Writing from the Ditch

Last night while getting my fix of televised movie-star gossip, I saw a preview of a movie about Johnny Cash. A snippet of a scene seized my attention. A man was haranguing the young Cash about what kind of songs he should write. I don't like to be harangued myself, most especially about what I "should write."

But this guy had some arresting advice. What he said to Cash was essentially this: imagine yourself lying mortally injured in a ditch at the side of a highway, knowing these are your last moments. What do you want to say to God about how you feel about the time you have had here on earth? Let that pure immediate force into a song. "Those are the songs," the guy said, "that save people."

I got up off the floor--I was doing crunches at the time--to make a note. It's not a message I want in the forefront of my mind while I write; it would make me too halting and self-conscious, would distract me from the characters and the story. But it's not a bad exercise, to play that last-moments game and see what emerges.

Anyone who has come close to death--and I haven't--probably already knows about this. If this has happened to you, did you find that it changed your work afterwards?