"Slacking" and a Bit of Jack

I guess it's been over a month since I last posted anything. Most of you probably know that I haven't been slacking (except for blog posting) as I am underwater in my doctoral work. I've also been working on an application for a different job. I'm not going to release too many details yet, but they will be forthcoming as the future brings answers.

I've actually been reworking an essay I wrote for entrance into my Ed.D. program because I'm using the revamped version as a cover letter for this new job. I probably shouldn't put it out over the Internet at least until my fate has been decided. Now, if you want to talk about the economy of words, I've recycled the core of this essay at least three other occasions.

For those of you shaking your bony, self-righteous fingers at me, you're never going to make me feel guilty. At a recent UCTE conference (where I presented), grammar guru Jeff Anderson told me I should repackage my ideas and send them off to different publishers so I can make even more money! Maybe in the future.

Now, as I have been reviewing different types of materials, I came across a little something from Jack Kerouac that I had never read. (My American lit classes never really covered all those twisted, influential individuals from the 20th century.) So, I decided to share them with you. If you are familiar with them, just smile and nod, and bask in your superior geekdom. If not, enjoy; especially you writers:

Jack Kerouac's Rules of Spontaneous Prose:

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
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 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 tranced 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 monolog
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

Check the rest of the website for more spontaneous fun!

P.S. Maybe if you're good, I'll post a video next time. Heh heh.