate awaits many.”

I sat there and stared at that for a while. It was a dark thought, certainly. And the editors were sugarcoating it with that last word. Many?? What about freaking all?

When I opened the paper up, I saw the article was actually about retirement planning. Harsh fate awaits many who fail to save for the future, was the full headline. But it was too late. The first half of the line had already cast its spell on me.

These days a new clipping is floating carelessly around my desk. Farmers find body surrounded by money, it says. It’s a sad couple of paragraphs about a woman found murdered in Eastern Oregon. My wife noticed it a few days ago and picked it up. “Why are you saving this?” she asked.

I have no idea, was my almost honest answer. 

Maybe there’ll be some electricity there.

What about you? What clippings have made your desk their home? 

___

Advance copy of WTW: "Will it glow at night? Will it make a hum? Will it look good with the rest of my furniture? Show me how this thing works," by Cracker.

(Runner-up: "A Day in A Life" -- I read the news today, oh boy. By a new group I just discovered on iTunes. Keep trying, fellas, and maybe someday you'll be the Blog Song of the Day.)

Posted in Wire to Wire | Writing

The Wall Ball Method

Posted on Dec 31st, 1969

I worked on my first book in my treehouse and my second, not yet published, in coffeeshops. Now I’m working on #3 in a secret location. I call it Wall Ball Arena.

Actually, it’s Wall Ball Arena II. I had to abandon the original Wall Ball Arena a while ago, despite the fact that it met nine of the ten facility criteria established by the IWBGC – that’s the International Wall Ball Governing Commission, the entirely fictional body that supervises the sport of throwing a ball against a wall. Their carefully developed criteria:

1. The wall must be tall.
2. The wall must be wide.
3. There should be a second wall behind you, so when you miss, you have a backstop.
4. The playing surface must be mostly even, but with occasional irregularities that produce crazy bounces to keep you on your toes.
5. The wall must be on public property to avoid private security guys telling you to scram.
6. The wall must be solid and not make too much noise when the ball hits it to avoid drawing unwanted attention.
7. The wall must be far enough away from homes that no one calls up the city and complains about a strange man playing Wall Ball day after day.
8. The wall should be mostly screened from public view so you can be alone with your thoughts. This is crucial!!!
9. The playing area must be covered, because this is Oregon and it’s raining.
10. The playing area must be lit.

Unfortunately, the first Wall Ball Arena fell short on criteria #10. It is not lit. Since it basically gets dark at approximately noon these days, I was faced with the prospect of going an entire winter without Wall Ball. Then I looked around and found Wall Ball Arena II. It’s even closer to where I live in Sucker Lake. It’s everything the first arena was…and it’s lit.

As mentioned, the rules of the game are simple. Throw the ball. Catch it. Repeat for 30 minutes.

That’s the physical aspect of the game, anyway. It’s the mental aspect I love. The necessity to be right in the present moment – there’s a ball arcing toward you, after all; your brain’s radar system must constantly calculate the route and calibrate your response. Your fine and not-so-fine motor skills must react instantly.

Wonderfully, the rest of your mind is not needed for this operation. Therefore it has the freedom to wander about and follow wherever your imagination leads.

For a while now, I’ve been letting it wander over the unexplored territory of my third novel. Or novel-in-progress, I guess.

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Today, I walked into Wall Ball Arena II at approximately 5:30 pm. It was completely dark, raining, and 39 degrees. (Bad conditions are good because they help assure the arena will be empty. On nicer days, I sometimes have to compete for space with basketball-addicted teens. Once I entered the arena and saw – horrors!! – four adults playing pickleball! I averted my eyes, did an immediate about-face, and returned later.)

So tonight, after a few warm-up tosses, I let the unneeded parts of my mind roam around Chapter 2 of my work in progress.

The main character is called Onck, a young woman, Instacart shopper and YouTube content creator. Her roommate is named Sev. He’s a very talented (as in, New-Yorker-covers talented) graphic artist.

Here’s today’s problem: Sev has a traumatic and shameful (to him) history that is crucial to the plot. But I plan to write the entire novel in Onck’s point of view. So we’ll never know his backstory unless he tells Onck, which he will never do.

The solution: Sev is dealing with the very real pain of whatever happened to him by writing, or trying to write, a memoir. Since they live in rather close quarters, he has made Onck promise not to read it.

Okay, so…we know instantly that she is going to read it. How’s that going to go on the page?

For 30 minutes, I let ideas come bouncing at me along with the ball. A surprising number of full sentences and dialogue-sequences showed up. Then, on the 20-minute walk home, I dictated them into my notes app.

Later, I reworked them a bit and came up with a rough scene to open the chapter.  It’s not brilliant and it’s a long way from final. But it is also, notably, not a blank page. It’s a draft I can work with.

What happens next? I have no idea. But maybe tomorrow night’s Wall Ball session will shed some light.

After all, Wall Ball Arena II is lit.

Posted in Wire to Wire