Jack Kerouac Lists 9 Essentials for Writing Spontaneous Prose

"Jack Ker­ouac wants you to turn writ­ing into "free devi­a­tion (asso­ci­a­tion) of mind into lim­it­less blow-on-sub­ject seas of thought, swim­ming in sea of Eng­lish with no dis­ci­pline, oth­er than rhythms of rhetor­i­cal exha­la­tion and expos­tu­lat­ed state­ment...." Think you can do that? Find out by fol­low­ing Kerouac's " Essen­tials of Spon­ta­neous Prose." He pub­lished this doc­u­ment in Black Moun­tain Review in 1957 and wrote it in response to a request from Allen Gins­berg and William S. Bur­roughs."

"[Note: If you see what looks like typos, they are not errors. They are part of Kerouac's orig­i­nal, spon­ta­neous text.] SET-UP: The object is set before the mind, either in real­i­ty. as in sketch­ing (before a land­scape or teacup or old face) or is set in the mem­o­ry where­in it becomes the sketch­ing from mem­o­ry of a def­i­nite image-object. PROCEDURE: Time being of the essence in the pu"

Spontaneous prose emphasizes an unedited, associative flow of thought guided by rhythm and breath rather than formal grammatical rules. The practice begins by placing a concrete object before the mind—either observed directly or recalled from memory—to anchor immediate sketching. Speed and time pressure are central to preserving authenticity and preventing self-censorship. The method discourages revision, challenges conventional notions of correctness, and encourages flexible, improvisatory sentence-making. Cadence, rhetorical exhalation, and extemporaneous statement shape meaning as the prose unfolds, allowing sense and structure to emerge organically from continuous, energetic writing.

Read at Open Culture