The 120-Foot First Draft

Evan Swensen
February 5, 2025

Jack Kerouac’s 120-Foot First Draft: The Wildest Writing Method Ever

Some authors draft their books in leather-bound journals. Others hammer away at keyboards in dimly lit coffee shops. But when Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road, he did something no one had ever done before—he rolled out a 120-foot-long scroll and typed nonstop.

This wasn’t some quirky experiment. It was a pure necessity, at least in Kerouac’s mind. He believed that stopping to reload a fresh sheet of paper would disrupt his creative momentum. So, to keep the words flowing without pause, he taped sheets of tracing paper together, creating a single, continuous roll that fed into his typewriter like an endless highway stretching into the horizon.

And then? He wrote—Fast.

A Three-Week Typing Frenzy

Fueled by coffee, cigarettes, and sheer inspiration, Kerouac blasted through the first draft of On the Road in just three weeks in April 1951. There were no chapter breaks, no paragraphs—just one long, breathless explosion of words. The manuscript read like the jazz music that inspired him—improvisational, free-spirited, and unfiltered.

His characters—freewheeling drifters chasing experience across America—mirrored the rhythm of his writing. The scroll itself became a symbol of that journey, an unbroken stream of thought that refused to be contained by conventional storytelling rules.

But as wild as the method sounds, it had its downsides. Kerouac’s typewriter wasn’t built for marathon sessions, and as the scroll fed through the machine, it began to wear thin, developing holes and tears. Some sections were nearly illegible. But to Kerouac, perfection wasn’t the point. He was chasing something raw, something real—a novel that captured life as it happened.

The Scroll’s Wild Journey

After Kerouac finished the draft, On the Road wasn’t ready for the printer. His editor insisted on major revisions, and the final version that hit bookshelves in 1957 was cleaned up, structured, and far more readable. But the spirit of the original draft—the unfiltered, unedited pulse of a restless writer—remains legendary.

And what happened to the scroll itself? Well, it went on a journey almost as unpredictable as the novel.

After Kerouac died in 1969, the scroll passed through several hands before landing in an auction house in 2001. When the bidding was over, it had been sold for $2.43 million to Jim Irsay, owner of the Indianapolis Colts. Since then, it has traveled the country, displayed in museums and literary exhibits for fans who want to glimpse the rawest version of On the Road.

What Does This Mean for Readers?

Kerouac’s 120-foot manuscript is more than just a fun trivia fact—it’s a reminder of the sheer energy behind the stories we love. Before a book lands neatly in our hands, it often starts as a chaotic, untamed mess of ideas. Every novel, no matter how polished, has a wild beginning.

So, the next time you pick up a book, consider what it might have looked like in its first draft. Maybe, just maybe, it started as 120 feet of unstoppable inspiration.

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