Skip to main content

A list of thirty “essentials”

Among the writings Jack Kerouac set down specifically about his Spontaneous Prose method, the most concise would be Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, a list of thirty “essentials”.

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy

2. Submissive to everything, open, listening

3. Try never to get drunk outside your own house

4. Be in love with your life

5. Something that you feel will find its own form

6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

7. Blow as deep as you want to blow

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

9. The unspeakable visions of the individual

10. No time for poetry but exactly what is

11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest

12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you

13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time

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

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

17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself

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

19. Accept loss forever

20. Believe in the holy contour of life

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

22. Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better

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

24. No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language & knowledge

25. Write for the world to read and see your exact pictures of it

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

27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness

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

29. You’re a Genius all the time

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

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Rodentia

Last night they discovered a human in the sewers, screamed the headline on Daily Vermin Times. Ed Rat paused to scan the headline and sipped his morning tea. He was in charge of the highly successful Human Extermination Programme. He came from the highly acclaimed family of rats that had unleashed Plague on the frail human race centuries ago. At that time rats used to be in the sewers and the humans used to be outside. Maybe they too had a Vermin Extermination Program. How ironic, thought Ed. We were destined to rule the world. We withstood their poison and laboratory tests. In fact, the tests made us stronger and resistant to the diseases. Now look at them hiding in sewers away from us, fearing us. The telephone rang. Ed woke with a start from his reverie. There must be something wrong, he thought. My room has shrunk, there are metal bars everywhere. It looks like a cell. I can see my cousins in another cell. They are all playing with something. What's this lump on my hand? What&#

Hallucinations

It is an ear worm for sure, the doctor sounded confident. Ear worms, this guy is out of his mind. Aren't they harmless musical notes that get stuck on your mind? Well, my case was different. What got stuck was a piece of a ringtone. Something that sounded like the lovechild of a heavy metal riff and a banshee. It kept ringing and ringing till I became a sleep deprived zombie. Everything started because of that rotten room mate of yours. The junkie who had that ringtone from some progressive goth metal band. I was sleeping peacefully and then the blasted phone started ringing. It was so loud that it even impregnated my brain. Now, all I need is it to stop ringing. How do I do that? It might stop when the battery runs out. Excuse me doctor, could you please check how long my battery will last? As soon as the morphine kicks in, your battery will die. Then you can sleep peacefully. The doctor's voice echoed from somewhere up there. He looked up and saw a galaxy of halogen stars fad