Ben Franklin with a lighting rod. "Do something worth writing or write something worth doing"

MAKE A NAME FOR YOURSELF

Not past chance or fate just by his own design, Ben Franklin's name is everywhere. On schools, avenues, ships, towns, companies, hundred-dollar bills—yous name information technology, at that place'due south Ben's name. Such renown was the Founding Father's intent, more for legacy than for vanity, less to residuum on honor than to inspire futurity achievements.

"If you lot would not be forgotten as soon every bit you lot are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or practice things worth the writing."1

Franklin was 32 years former when he quoted this phrase in the 1738 print of Poor Richard's Almanac, his all-time-selling yearly publication containing weather, calendars, and proverbial advice to alive one's best life: healthy, wealthy, and wise. By this fourth dimension, Ben had already fabricated a proper noun for himself, founding the Junto, or Leather Apron Club, in 1727, and becoming publisher of The Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729.

The family name itself represented a legacy of freedom. Equally Franklin's biographer Walter Isaacson describes his ancestors, "Proud just without great pretension, assertive of their rights every bit members of an independent middle course, these freeholders came to be known as franklins, from the Center English give-and-take 'frankeleyn,' meaning freeman."2

It's ironic that Franklin uses a pseudonym, Richard Saunders, to share communication on making a name for oneself.3 Merely maybe such artistic self-reinvention is exactly how to make a name people volition remember.

According to Thomas Fuller's version of the quote (Franklin's likely source), "If thou wouldest win Immortality of Name, either do things worth the writing, or write things worth the reading."4 Franklin's folksy twist replaces the religious vibe of immortality with an all-American entrepreneurial instinct to build a memorable reputation and legacy.

Three decades would laissez passer earlier Franklin started writing his memoirs, notwithstanding in the meantime he was making a name for himself past writing things worth reading and doing things worth writing.

BE Self-Fabricated

By the time Franklin was 42 years onetime in 1748, his press business had made him rich enough to retire. At present "master of [his] own fourth dimension," he was free to pursue public service and Enlightenment; to unite the colonies, experiment with electricity, and flirt with French ladies, to name a few of his post-retirement exploits. He besides purchased enslaved persons, though eventually he subscribed to abolition.five

All the while, in real time, he was writing his life story, and the collective story of American life, through letters, papers, and texts such as Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1751), "Programme of Wedlock" (1754), The Way to Wealth (1758)—oh, and the "Announcement of Independence" (1776).

Franklin started seriously writing the Autobiography in 1771, put information technology on ice during the American Revolution, so picked information technology up in 1784. Published in 1794, Franklin's Autobiography made him "the hero of countless…cocky-made businessmen" and "came to personify the American dream."half dozen

According to the Library of Congress, the Autobiography "maps out a strategy for self-made success." Information technology was created "over the grade of several decades and never completed."7 Autobiography is a lifelong act, never complete, ever ongoing. This messy resemblance to life is not a error but a virtue that makes Franklin'south Autobiography worth reading.

PUT YOUR LIFE INTO WRITING

In the Autobiography , Franklin tells his son that he wouldn't mind repeating his life over again, if only he had "the advantages authors have in a 2d edition to correct some faults of the start." If such a second risk is incommunicable, he writes, "the side by side thing well-nigh similar living one's life over once more seems to exist a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable equally possible by putting information technology down in writing." 8

Franklin'southward success justified committing his life to writing. "Having emerged from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a country of affluence and some degree of reputation in the earth," Franklin thought "posterity may like to know" about his virtues and experiences, "every bit they may find some of them suitable to their own situations, and therefore fit to be imitated."9

However, Franklin's life writing was ever proactive and future-facing, never but a retrospective recollection of by deeds just a artistic act that fabricated his life successful from the start. As he wrote in the Autobiography, "writing has been of great employ to me in the grade of my life, and was a principal means of my advancement."10

Gordon S. Forest remarks that "Franklin realized, equally all the Founders did, that writing competently was such a rare talent…that anyone who could do it well immediately attracted attention."11 From his youth as a printer's apprentice to his career as a successful publisher and prolific author, Franklin used words not to describe action simply to accept it.

DECLARE INDEPENDENCE

Like the telling of Franklin'due south life story, the Declaration of Independence transcends words to become activeness. Information technology creates a new reality as much as information technology retells an existing tale, proving that one can "write things worth reading" and "practice things worth writing" at the same time.

Half a century earlier, the sixteen-twelvemonth-one-time Benjamin Franklin posed equally a widow named Silence Dogood and wrote a fictional autobiography "To the Author of the New-England Courant" on Apr 2, 1722. Having been rejected past publishers, Franklin's reason for telling the widow's life story is that "People, at present a days, are unwilling either to commend or dispraise what they read" unless they know "who or what the Writer of it is, whether he be poor or rich, one-time or young," educated or not.12

Then Franklin, impersonating the widow Silence, starts "with a short Account of my past Life and present Condition" for the reader to "judge whether" Franklin'due south words "are worth his reading."13 In the 21st century context of fake news and deep fakes, Franklin's critique of authorship is questionable. Shouldn't nosotros intendance who the writer is before nosotros judge whether something is worth reading?

However, nosotros can subscribe to Franklin's founding intentions: to make a name for oneself, to exist cocky-fabricated, to declare independence from the tyranny of 1's by circumstances and nowadays state of affairs. Today, entrepreneurs are democratizing life writing, making information technology easier than ever to write things worth reading while doing things worth writing.

Aaron Lee Greenberg, PhD is co-founder of Biograph and lecturer at the Schoolhouse of the Art Establish of Chicago. Aaron's publications include "Reviving Vitalism in King Lear" and Recorded Time: How to Write the Time to come.

SOURCES

1 Richard Saunders [i.e. Benjamin Franklin] Poor Richard, An Almanack For the Yr of Christ 1738, Being the Second after Leap Year (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: B. Franklin). Images from Historical Society of Pennsylvania; accessed at rarebookroom.org on July twenty, 2021).

ii Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, 5.

iii "Poor Richard's Almanac And Other Activities," in Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Frank Woodworth Pine (New York: Henry Hold and Visitor, 1916): https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm

iv Thomas Fuller, Introductio Ad Prudentiam: Or, Directions, Counsels, And Cautions, Tending to Prudent Management of Affairs In Common Life(London: Printed for West. Innys, 1731). https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000329530; https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015036016064&view=1up&seq=64&q1=write%20things

5 Wood, Grand. S. and Theodore Hornberger, "Benjamin Franklin." Encyclopedia Britannica, April 13, 2021. https://world wide web.britannica.com/biography/Benjamin-Franklin

half dozen Woods, Chiliad. South. and Theodore Hornberger, "Benjamin Franklin." Encyclopedia Britannica, April 13, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benjamin-Franklin

seven "Finding Franklin: A Resources Guide," Library of Congress: https://world wide web.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/franklin/autobiography.html

eight Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Frank Woodworth Pine (New York: Henry Hold and Company, 1916), https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm

9 Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Frank Woodworth Pine (New York: Henry Agree and Visitor, 1916), https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm

10 Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Frank Woodworth Pine (New York: Henry Hold and Visitor, 1916), https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20203/20203-h/20203-h.htm

xi Forest, Chiliad. S. and Theodore Hornberger, "Benjamin Franklin." Encyclopedia Britannica, April 13, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Benjamin-Franklin

12 Franklin, Benjamin. "The New England Courant: Silence Dogood Messages." Ushistory.org, Independence Hall Association, www.ushistory.org/franklin/courant/silencedogood1.htm.

13 Ibid.

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