My mentor Mel Mencher drew my attention to this report about writing, from Mark Twain. Note: LitJo master's student Charlotte Atchley is working on final paper about Twain's INNOCENTS ABROAD.
Excerpt from Mark Twain: A Study of the Short Fiction Tom Quirk-University of Missouri-Columbia Copyright 1997 by Twayne Publishers Page 132-135
The paper we have chosen for the first prize of the graduates is very much the best literary effort in the whole collection, and yet it is almost the least ambitious among them.
It relates a very simple little incident, in unpretentious language, and then achieves the difficult feat of pointing it with one of those dismal atrocities called a Moral, without devoting double the space to it which it ought to occupy and outraging every canon for good taste, relevance and modesty.
It is a composition which possesses, also, the very rare merit of stopping when it is finished. It shows a freedom from adjectives and superlatives which is attractive, not to say seductive--and let us remark instructively, in passing, that one can seldom run his pen through an adjective without improving his manuscript. We can say further, in praise of this first-prize composition, that there is a singular aptness of language noticeable in it—denoting a shrewd faculty of selecting just the right word for the service needed, as a general thing.
It is a high gift. It is the talent which gives accuracy, grace and vividness in descriptive writing.
[I can send you a Word document with the full Twain report, if you want it. BH]
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