31. Write big and write small.

By Yango - March 06, 2018



That's Jack Kerouac's list of 30 rules for writing. I don't think he planned to come up with 30. More like 18 to 20, but he damned well resisted turning that page.

When you need to cover a blank page, write big, because you might run out of things to say, and when you see the end approaching, don't wrap it up in fewer words, write smaller and smaller.

I used to teach my classes this way, talking expansively in the first half, with side roads and pauses, gearing up and pushing forward expeditiously in the second half. I saw myself doing that for more than 30 years, yet I never acquired the belief that there was plenty of material and expansiveness could be done at the end, if there was extra space. I guess I liked the expansiveness, the big writing on the left-hand page. If we're cramped later, we'll adjust, but for now, while we're young, we're left-side-of-the-pagers, let's breathe.

10. No time for poetry but exactly what is...
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time...
29. You're a Genius all the time
Those are the ones about about time. What does "Like Proust be an old teahead of time" mean? From "The French Genealogy of The Beat Generation: Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac" (page 82)(click to enlarge):
teahead of time

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