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The Johnny Cash Approach to Novel Writing

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photo by Wikipedia

Do you know that Johnny Cash song, “One Piece at a Time”? In it, the song’s protagonist works in a Cadillac plant, and he decides to pilfer car parts to home-build his own Caddy. But because he can only take home one piece at a time, the car takes more than 20 years to build. He does indeed end up with a Cadillac, but as auto fashions—and fins—change greatly over time, his ride is a mongrel. But it’s his mongrel, uniquely so. That’s what you should do with your writing.

No, no, I’m not saying stitch together a Frankensteinian monster with your work, not some particolored pastiche, not Cormac McCarthy’s cracked, dry arroyos filled with Danielle Steel’s bonneted women fluttering in chiffon. (Do feel free to steal that for your next novel.) What I’m saying is pull from everything you’ve seen, pull from your life stuff, pull from the bones of your being and from their marrow yet—and put that in your writing.

The premise above might sound like a mouthy way of saying “write what you know,” or maybe even “write what you feel.” But it’s more along the lines of “write what makes you feel.”

The rest of this post will rely on a pathology known as ODR (Old Dude Reminiscing), but I promise to spill something useful before I have to nap. My pitch is less the knowing that your character would rather have two olives in her martini than one; it’s more that as the nosy, observant, judgmental writer that you are, the world has given you endless olives—so employ your toothpick.

Siblings Torture You? Get Even: Write About Them

Let’s get into it: it starts at home. When I was about ten, starting to enjoy pop music, my older sister was deep into jazz. Since I couldn’t touch her records, when she would leave the house, I’d put on her Hugh Masekela and have my brain cleaved. I didn’t like it—I had a visceral “what is this shit?” reaction of dismay and confusion. That boy’s mind stutter belongs in a character’s mind.

Baseball meant everything to me as an adolescent. I was love-struck by Sandy Koufax, knocked asunder by Willie Mays. I wouldn’t have expressed it as such, but what made my eyes glitter was their art, the extraordinary confluence of physical grace and grit, a mastery that yet saw regular failure, because that’s baseball. That fan’s absorption in a game that produced an indifferent shrug in other people, his blindness to any of his heroes’ failings, his overfull heart—that belongs in a character’s heart.

Here’s a crazy Cadillac fender: for some inexplicable reason, I loved glassware (specifically, drinking glasses) when I was thirteen or so. I liked to go into department stores and look at the wine glasses, the highball glasses. I bought a GIANT brandy snifter, one that a baby could backstroke in, and used it to capture my RC Colas. I’d walk around my house, swirling and sniffing at my drink, while my parents and siblings rolled their eyes. That kid’s strange affectations belong in (or on) a character.

Vegas, Bukowski and Funky Texas: Put ‘Em In

But let’s get out and look around: when I lived in Vegas, I spent a lot of time in casinos. You don’t have to look far in Vegas to find funky Cadillac parts in every face, every twitch, every empty pocket. I was sitting outside the Golden Nugget once and a haggard guy came up to me, holding a Mickey Mouse watch in his outstretched hand. “Hey man, give me five bucks for this, it’s worth fifty. I just gotta get back to the tables.” That guy. That guy, his fractured hope, his Custer’s bluster, his canceled ticket—that guy’s gutter belongs in a character.

Watching Charles Bukowski read, in a tiny performance house in Huntington Beach when I was a goggle-eyed semi-adult. At various junctures, Bukowski was being harangued by some meathead in the audience, but the poetic crustacean gave back better than he got. However, around Bukowski’s 15th beer (he had a cooler of Michelobs on stage), he could only muster a bland “Yeah, well fuck you too” to the guy. Bukowski, wobbly, rheumy-eyed, probably tired of the world’s crap before he was even born—put that world-weariness in a character.

I drove around the country years back and took a picture of some beat, closed-down cafe in a funky little town in Texas (not sure what town; might have been WhereInHell), a beautifully ruined joint, probably from the 30s, great arched lines on what looked to be an adobe facade. There was a massive electrical storm miles away I could see lifting the dry dirt. The peeling green paint, the chipped walls, the crackling air, all touched by time’s patina—that’s a sense of place that should be placed in a book.

Small Moments Writ Large

Small moments have everything too: the woman in the grocery store studying a pickle-jar label for its sodium content, sunglasses pushed up on her head, puzzling at the small letters, suspicious, controlling. Your fellow humans are giving this stuff away, use it. Think of the smashed-up feeling you had after breaking up with someone when you were young—bring that hell to the page. Think of the twist in your heart (well, mine, because I’m petty that way) when another writer has some giant success. That stab and its guilty cousin belong in a book.

