Mark Twain’s views on writing still apply for Web writing and blogging

I would have loved to have hung with Mark Twain, assuming he would have let me. He was a technology buff, well ahead of his time. He was among the first to use a typewriter to compose his manuscripts and to own a telephone (he had a booth in his house in Hartford, Conn.) He also invested in a company that made a  typesetting machine, which would have revolutionized printing, if only the contraption had worked. He loved cigars, whiskey and shooting pool—so do I, to my wife’s chagrin.

In honor of Twain’s birthday, which is coming up next month, I want to give the old guy props. Much of what Twain wrote about writers and writing still applies, especially to  Web writing and blogging (I told you Twain was ahead of his time).

On Writers

An author values a compliment even when it comes from a source of doubtful competency.
Mark Twain in Eruption

When an honest writer discovers an imposition it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence.
A Tramp Abroad

On Writing

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English–it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them–then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.
Letter to D. W. Bowser, 20 March 1880

The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say.
Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1902-1903

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself… Anybody can have ideas–the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.
Letter to Emeline Beach, 10 Feb 1868

You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God’s adjectives. You thunder and lightning too much; the reader ceases to get under the bed, by and by.
Letter to Orion Clemens, 23 March 1878

We write frankly and fearlessly but then we “modify” before we print.
Life on the Mississippi

It is no use to keep private information which you can’t show off.
An Author’s Soldiering, 1887

Let us guess that whenever we read a sentence & like it, we unconsciously store it away in our model-chamber; & it goes, with the myriad of its fellows, to the building, brick by brick, of the eventual edifice which we call our style.
Letter to George Bainton, 15 Oct 1888; (The Art of Authorship: Literary Reminiscences)