To write his 1957 novel 'On the Road,' Jack Kerouac used a unique method to ensure his creative flow wasn't interrupted. He taped together long strips of architect's tracing paper to create a single 120-foot long scroll. This allowed him to type continuously without having to stop to change sheets of paper. Kerouac famously claimed to have written the entire novel in a three-week 'benzedrine-fueled' burst of 'spontaneous prose.' While he had actually spent years planning and sketching the novel in notebooks, the scroll became a legendary artifact of the Beat Generation. The style, characterized by long, rambling sentences and a lack of traditional structure, was intended to mimic the improvisational feel of bebop jazz, capturing the restless energy of post-war American youth.