Jack Kerouac was a Beat Generation writer from the 50's and 60's. He wrote in what is called stream of conscious technique. William Faulkner, the great Lost Generation writer, wrote like this as well. For those people looking to write journals and wanting to improve their technique, following some of these rules could be a good thing. That said, not all of them apply and perhaps Kerouac could have listened to his own rules (esp. #3) better and then his life wouldn't have turned out as it did, but that notwithstanding, being able to get inside oneself and express life is what writing is all about. I provide this for inspiration or entertainment value.
BELIEF AND TECHNIQUE FOR MODERN PROSE
LIST OF ESSENTIALS (by JACK KEROUAC)
1. Scribble secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own home
4. Be in love with yr 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 the 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 traced 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 monologue
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. Dont 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 yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr 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
