Let's Get Back to Kerouac: #8 Belief & Technique for Modern Prose

Yes folks, it's time to get back to Kerouac and his writing tips. All you legions and hordes of readers of my riveting blog will recall that a while ago (when was it?) I set out to write up a commentary on the a list by Kerouac called Belief & Technique for Modern Prose List of Essentials. My plan at that stage was to do one a day-and I kept that up for a week. Alas, I found it too much for some reason at that point. I think probably I was wanting to think of other things (not to mention my need to rid myself of the compulsion and rigidity when it comes to aims, goals and things I set out to do).
So, here we go again. This time it will be more of an occasional revisiting of the list. Well, I expect we will eventually reach the end: there are only 30 items in the list. But they are pretty wild items, and really get you thinking about writing, and your role and place as a writer. For the tiny minority of blog readers who haven't seen my commentaries thus far, please feel free to go back and read the Introduction, which is followed, of course, by posts which include my commentaries on the items I've covered up till now. Now, here we go folks.

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

Now, don't say you always write what you want: who does in reality? Well I guess there are some people who just write what they like for themselves for fun kind of thing. Then there are the obsessive journal keepers (cest moi!) whose meanderings will never be viewed by another. Of course, for my part, I plan on leaving mine to some library: must be somewhere a library which collects the journals of people other than the famous ones.
But, for most of us, writing is about having it read. After all, isn't that what writing is about? A vehicle to communicate ideas, stories and other stuff to a wider audience? And few, very few of us can claim that all that we've written is exactly what we have wanted to write without exception. After all, even writers gotta eat, right?
What Kerouac is saying is just write what you want. That's it. Forget eating. Forget the requirements, restrictions and other freedom killing dictates of the world and its money making minions. See? Simple. No crap. Just write. Like I'm doing here I guess (gee how lucky can you readers get? Should be charging you for this stuff!)
Bottomless? I guess this one's self-explanatory, you think? Not sure it is now I think about it. The first 'bottomless' I think could translate to something like, let it all hang out, just write without limits imposed by, well, anything. The second one refers to the writer's (that's me, maybe you too?) mind. Dig deep, try to get your internal censors out of the way, at least for the first draft type stages, you dig?
But it isn't only about the ridding of our own censors and even inhibitions when it comes to allowing our fingers to fly their own ways. It's about digging deep in terms of finding what is there. Long forgotten memories, old ideas, snippets (cool word: snippets) of conversations or of people's faces from the past that rise to the surface from time to time without warning and with no explanation. All these things reside at the bottom of the storage box in our heads.
You can dig deep as in a kind of proactive exercise where you go hunting for stuff. Or you can simply grab hold of the odd things that you see poking up asking for attention from that bottomless pit (I mean that in the nicest possible way of course). How do you put yourself into the right place to be picking up this stuff, seeing as it's buried pretty deep in that pit?
Of course we all know and have heard many times about taking notice of our dreams, writing them down etc. This is a great way to pick up on stuff that is trying to rise above that bottomless place. Then there is the old 'walk on the beach/in the forest/around the lake/wherever' method of getting the whole system open to creative input and it sure can jolt up that bottom dwelling stuff like memories, old visions, and all.
How's this for an idea? Get a friend or someone to write you an opening line. Doesn't matter if it's of the 'Dark and stormy night' variety: the key is to have it written down for you. Then you sit in front of a blank piece of paper, or a blank document in Word, type the line and don't stop. That's right: don't stop, don't 'think' with your conscious mind or whatever you call it. Just type (or write if you're using paper. Blimey, imagine that? paper!).
Many writers have stories that have come out of such an exercise. I wrote one that got a distinction in a course i was on that started with NOTHING but the line, 'This day had been a long time coming'. Nice story too. Quirky and it brought up memories of a friend from school who'd had a hard time, thought life would be over by 21, so he was going to kill himself. (he didn't: he ended up moving states and joining the Socialist Party. Which some might say is a suicide of a kind).
And there must be lots of other ways to either actively access this bottomless place in our minds, or to have ourselves made receptive to what might rise from the surface. The key is to realise there is a bottomless place that can be used for our writing.
Write what you want, from the bottom of yourself and without limitations. You may not be able to use the resultant words to sell to a publisher (though of course you might be able to), but you will have helped yourself unleash (I was going to type untether. I think I like them both, those words) that part of yourself where creativity, truth, honesty and freedom live.

Write the Truth. What else is there?

I'm reading Jack Kerouac's On the Road: The Original Scroll at the moment. Now, this is a very groovy book: so much of what Kerouac wrote didn't end up in the published version of the novel. The names are real (a whole lot less confusing for sure) and there are many scenes, different sentence structures, lots of stuff, that make it a whole new and exciting experience to read.

Anyway, one of the features of this book are the essays in front of the novel itself. They are by all sorts of Kerouac scholars, literary types etc, and they give some interesting new perspectives on this very famous, very cool and life-changing novel (as well as others by Kerouac such as The Dharma Bums, Big Sur and others). In one of the essays there is a quote from Kerouac's diary or from a letter he wrote (I forget which):

"There is nothing to do but write the truth. There is no other reason to write."

That's what he said, and to me it seems a pretty succinct way of putting my own writing philosophy (well, a part of my writing philosophy at least).

Kerouac's quote says two things. First, writing the truth is the only thing to do. And, second, writing the truth is the only reason to write. The conclusion one could draw from this is that all of his writing was true, or the truth. Of course, as we know, Kerouac wrote novels (among other things: his poetry is pretty wild also) about his own and his friends' adventures and lives as part of what became known as the Beat Generation of the late 1940s and 1950s. And, as one who has read the biographies, I know that what he wrote in his novels wasn't always factual: he made stuff up, invented characters and events and so on. Just like any novelist does.

You notice I said his writing wasn't always factual. That's not to say he wasn't writing the truth. Another of Kerouac's quotes (again I have no idea of the exact source, sorry) says, "The truth is the way consciousness really digs everything that happens." In other words the truth is in the eyes of the beholder. Anyone who has read Kerouac will tell you that he always went for the essence of whatever was going on; he was very intense, always open and looking for the heart of the matter - and the people, places and goings on he was involved with.

Now, if that essence of heart of the matter stuff had to be dressed up or disguised for whatever reason, then it was okay as long as it, to quote from another quote (the author of which I have long since forgotten. I collect quotes but often lose the bits of paper I wrote them on), "serves some notion of truth''.

There is obviously room for manipulation here isn't there? What if I as a writer tell you that what I've written is true, and I lead you to believe that this ''true'' means factual? It's easy to do and it's done all the time (no need for me to point out the litany of literary hoaxes from over the years that gets trotted out in discussions of this sort). And, the manipulation may not necessarily be deliberate: I could by innocent omission give the impression that what I've written is fact. Again, it's been done.

What it boils down to for me is pretty much what I refer to in the description at the top of this blog: we are all searching for truth, artists perhaps more than most people. but the only truth we can ever know is that which comes from our own exploration of ourselves and the world. It doesn't matter how we dress it up or in what terms we define it or whatever; all that matters is that it is our truth. And that we are honest with ourselves too. If we are honest with ourselves, then we are by default being honest with our readers (if we are lucky enough to have readers that is). As writers, as artists, that's all that is required of us. Like Kerouac says, let your own unique consciousness really dig exactly what happens.
Thanks!