Thread: Kerouac's Essentials of Writing Prose

I was going to post these in the Books & Author's section, but I think they're much more appropriate in this section since they deal with writing more than the author himself and his work. Written by Kerouac in response to questions regarding his writing technique (generally characterized as 'spontenous').

Jack Kerouac was one of those writers who reinvented literature. He climbed in James Joyce’s stream of consciousness car then careened down the streets of Beat poetry and the alleyways of Bebop jazz, creating such novels as The Dharma Bums, Big Sur, and the landmark On the Road. He influenced countless writers and, some say, helped usher in the 1960s counter-culture movement.

Rule #1. Keep scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy


Rule #2. Be submissive to everything, open, listening


Rule #3. Try never get drunk outside of your own house


Rule #4. Be in love with your life


Rule #5. Something that you feel will find its own form


Rule #6. Be crazy dumb-saint of the mind


Rule #7. Blow as deep as you want to blow


Rule #8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind


Rule #9. The unspeakable visions of the individual


Rule #10. No time for poetry but exactly what is


Rule #11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest


Rule #12. Write in tranced fixation, dreaming upon object before you


Rule #13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition


Rule #14. Like Proust, be an old teahead of time


Rule #15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog


Rule #16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye


Rule #17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself


Rule #18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea


Rule #19. Accept loss forever


Rule #20. Believe in the holy contour of life


Rule #21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind


Rule #22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better


Rule #23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning


Rule #24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge


Rule #25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it


Rule #26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form


Rule #27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness


Rule #28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better


Rule #29. You’re a Genius all the time


Rule #30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven


What do you think? Discuss!!!

Well, uh... hmm. Not sure many of these would be rules, or even advice. Not sure what they are, actually. TBH, sounds a lot like people I know who are in love with their own words, regardless of whether they make sense.

"Damn dirty hippies"? :p

Maybe I'm a little too brass-tacks for that sort of thing.

Totally agree with shadowwalker - most of these don't make any kind of sense; they're just fancy words for fancy words' sake.

They makes perfect sense, if you keep in mind the list was composed with rule #13 in mind:

Rule #13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

: )

Why shouldn't you get drunk outside of your own house? You're less likely to break your own stuff if you're not in your own house, that's what I say.

Originally Posted by KyleColorado

They makes perfect sense, if you keep in mind the list was composed with rule #13 in mind:
: )

Well, like I said...

For donkey's years I've had a framed copy of the rules hanging on the wall. These ideas guide all my private writing, all my efforts at being creative. What I write using these rules I show to no one.