Jack Kerouac’s Rules for Writing
In the winter of 1948, Jack Kerouac went on his famous cross-country road trip with Neal Cassady. They visited old friends, all-night cafes, broken down bars and forgotten towns. They acquired food, money and gas by whatever means possible and arrived in San Francisco in 1949 broke and exhausted.
Reflecting on his journey, Kerouac experimented with a frenetic, Benzedrine-fueled writing style he called “Self Ultimacy.” He’d fall into a deep trance and write with chaotic speed, channeling spontaneous prose that jibed with the ethos of “first thought best thought.” Like the surrealists, Kerouac believed in the William James construct that “mind is shapely.” His writing style was influenced by the jazz bebop of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis and the concept of breathing as taught in Buddhist meditation. His words had an inherent rhythm and cadence, especially when spoken aloud.
Kerouac completed the first draft of On The Road in three weeks. He typed on a Teletype roll, a single-spaced, unbroken paragraph resulting in a 120-foot long scroll. On The Road was published in 1957 and Kerouac became an overnight sensation. Despite Truman Capote’s famous critique “That’s not writing, it’s typing,” the book changed the face of literature and launched an age of experimental, automatic-style writing.
