As introduced last week, Tuesday is “Book Promo Day,” on which I highlight some of the books I’ve written/published over the decades.
My first road novel, Motional Blur (2016, Skyhorse NY), was the result of tooling around seven Western states in my Clubhouse on Wheels (COW).
A second road novel, aptly titled Book Drive, was published by Bartleby Press in July 2021
This column is the tale of how the COW was born and led to road novels.
The choice was this: Join an exclusive “social” club in Montecito—or hit the road, Jack.
Ultimately, it was a no-brainer: For half the cost of beach club membership I purchased a vehicle and chose outside world over comfort zone.
My own Clubhouse on Wheels. Acronymically, COW.
This 2014 Escalade would be the right home for membership money—and free spirit. It would be about living, not languishing in exclusion. The road to everywhere (full of colorful characters) instead of somewhere around the corner (full of uptight snobs).
Out of it evolved road trips and road novels, based on a methodology I soon created.
HOW TO TURN A ROAD TRIP INTO A NOVEL
It starts with an idea that kicks around in my mind.
The late Thom Steinbeck of Montecito once imparted to me this bit of wisdom he’d been told by his famous father, John, who wrote Travels with Charley (arguably the best road book of all time): “You should carry a story in your head, live with it a while before trying to write it down. You should be able to take a lie detector about your story and characters before setting pen to paper.”
Only then, after months of scribbling notes about plot development and characterization, was I ready for the road.
Or so I thought.
I had planned a cross-country jaunt as the setting for my story. However, the day before departure (in late June 2014), I had second thoughts and changed the itinerary.
My reasoning: Driving cross-country would mean too much time in a vehicle and not enough in the places that provide the aromas, flavors and sounds I’d want for peppering my prose.
More important, a cross-country trek is something of a cliché and I felt my highly original novel deserved a more creative setting.
So I carved a new route that took me from home base in Montecito through Las Vegas and into Park City, Utah—a 12-hour drive—for the first overnight.
This establishes motion. The essence of a road trip—and my novel—is motion.
Such motion needs to be conveyed to the reader as if he/she is present, sitting in a car motioning along with the story’s characters, overhearing dialog, enjoying the scenery and witnessing every nuance.
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road achieves this with “spontaneous prose”—part of the reason for its enduring success.
For that road trip I took along a friend who would partly form the character of my first-person protagonist. I wanted to see how this person reacted to outside-the-box situations and unexpected events; reactions that would later become part of the story I wrote.
Now all I needed was to enjoy the ride; observe and take lots of notes as our journey wove from Utah to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and up to big sky country in Montana before veering southwest and rolling through Idaho, across Oregon and finally alongside the Coastal Redwoods of northern California.
By the time I got home, I had a journal packed with detail and a mind stimulated by new experiences.
That’s when the fun begins; what German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called taking all the chaos and birthing it into a dancing star.
I know from experience that the time to write arrives when I can’t not write i.e., when a first line, or three, reverberate around my skull until, like a volcano, they erupt from my fingers onto a computer screen. Thereafter the words continue to flow like hot lava.
I write the way I road trip: By ending a writing session (or overnight somewhere) knowing where I’m heading next, so I will awaken in the morning with direction, excited to continue.
This—the writing—is the fun part; it is where I get to weave genuine setting with fabricated story, a marriage of journalism and fiction.
Restaurants, and the aroma of indigenous dishes, are woven into my story along with real people encountered along the way.
Even random incidents become anecdotal to the plot, a verisimilitude that can never be accomplished by staying home and researching on the internet.
During the road trip, my friend/protagonist gets pulled over in Wyoming after overtaking a police cruiser. It goes into my novel.
A piece of jewelry I purchase in Boise, Idaho becomes one of the story’s most poignant moments.
While traveling in real time I publish captioned photos and commentary on my blog, Clubhouse on Wheels, named after the vehicle. That blog has now been retired as a private reference resource, superseded by Substack; the Escalade, superseded by a Land Rover Defender 110.
And although I cultivated a readership for my road trip blogging, the real reason for the blog was to maintain a chronological photo essay with which to assist my memory of all that had taken place.
My methodology is based on having a plot and characters in my mind before rolling off anywhere. But it can, of course, work the other way around: Take a road trip and become inspired by all the new stimuli and knowledge you collect.
At the very least, you bring your senses alive and clear your mind.
At best, you might stumble into the story of your life.
A road trip is a metaphor for living and, better than any other exercise, teaches you that life is not about the destination. It is about the journey.
https://www.amazon.com/Motional-Blur-Novel-Robert-Eringer/dp/1510711147