Power in Doing and Writing Well

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” Those words from Benjamin Franklin still carry weight, not because they sound clever, but because they speak to a simple truth: words matter more when they’re backed by a life worth telling. Franklin, printer, inventor, statesman, and thinker, never settled for one or the other. He lived so his life could be recorded, and he recorded so others could live differently. His challenge to writers is as much about courage as it is about craft—about the risk of stepping into the world and the discipline of putting something lasting on the page.

Before Franklin was a man whose name would be stitched into the fabric of a nation, he was a runaway apprentice in a strange city, nearly broke and unknown. Philadelphia was not waiting to welcome him. He walked the streets with rolls under his arm, searching for work in a crowded printing trade. The weight of obscurity pressed hard. He wanted to write, but without position or reputation, his words would be dismissed before they were read. Instead of waiting for approval, he printed under pseudonyms, sharpening his ideas without exposing his name. This gave him the freedom to write boldly, but it also meant he had to work twice as hard to be taken seriously. That period of invisibility taught him a hard lesson—worthwhile words often come from lives tested in obscurity before they’re heard in the light.

Franklin’s written legacy rests on the bedrock of his lived experience. He didn’t simply imagine civic improvement—he organized it. The lending library, the volunteer fire brigade, the postal system, and public hospitals—each began because Franklin did not wait for others to act. He knew that written persuasion carried more authority when paired with visible results. His Poor Richard’s Almanack is still remembered not just for its wit, but because the advice rang true coming from a man whose own life showed its practicality. In Franklin’s world, writing and doing were not competing callings; each gave strength to the other.

Franklin’s approach shaped more than his era. He proved that words, when anchored in action, can reshape public life. His writings on civic virtue influenced debates on education, industry, and personal responsibility long after his death. The institutions he founded carried forward his belief in shared improvement. His example still speaks to writers and readers today: an essay can ignite change, but a life lived with intention fuels the fire. Franklin’s standard—write something worth reading or do something worth writing—reminds us that writing disconnected from lived reality risks becoming hollow, while a life without reflection risks fading without a trace.

Franklin’s enduring legacy is not bound in the covers of his works alone, nor in the institutions bearing his influence. It’s in the intertwining of action and expression. He refused to be only a commentator or only a doer. His life shows that writing worth reading grows from engagement with the world, and action worth writing about grows from an examined, purposeful life. For those holding a pen today, his example presses for more than clever phrasing—it demands a voice backed by a life that gives those words weight.

Read Franklin, yes—but also take his advice as personal instruction. Live with enough substance, service, and risk that your words will not need to shout to be heard. And when you write, do it with care, precision, and truth so your work earns its place on someone’s shelf. Start something worth telling. Then tell it so well it’s worth keeping.

The Power of Authors: A Rallying Cry for Today’s Writers to Recognize Their Power, Rise to Their Calling, and Write with Moral Conviction, written by Evan and Lois Swensen with a foreword by Jane L. Evanson, PhD, Professor Emerita at Alaska Pacific University, launches this September. You’ve been reading its heartbeat in these Monday messages — soon you can hold the book in your hands.

 

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