I’d like to go on, about the crazy joy I saw in this crazed bootlegger’s eye when I went up to his mountaintop aerie to interview him and he showed me his catapult, his small working cannon and the tiny guillotine he had, along with some headless dolls. Book him. I’d also to talk about how my mom’s chocolate chip cookies are love, but I’ve spouted too much already. So, this is just a reminder that we are all grizzled souls with our own Psychobilly Cadillacs. This mean old life will get you one way or another, but grab some of it in passing, and put it in books.

So, what say you, WU? Do you often pull from your life stuff to paint your writing walls? Do you find it can be the situations that made you uncomfortable or that struck you speechless that supply the sharpest material from which to sift and stick? Do you think you fooled your sister when you gave her character in your novel just a different name and shoe size, but retained the fact that she had crashed three of your parents’ cars?

About Tom Bentley

Tom Bentley is still trying to figure out what flavor of writer he is, but so far he’s a short story writer, novelist, essayist, travel writer, journalist, and business copywriter. He edits all that stuff too. His new book, Think Like a Writer: How to Write the Stories You See is available as an ebook on Amazon. His singing has been known to frighten the horses.

Comments

    • Yeah Alex, those fellow humans, such pawns in our games! Do you think they notice the antenna sticking out of my collar to pick up their conversations at coffee shops? Thanks for the note.

  2. Awesome advice, Tom. What a great way to breathe life into characters.

    Denise Willson
    Author of A Keeper’s Truth

    • Thanks Denise. I just have to remember to take my own advice and be present and open to the crazy kaleidoscope of material out there. (And be able to choose which colorful bits are the brightest or darkest for a story’s purpose.)

  3. I always pull from my life for ideas for characters. In one of my books, the office situation mirrors my experience. Having teenagers helps so much, especially for drama. Love Johnny Cash!

    • Mary Jo, I’m an office setting is a central place in a new novel of mine. While they can seem like surface repositories of the utterly mundane, there’s often seething below the surface.

      I’m with you on loving Johnny Cash; not so sure about the teenagers.

      • Oh yeah—”I’m an office setting …” in my reply is pretty cracked. Just remove that “I” guy there, like all good writers should do, and let the office speak.

  6. omg, I love the highball glass story! And I’ve heard the Cash song many times, but never seen that picture!

    I don’t see how writers write without using all the stuff they’ve accumulated along the way. When a character comes up against something, I have to ask myself, “When did I have that happen to me?” and “How did that feel?” and “How did I react?”

    Fun post.

    • Carmel, yeah, I’m still weird about glassware. Probably why I break so much of it, so I can replenish my cupboard. (Though I turn much more readily to bourbon than RC Cola now.)

      It is funny how witnessing a single moment, an odd expression, a thrown-off gesture from a stranger (or not a stranger) can click in a writer’s head, and you build a dossier: “I saw him kick at that dog, which suggests a person who …”

      Gathering the material is easy when you look; catching its full resonance and using that in rendering a character or situation (in story context) is subtle and hard.

  8. Two of my best sources have been my Uncle Charles, also known as The General (as in The Confederate General), and my cousin’s husband Ben. Both are gun and hunting nuts, and since I belong to the No Nothing Party when it comes to all things guns, I sought out their expertise for my Southern historical novel. They shared more than how-to’s. In fact, I’ve “stolen” some of their terrific anecdotes, including Charles’s explanation of how to protect your curing ham from rats. So you’re right, Tom. All we have to do is look and listen. Stories are all around us.

  9. Tom-

    I am a grizzled soul with my own Psychobilly Cadillac? Substitute the adjective “thirsty” and make it a 1964 Aston Martin DB5 and I’m with you.

    What I like about this post is that you both seize the visual details that make fiction feel real, but also emphasize writing so that you, the author–and thus we–feel.

    I’m glad you hit both points. In most manuscripts authors emphasize not what makes us feel but what makes the author feel good. Put differently, they showcase their best tricks.

    I read whole novels that are mostly a carnival of crystalline moments. (Did someone mutter “Swamplandia!”?) They’re like those oversize goblets filled with clear glass marbles you see on dining tables at Pottery Barn: pretty, oh so pretty, but coldly decorative.

    Then there are novels that revel in feelings but do not once make you *see*. (Do historical romances come to mind?) They’re like a roller coaster ride: three minutes of thrills that fade as fast as cotton candy in your mouth.

    The best trick, then, is to put those sparkling details and moments into service of a story whose events and inner journey lift us out of ourselves, sink us into the world of another, humble us and drop us to our knees.

