Today's post by one of Language Log's founders and regular contributors, Mark Liberman, reproduced a quote from the recently published Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol 1:
Finally, in Florence in 1904, I hit upon the right way to do an Autobiography: start it at no particular time in your life; talk only about the thing that interests you for the moment; drop it the moment its interest threatens to pale, and turn your talk upon the new and more interesting thing that has intruded itself into your mind meantime.As I reached the second paragraph I found myself thinking 'what wonderful advice for blogging' - only to read Mark Liberman's comment on the quote, 'This is also the right plan for successful blogging, in my experience'.
Also, make the narrative a combined Diary and Autobiography. In this way you have the vivid things of the present to make a contrast with memories of like things in the past, and these contrasts have a charm which is all their own. No talent is required to make a combined Diary and Autobiography interesting
And so, I have found the right plan. It makes my labor amusement - mere amusement, play, pastime, and wholly effortless.
I imagine that if Mark Twain were alive today he would be a most entertaining and innovative blogger. But given he was a popular, entertaining, innovative and great writer, he'd hardly have a need to blog.
4 comments:
mark twain would have been a blogger for sure! i take heart that we are in such good literary company! thanks for sharing this lyn.
i reckon he would have been too. he was such an innovator. I think some great authors have great blogs - I think it gives them a way to keep up that sense of immediate contact with readers in the long periods between books!
Apparently there's a new Twain biography that's well worth reading.
That's just so Mark Twain, it makes so much sense to write that way when you think about it. Timeless. I do love your posts Lyn, I always learn something new.
Aren't we all Mark Twains in blog land!
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