I was 22 when I read the once famous but now long forgotten novel The Titan (1803) by Jean Paul (1763 -1825), Germany's belated echo of England's Laurence Sterne.
The chapters in The Titan aren't called "chapters" like in any other book. Instead each is a "Jobelperiode", "Jubilation period" or perhaps "Joohbilation Period". So having finished say chapter 22, the reader turns the page and enters "The Twentythird Joohbilation Period".
The concept was liberating. Style can subvert. Convention has no claim on any of us.
When I encountered the Jobelperiode I knew there was a role for me as a writer. Not a novelist or poet, but a science writer with poetic urgency. Forty years later, I agree with my younger self. I write mostly for my students. Long notes of precise analytical exposition, with the occasional intervention of the unexpected poetic liberty, the confident breach of protocol. Jean Paul's Jobelperiode has stayed with me.