    I think that’s what you’re talking about, yes? Pulling from your life stuff. It starts with stealing from the factory line but then building a Cadillac that makes us aware that as we drive we’re really being driven by the past.

    • Donald, I would like to drive the Aston Martin when it gets out of the shop. Yes, showcasing tricks is a glittery way to build a book, but there is a bit too much Vegas in it. Funny what you say about Swamplandia—I very much wanted to love that book, and did indeed love many of those decorative moments (because I’m shallow that way), but in the end, I didn’t feel any skin in the book, any blood.

      Serve the story, humble us, drop us to our knees—yes, there’s the ticket! Difficult stuff, but probably the only stuff worth going for. Still trying. Thanks!

      • Tom-

        We should talk glassware sometime. Little known fact: In my office is a collection of Victorian pressed glass goblets. I love looking at wineglasses, cocktail tumblers, you name it. It’s odd. Why? I think it has to do with a fantasy life more glamorous than my own…

        • Donald, I think your interpretation has merit; it’s probably the impetus for my small flask collection, some kind of James Bondian fabulosity fantasy.

          I love beautiful stemware, but I’m the guy who broke one nice Riedel glass by hand-drying it, and then after I read you shouldn’t hand-dry them, I broke another one by hand-drying it. Now I break out the jelly jars for the Cabernets…

  10. I must have been speed-reading (not at all bleary-eyed from visiting the pub last night), because at first pass I thought you said when your sister left you house, you put on her Mascara. Which I later wished had been the case. I loved the idea of the clerks’ raised eyebrows over the 13 y.o. Tom shopping for stemware in guyliner (not that there’s anything wrong with that). In fact, I’m going to use my beer-goggle version of that section of this post as story fodder (with a different name, of course).

    I love how you were able to look beyond the fear and loathing outside the Golden Nugget. And I have been to Hell (Michigan–coincidentally just a hoot and a holler from Jackson Prison–hey, isn’t that another Johnny Cash song–oh wait, I’m mixing my Cash-isms). I wonder if Bukowski ever did a reading there (Hell or Jackson). Ironically, Jackson–oh-so-close to Hell, home of one of the most mediaeval prisons in America–is also known for being the birthplace of the Republican Party (see there? coincidence versus irony). But I digress–or do I? More Cadillac parts for me?

    Anyhoo–I was just thinking about the various ways these past few rewrites have done more than just polish my Caddy. I’ve also added more than fuzzy dice and a furry steering wheel cover (although I think my readers are going to love the feel of the latter). This time, I’m changing out the outmoded fenders and adding power steering. I think there’s a bit more horsepower this time as well.

    Thanks for sharing, and for the earworm (of course I googled the song and played it as I typed this)! And for the laughs. Love your posts (and comments here), Tom, keep ’em coming!

    • Vaughn, I won a Halloween costume contest when I was 12, dressed as a lass, heavily larded with makeup and in a sprightly spring dress. I still have the legs, but the soul patch might give me away now.

      Your conflating of Hell, mascara, prison, the Republican party and fuzzy dice is a roiling river, but as I’m not a therapist, I can’t wade out there with you. But I’m waving from the bank!

      Bolt out of the blue: right when I was writing this, I remembered when I was a teenager and a friend was driving a ’57 Chevy (with an actual “ahh-oooga” horn), and the steering wheel came off in his hands while he was turning. Heart in mouth! We all lived…

      • Aw, come on in, Tom. The water’s fine here in the roiling River Styx. And don’t give up hope. Remember, Joe Willie Namath experimented with all kinds of facial hair configurations (up to and including a Fu Manchu, remember?). There still might be a panty hose commercial in those gams of yours.

        Very glad you survived the Three-Stooge-esque steering wheel episode! Thanks again!

        • Vaughn, I forgot all about Namath and the pantyhose commercial—good one! I would certainly consider it, but it will be challenging to find some nice stilettos that come in my size 13.

  11. Christina, Uncle Charles and the Confederate would have been right at home with the bootlegger I describe in the piece. One could man the catapult, one the cannon and one the guillotine—a fine time would surely be had by all! (Me, while the commotion was commoting, I’d man the still.)

    Let’s clearly catch the twitching of those rats’ noses while they are nosing about the ham—there’s a story to be cured.

    • Cindy, I love old cars (and have literally owned maybe 45 cars in my life) and I had a ’62 Caddy that had a rear bumper so big, so broad and so brilliantly chromed that it was blinding to look at it when the sun hit it at the right angle. The only car I have taken over 100mph (and that probably took 14 gallons of gas to get up to that speed).

      They probably took the bumper off theirs to make it into a corral.

