Mark Twain's advice

Mark Twain is often regarded as one of the greatest American writers of his time. His brilliant and innovative ideas of writing are still relevant and are often used by modern writers to this day. http://editorialengine.com/?p=808 shows a list of quotes from Twain, detailing his opinion and methods in writing. These quotes are all shockingly futuristic and ahead of their time, which proves that this man knew good writing, across all boundaries. Some of these quotes are even relevant to digital writing and blogging.
My personal favorite quote of Twain's featured on this website is "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." I like this quote because it is staggeringly true. I often go back into my papers and repeatedly change around sentences to make them work. More often than not, I remain dissatisfied with the sentences I have formed and eventually abandon hope of rearranging them to my liking. I believe the most difficult task that we, as writers, have is making our work flow, making every sentence sound like a melody. When I write I aim for every sentence to have a rhythm and a feel, and I hardly ever find myself achieving my goal. This applies to blogging because a blog is a public piece of writing which is put onto the internet for others to enjoy. In my opinion not many people would want to read a rambling entry, with nothing to say. But if the writer of the blog can keep their sentences flowing without rambling, it will spark the interest of those following that blog, and a return of an admiring audience is the true definition of success for a writer.
Another quote of his that I particularly enjoyed was "We write frankly and fearlessly but then we “modify” before we print." This quote holds true in a modern age moreso than most of the others because now that computers are common in a household, it has become gradually easier to edit and reshape a work before it is officially printed or posted to a website. With things like spellcheck, a synonym finder, and a grammatical editor built right in to Microsoft Word, editing has become a much simpler task and is utilized much more than it has ever been before. But aside from the helping hand of Microsoft, the computer has made it easier to revise a work of literature with just a click of the mouse and a few key strokes. In modern day America a work is almost never printed without some form of editing or revision taking place first. This quote is also becoming a little less true as time goes on however, because the internet has given writers a feeling of invincibility and invisibility. Due to the feeling that most digital writers have of hiding behind their computer, people have become more fearless in their writing and feel less of a need to censor themselves and edit their ideas. It has become a norm to write outrageous and scandalous things on the internet because writers are able to hide behind usernames much like Mark Twain used a psuedonym.
In conclusion these quotes by Mark Twain further prove that this man was way before his time and that his styles of writing will never go out of style. He had an original and brilliant way of writing and shared his knowledge of language with those around him. We can learn much from this late writer and his lessons, and should all take into heart this revolutionary man's techniques and suggestions in order to better our writing whether it be handwritten or digital.