Rules

Jack Kerouac's works would suggest an author who was not bound by rules, or at least not comfortable with the notion of rules. A list of guidelines for writing, "Essentials for Spontaneous Prose," is full of his trademark shorthand, crammed compounds, and consciousness. Difficult to write or live by, certainly (you would be a mad one to try); but pretty to think about:

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try to never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find it's 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 the bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon the 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 the interior monolog
16. The jewel of the center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement of 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 within the mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see the 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 and knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see your 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

Note that I can't find an original source for this other than other unsourced internet pages; the first hit is wikipedia. So maybe take it with a grain of salt; but it would be interesting advice even were it fake.

Also, dcblogs, thanks for the link!