  13. This post just made my day. I love the feel of it, the way you describe snippets of simple daily life experiences that, when inserted into a novel, will make the reader feel. And that’s what I yearn for in my books.
    Patti

    • Patricia, yes, that “simple daily life” stuff often isn’t so simple. A glance can be a lifetime. (Man, sometimes I sound so heavy.) Appreciate the note.

  14. As a newbie to the WU community I must send you an early morning shout out from Vegas. I love your honesty and your message in this piece and the ‘Garcia Looked At Me’ piece.

    Indeed, pausing to observe the patina of life adds to the richness of visual story-telling. I lived in Venice Beach for twelve years and after observing the subtle seasonal shifts of sand and tides, neighbors and tourists, when I moved away I realized that I simply had to write about it. All of it. The cloudy days in summer, the bootlegger history, the thrift shop chic, the fortune telling gypsy women along the beach and hundreds of other little details that made living at the beach a daily feast for the senses.

    The first of what I call a series of place-centric mysteries was just published (a murder mystery/ghost story set entirely in an old apartment building in Venice Beach) and I am working on the sequel which will be set here in Vegas in one of those week-to-week motels south of Charleston. Early reviews have been good exactly because I wrote about the places and people that I knew and loved enough to watch, listen and learn.

    I think one of the highest compliments any writer can hear, no matter what genre they write in, is something along the lines of “I felt like I was right there living with your characters, seeing what they were seeing, feeling what they were feeling.”

    Great job!

    • Eric, Venice Beach, good god almighty! I grew up in Long Beach, and thought that the Long Beach Pike was a funhouse of character mirrors, but Venice takes it hands down. And then there’s Vegas.

      To me, one of the interesting aspects of Vegas is what the “regular folk” do, the bricks of their lives in the stacking. I was the “bad address clerk” at United Parcel Service there (when I wasn’t losing every paycheck at blackjack), and it was enlightening to be a part of the working community not casino-connected. I’ve written about it before, both fiction and nonfiction. The story elements are endless.

      Thanks, and good luck with your writing.

  15. Tom,
    Thank you for this beautiful, exquisite piece. Who would have thought to call the woman examining the pickle jar ‘controlling’? But that one word brings her, and everything about her, to life.
    I am inspired!
    Kathy Daché

    • Kathy, thank you. Sometimes it is just a single word that works wonders. Though in the instance of the pickle-jar lady, I’d probably go with trying to use some action/gestures to get her controlling aspect across. Maybe have the grimace, and the quick thrust of the jar back on the shelf, only to do that with the next jar too?

  16. Excellent post, Tom. A writer must draw on the sum total of his/her life experiences and bring those to the page. To do that, a writer must constantly observe and record those brilliant nuggets that you have so vividly brought to life in this post. Write on!

  17. CG, thanks. Duh of duhs, but I do have to remind myself always: pay attention! It’s the old Henry James quote (and I’m paraphrasing) about a writer being someone upon whom nothing is lost.

  18. Great post. I’ve heard that Johnny Cash song many times, but guess I never really listened to the lyrics. Now, I must go listen again. :)

    You’re a Willie Mays fan, eh? Well, then you’ll enjoy this story: My husband played in the minor league system some years back. He met and played with several big name players, but his favorite was meeting Willie Mays. One weekend, Willie took him to his favorite black bar (my hubby is white). Normally, he’d have stuck out like a sore thumb, but because he was Willie’s buddy, he fit right in.

    Thanks for the post.

    • Rebecca, wow, your husband got to knock back a few with Willie Mays? Pretty good. I had the difficulty of being a Dodger fan, but my favorite player was Willie, a Giant. If you know baseball, you know that dichotomy is an atrocity. Probably messes me up to this day.

  19. Loved this. I think I’ve been putting together MG roadsters for years now, just never thought about it that way.

    • Lisa, “putting together MG roadsters for years”? Dang! Since many MGs are known to loll about in the backyard (or in shops) with their guts lying about, I have to ask: did they run afterwards?

      By the way, I love MGs. My sister had a Midget, and for at least six months, only the reverse gear worked. Naturally we used to drive it around the neighborhood backwards.

  20. Absolutely. I have a romantic view of baseball too, and I’ve worked the game into several stories. I also came across a man’s name, at my job, that I immediately wrote down because his name is so fabulous I just have to use it in a book. And my 6-year-old son’s fascination with geology has provided the framework for my next novel; I have half of my research material already in National Geographic books and videos!

    • Elizabeth, I’m with you on the names. I will hear an odd name, and repeat it to myself over and over. I just edited a novel for a friend of mine, and it’s mostly set in WWII Britain, and his characters have names like Throckmorton Sprocket and things like that. Love it.

