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Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions:

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SHORT STORY

Clemens in chair
It probably costs you nothing to write a short story but I find that it costs me as many false starts--and therefore failures--as does a long one. And as the right start--the right plan--is the only difficulty encountered with either, consider what a rascal for time--expense the short story is to me. Ten years and five failures--that is about my luck. I had it with the one in the Christmas Weekly. And yet that one is so light and frivolous and looks so easy, and as if it couldn't be started on a wrong plan,--but I discovered four wrong ones in ten years. I have hardly ever started a story, long or short, on the right plan--the right plan being the plan which will make it tell itself without my help--except after three failures. I think you are safe to tell the advanced class that only the born artist can expect to start a story right the first time.
- Letter to Henry Van Dyke, Dec. 1902

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