MARK TWAIN_HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

 

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."  

- Mark Twain.

Ghost of Samuel Clemens here. Now, it might be MY BIRTHDAY,

but I thought I would give YOU the birthday present!

We beloved literary artists are like that, don't you know.

While babysitting Roland's apartment while he's off galivanting around on his rare blood runs,

I've wandered over to his friends' blogs ---

who in tarnation named them that? Sounds like I'm going to sink in tar like one of those dinosaurs when I visit one.

Anyway, being the beloved literary genius that I am, I noticed a lot of you have been writing on how to get folks to like you,

to hang after you,

and to put their faces on your "wanted poster" as it were.

WHAT YOU BOYS AND GIRLS WANT TO KNOW IS HOW TO WRITE A SEDUCTIVE BLOG!

The answer is ... Easy.

Be easy.

Be seductive, don't you know.


1.) What you learn by picking up a cat by the tail, you can learn in no other way.


In other words, learn by doing. Experiment. Gals do it all the time. That dress doesn't draw any whistles? Put on another.


Try something in your blog new and different. If no one comments, drop it faster than a politician does morals upon election.


2.) Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.


I mean, make your visitors laugh. Your blog is your home. Folks go where they feel comfortable, accepted, where they leave feeling better than when they came.


3.) Your blog is your Mini_Me novel. (And yes, even ghosts watch movies.)


And like in your novel, You need not expect to get your blog right the first time.


Write your post like you'd write a page in your novel.


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.


The time to begin writing your post 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.


4.) You can tell German wine from vinegar by the label.


By which, children, I mean to not have your visitors leave your blog with their mental faces all screwed up in distaste.


A.) No bragging. Not even if it's true.


B.) No slandering others not there. Not even if it's true. Don't make your guests squirm.


C.) Do help.


You know some of those literary potholes you twisted an ankle on? Point those out to those who follow after you. Make the road you walk easier for the next fella after you.


5.) It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.


The same for your post. Your blog is the only YOU most folks will ever see. Make sure a first time visitor gets the best YOU that you can offer.


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.


And that's all the wisdom I can presently conjure. I must have a prodigious quantity of mind :


it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up. Don't be a stranger, hear? You don't want to miss my next brilliant gem of a post.
***