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Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Kerouac's soup for the writer's soul


Jack Kerouac's "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" is one of my personal favorites in all of modern literature for its fresh insights into the writer's mind.Here are some of my connects/comments/reactions to a few of these essentials(in brackets).The original text is in italics.
  • Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy (the most important word in writing is joy,your writing should be your joy,if it isn't that forget about it.
  • Submissive to everything, open, listening (erasing your slates often to make space for new words,experiences and writing.)
  • Be in love with yr life ( life is the canvas,the blank space and the mosaic its both,love this amazing thing.)
  • Something that you feel will find its own form (form is incidental to content,it will come if you have the content to fill the shoes of form)
  • Write what you want bottomless from bottom of mind (let the thoughts flow from where they are coming,don't put check posts,they dilute the essence.)
  • The unspeakable visions of the individual (if you are a writer worth your salt,find a word,make a word for the unspeakable and ensure it fits and conveys.)
  • Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition (the world will not end with a spelling error but it might be less meaningful without a worthy thought expressed,so let the technical loose,if not all,a few.)
  • Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind (the poems,novels and plays are all there,you have to strive to make them tangible on paper and screens)
  • No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge ( every context you bring to your work deserves due respect,your craft would be lesser without it.) 
Original extracts from the text - Jack Kerouac. "Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" from a 1958 letter to Don Allen, in Heaven & Other Poems, Grey Fox Press, 1958, 1977, 1983.] 

1 comment:

  1. This is a good blog message, I will keep the post in my mind. If you can add more video and pictures can be much better. Because they help much clear understanding. :) thanks Cavalieri.

    ReplyDelete

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The Human Bean Cafe, Ontario

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