The Writer in Johnny Cash

A passage in Robert Hilburn's biography, Johnny Cash: The Life, illustrates a common view of writing in education. The sense that something is written in one or two sittings or within the confinement of an assignment tagged with the full-disclosure of a rubric.

Associating a written piece with a specific date makes sense only to people who are not writing.

So, it puzzles me that Hilburn would write, "Cash always said he wrote 'Folsom Prison Blues' after seeing [the film 'Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison']. In truth, he would write it long after seeing the film."

Cash was writing that song in his imagination. He was thinking about the film. Maybe he was talking with friends about its impact on him. All of that counts.

Writers keep notebooks and think about ideas throughout the day. Some wake up in the middle of the night to scratch an idea into a notebook. Others jot something down while waiting in the carpool lane as they pick up their children from elementary school. Often, these threads of thought are kneaded within the imagination as much as they are drafted on paper and set aside.

All of those moments are as much a part of writing as is the final draft. Perhaps Hilburn meant Cash would polish his song long after seeing the film--that it took many years of drafting and revision, thinking and exposure to other texts, before he finally felt satisfied with his piece.

Hilburn even notes on the same page (40), "...John jotted down musical ideas in a spiral notebook..." That evidence exists. We also have evidence that Cash thought about songs and ideas for years, using music that he had been exposed to as mentor texts to guide and inspire his writing.

Associating writing with every other subject in school, students tend to think of writing as a one shot deal, an assignment that begins at the rubric and ends at the rubric.  Many of us don't ask students to keep a writer's notebook with the expectation that they could write in and about any class in addition to English.

For instance, given a math concept, students practice with fixed problems until they master it enough to use it in mastering the next concept, and so on. A teacher models the formula, the steps, the pitfalls, and pushes students forward. Find the answer. How did you find the answer? Try it again, etc. Math seems very much centered on one moment of thinking--I have these numbers in this situation--how do I handle them?

What opportunities we miss by not having students write, ask why, or even reflect on themselves in the same notebook that they use in their English class. Too often, students do not see writing in subjects other than English as writing.

They just see it as (sigh) work.

Labs in science seem to relate similarly to math. Learn the concept, examine it--when you know it, explore the next concept.

Again, where is the opportunity to write about what they want? Where are the opportunities to write casually and informally as much as we ask them to write formally? Are those pieces written in the journal they keep for English? Or in a common place for all of their writing and sketching?

Social Studies, like math and science, hones in on a specific, fixed, piece of information. Students might work on connections and dig into cause and effect, but once the conversation ends, it is on to the next decade.

Do students come back to ideas they maybe could have scribbled in their writer's notebook three units ago?

Unfortunately, writing finds itself pulled into the gravitational field of convergent thinking. Students come to think of writing in one, similar way, often asking: what is my topic, how long should it be, and where is my rubric? Writing becomes an assignment with a born on date and expiration date.

They have been trained that there is one way to do it, and that one way will lead me to an A.
And when it is done--when students have satisfied the assignment--it ends and they expect the next assignment to come churning along.

Real world writing doesn't happen that way.

I don't care if you are an author, journalist, musician, research technician, chemist, or detective. Writing is recursive. Writers come back to old notes, scribblings, sketches and writers revise in their brain as much as on paper. We sit at red lights or drive along empty country roads and think about the idea we are trying to frame, solve, or share.

Writing takes place over time, in bits and pieces. All writing is a product of our experiences, no matter how fictional or fantastical, informative or argumentative. All writing in all subjects can be creative because of the decisions we make, and all writing has ephemeral elements to it. Ideas slip from our brain all the time--hence, keeping a journal, coming back to a shaving of a thought or an experience. It is ok to go back to something you thought about three months and tease that thought out.

We don't work on that much in public education. We are very much in the moment, aren't we? Preparing the students to write to the prompt on a test, a prompt they see for the very first time in the heat of the moment. Yes, we teach them to brainstorm and outline and draft and then do their best to write a coherent essay as the minutes trickle away.

But is that writing? Is that what people do once they escape public education? I think people believe that it is writing; otherwise, Hilburn would catch his mistake in suggesting that Cash didn't really write his song in the moment he was moved by a film.

If we want to develop people who write or teachers who engage in writing across the curriculum then we need to help each other rethink what writing is.

It isn't a report. Or a rubric driven assignment. Or something you do while someone holds a stopwatch over your head.

Writing is power. Cash felt moved by that film, and he knew he needed to express himself by writing...but he had to do a hell of a lot of drafting first, and sometimes drafting looks like talking, daydreaming, thinking...it looks like a lot of things other than writing coherent phrases and clauses on paper. It took him years to do it.

That is real writing.

Over time, writing can show us how our kids are thinking, because students who write clearly, think clearly. But it doesn't happen in one day just because we give an assignment. That is no more likely than Johnny Cash writing "Folsom Prison Blues" on any one day.

The lyrics to that song can show you what Cash had been thinking about for a very long time...not just over a weekend:

When I was just a baby, my Momma told me, Son,
Always be a good boy, don't ever play with guns.
But I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
When I hear that whistle blowing, I hang my head and cry.

As a matter of fact, Cash used one of the great tools of writers, a mentor text. Look at how his lyrics match Crescent City Blues, written by Gordon Jenkins:

When I was just a baby, my Momma told me, Sue,
When you're grown up, I want that you should go and see and do.
But I'm stuck in Crescent City just watching life mosey by
When I hear that whistle blowing, I hang my head and cry.

Imagine being able to talk to the writer in Johnny Cash, and ask him to tell you about where the idea for 'Folsom Prison Blue's came from, and then explain the effect 'Crescent City Blues' had on him, or the film 'Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison'...

Tell me about why it matters to you, John? Dig deeper, why is it important to your reader/listener?

Writing allows our kids to explore topics and formats of interests, it opens the door to mini-conversations with students, and it invites opportunities to share, and grow, and learn.

If we create nothing original, we have little to share that has any meaning to us.

And we know that collaboration and sharing is one of the most powerful tools in helping people learn and improve their work--especially when the teacher writes and shares...and struggles. Because when you struggle, when your writing takes time and is stretched out over days or weeks, you discover that you begin thinking about your writing in your car, or while washing the dishes, or walking the dog. And you understand the struggle of the writer...and the struggle of your students.

When we have those experiences, we learn to understand why computers can't score our writing, and why we can't hand essays to a third-party to assess--especially if that person is not conferencing with the young writers. Scoring writing without conversation misses enormous opportunities for growth because writing should not be about the score.

It should be about taking the time to read it and then talk about it. Hear from the writer. Let the writers talk with each other. And guide them as you listen and share your own work.

And we do have time. You do have time. Actually, we all have the same amount of time in a day.

It is just how you choose to use it.