It’s no coincidence that the world’s best writers tend to keep diaries. If you faithfully record your life in a journal, you’re writing everyday — and if you write every day, you become a better writer. David Sedaris has kept a diary for forty years. This means that if you’ve kept a diary for a year of your life or less, Sedaris is at least forty times better at writing than you are.

Prefaces and dust jacket copy are underrated.

Sedaris, David. Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002). United States, Little, Brown, 2017.