Franklin Learned To Write By Hiding From The Answer

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THE TIP. Benjamin Franklin taught himself to write by copying a magazine, and he ratted himself out in his autobiography.

He’d read an essay in The Spectator and jot a few words for what each sentence said. Then he’d put the notes in a drawer for a few days. When he came back, he wrote the whole essay again from the notes, in his own words, and set it next to the original. Wherever the original was better, he fixed his. He shuffled the notes, too, so he’d have to put the ideas back in order himself, and he turned essays into verse to dig for words he didn’t have yet.

He was a teenager in his brother’s print shop. Nobody was grading him.

I’m stealing the drawer. The gap between the notes and the rewrite is where you find out what you think and what you only recognized when somebody else put it on the page. Most of us skip that part and then wonder why our shit sounds like everybody else’s. Set yours next to the real thing and you’ll hear exactly where it runs out of gas, and yeah, it stings.

Pick the piece you wish you’d made. Take the notes. Then close the damn book and leave it shut for a few days. No peeking.

What’s the one piece you’d take notes on? Hit reply and tell me. ~ J.D.