      Hope you get good diggings out of that geographic/geologic book. Isn’t it a fine thing when clusters of ideas just seem to ripen like that?

  21. Can you stand a moment of Old Broad Reminiscing? The phrase “book ’em, Danno” takes up a corner of my childhood. But I love that you’ve made “book” a literary verb, so I propose that “book ’em, Bentley” should form part of the WU lexicon, indicating stealthy appropriation of life for fictional purposes.

    As to your actual question, I’ve definitely borrowed phrases and behavioral tics from my past, but it’s more common for me to write a character and then be baffled about their origins.

    • Jan, I am guilty of verbing, and other forms of willful back-formation. I can’t help it; I’m drawn that way. “Book ’em Bentley” sounds better than being the one booked, but those are stories for another day.

      Interesting thing on characters being drawn out of whole cloth. I thought I’d done that with a novel character, but then later realized that her origins were from a girl I knew briefly in my adolescence. It’s intriguing to think of one that’s pure (or impure) creation.

  22. This. Is good stuff. I have little to add, but I do want to go back and read every sentence a third and fourth time.

    Okay, I have two things to add. First, one of my sisters did not recognize herself in my story. The other did. Second, does your mother share her chocolate chip cookie recipe? Because I’ve heard that love is all you need, really.

    Thanks.

    • Thanks Therese (and thanks to you and Kathleen again for your gracious hosting here). But I never touched your sister. Wait, what were we talking about?

      On my mom, sadly, at 91 she can’t actually mix the dough like she used to. She has one of her helpers make the cookies from the recipe she’s used for years, and she supervises the process, but they just aren’t the same. It’s funny: there’s just something off in the taste.

      So, I could give you her recipe, but I think she’d have come to your place to make them with you, and who knows what the outcome would be?

  23. I just had to stop and say that I could have listened (read?) you waxing on for quite a while. I loved the post, but I also loved those little snippets of life being lived. :)

    • Lara, thanks back at you. Many snippets do make up a life, don’t they? Here’s to snippets, staggering or soaring, to come.

      (Cephalopod Coffeehouse, now that’s a mouthful.)

  24. Tom,

    I can’t decide which would be a better career move to ask Santa for: waking up once a week with a dose of your wit and writer’s smarts in my brain or to be immortalized as one of your characters.

    Your post reminds me that one of the great joys of being a writer is ‘these moments’ that pop everyday – the curl of a man’s lip when he sniffs something he would never buy, the way the highway patrolman eyes you as you pass and your panic as you check to see what’s lying on the passenger seat. Everything is game. It’s like the first lines of paragraph’s, scenes and even novels rapping on the forehead. We get to read them before anyone else and without them knowing.

    Oh, ’51 Chevy panel.

  25. Tom, I’m grateful for the thumbs-up, but I’m only smart for about 25 minutes a day. The rest of the time, I am in a comfy vegetative state. Hey, it’s a living.

    “Everything is game” is a great way to put it. And since I’ve been that guy curling his lip and the guy freezing when the CHP goes by (or when they light it up behind me), I know well those novelistic moments.

    I never had a Chevy panel truck, but I always admired them, for their manly stance on the road. And because they used to carry doughnuts in my neighborhood. Another of those old V8 rumblers (and such modest gas-sippers—not!).

    Have a great Laborious Day weekend!

    • P.M., I’m pleased that the words sound like music, because I can barely make a radio work, much less play an instrument. Keep stealing those melodies (and make them your own).

  28. This actually makes me run back to my abandoned short stories and tackle them again with some new ideas. Thanks so much!

    • Hanni, go for the ankles of those short stories, so they’ll topple easily. I know what you mean: I have let a short story sit in my mind for almost two years now, and I just realized how I could write it the other day. (My muse has been in Miami.)

  29. Brilliant post, Tom.
    You saw Bukowski in the flesh? Sigh.

    I’ve got a zillion of these too, mostly places and people I’ve seen as an itinerant voyeur on motorcycle trips.

    A grizzled old guy I met at a falling-to-rust Arizona gas station while Alpha Dog changed a clutch cable, who pitched going in with him on a gold mining operation. He’d work the pick – I’d fund him.

    That gas station ended up in a book – the miner hasn’t.
    Yet.

    • Laura, yeah, that was a fine thing. I wasn’t kidding about the 15 beers, though. I saw Bonnie Raitt in the early 70s at the same club (The Golden Bear) when she wasn’t a name, playing some blistering slide guitar.

      I wonder if you’d have a gold tiara now if you’d funded that crusty old miner. At least the gas station got its due.

 

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