Jack and Chocolate Pecan Pie

Jack Kerouac's Rules for 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

Chocolate Pecan Pie

• 9" pie crust
• 1 Cup pecans (Trader Joe's Cinnamon glazed pecans are an excellent choice)
• 1/4 Cup semisweet chocolate chips
  
• 1 Cup (packed) golden brown sugar
• 3/4 Cup pure maple syrup
• 1/4 Cup butter, melted
• 3 large eggs
• 3 - 4 Tablespoons of bourbon
  
• 1 1/2 - 2 Teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 Teaspoon salt

Preheat oven 325 degrees.
Sprinkle 1/2 cup pecans and 1/4 cup chocolate chips over bottom of crust. Whisk brown sugar and next six ingredients in medium bowl. Pour into pie crust. Sprinkle remaining pecans over filling. Bake until filling is set in center about 40 minutes. Cover the edges of pie crust with aluminum foil or a pie shieild about halfway through baking to prevent edges from getting too brown.

Writing Topics

Shaving wounds
Distortion
Straight backed chairs
Grabbing at straws
Going Greyhound
Dealing with bacon grease
The third opinion that thoroughly confuses you
Half-baked people
Half-baked ideas
Half-baked pie
Melting snow that makes impassable streams
Midnight phone calls
Wrong numbers
Exit wounds
Falling asleep on the lawn
The day that slips away
Insomnia
The absence of waves
Best laid plans
The best planned lays
Non-dairy spreads
Turkey roll
Recipes for disaster
45 consecutive days of rain
Wet lawn furniture
O'Hare Airport
Low fat cheese
Fruit
Emotional tidiness
Family-size Velveeta
Wet wool
Hollow chocolate bunnies
Sex on a metal bed frame
Typewriters I have known and...
Tuneless whistling
Dirty city snow
Threading correction ribbon
Library fines
Carelessness

Process for writing a first draft

Certainly a writer with serious visionary ambitions must embrace worthlessness, childishness, psychopathology, and shame. - Wayne Koestenbaum

• Inspiration strikes.
• Inspiration peters out.
• Work begins.
• Fear and panic set in.
• Story lays itself out plank by plank like a wood floor
• Who am I kidding?
• Keep adding up the page numbers
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Read the story out loud
• Run a spell check
• Exchange one word for another
• Surf the web
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Nurse the child x times a day
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Re-read the story x times
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Change the tot’s diapers x times a day
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Take a bath, a walk, GET OUT OF THE HOUSE
• Watch Survivor
• Eat a bowl of cereal
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Rewrite the step outline
• Drink a cup of tea
• Drive to the City
• Listen to a conversation between my friends
• Realize that clever and abstract won’t carry a story
• Answer emails
• Do phone (friends, business, life maintenance)
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Take the tot for a drive and pray she goes to sleep, listen to Miles Davis
• Play with the tot
• Clear off the desk in the kitchen
• Update my blog
• Make some brownies
• Read a play for possible production
• I am not writing at this point
• The tot is asleep, it’s 1am
• Cruise Craigslist
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Find freedom in structure
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Admit I don’t know where the fuck this story is going
• Buy more cereal
• Compose a grocery list (at least I can finish that)
• Go out for coffee and a stroller walk with the tot (who is not sleeping)
• Sift through past work to remind myself I have indeed finished things
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky
• Focus on the details
• Introduce another character
• Grasp at straws
• Sweep the floor
• Do the dishes
• Offer to do the laundry
• There is no substitute for doing the work
• Write a sentence or maybe a paragraph if I’m lucky