Kerouac published a few and reviews in New York magazines and newspapers in the 1940s. He worked briefly for his hometown newspaper, "The Lowell Sun". His first novel, "The Town and the City", was published in 1950. For his second novel, Kerouac wanted to write a book about road trips and hitchhiking. Hitchhiking was safer to do in the 1940s, in America, than it is today. Kerouac stopped and restarted writing this book several times. Kerouac did not want to just tell an ordinary story. He wanted to give an idea of how the people he met thought things through, and expressed this to each other, along with telling what they did and said. He also knew he needed more experiences, to tell a better story.