Three weeks ago I got fired. When I got the news, I wasn’t worried as I was already onto my next thing. Copying dead people.
I have always been a good public speaker, a good graphic designer, a good drawer. However, I have always been bad at one art. Writing.
But with AI copy poisoning the internet (and a whole lot of free time), it was finally the kick in the butt I needed to get better at this lost art.
So in a pursuit to learn more, I constantly heard the advice that ‘the best way to become a better writer is to copy writing you already love’. The only problem? Most of the writers I love are dead.
Instead of letting that stop me, I visited the dead through their archived works on the internet and started to see the styles of writing more clearly. I would read the article, then write it down. Verbatim.
The biggest thing I learned from the dead is how good writers piece together a sentence. It’s a long thoughtful whimsical sentence. Then a tight reply. Then a very long sentence to take the reader and cast the line deeper into the ocean just to pull them back up to the surface. But it’s also crystal clear (and they love their parentheses to capture attention).
So while everyone expects a job search, I'm burying mine to write from the dead.