| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: One dim star glimmered in the southwest sky. The sound of
trotting horses had ceased, and there was silence broken only by
a faint, dry pattering of cottonwood leaves in the soft night
wind.
Into this peace and calm suddenly broke the high-keyed yelp of a
coyote, and from far off in the darkness came the faint answering
note of a trailing mate.
"Hello! the sage-dogs are barking," said Venters.
"I don't like to hear them," replied Jane. "At night, sometimes
when I lie awake, listening to the long mourn or breaking bark or
wild howl, I think of you asleep somewhere in the sage, and my
Riders of the Purple Sage |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle: the feeling that I might hardly yet be safe from my pursuers. But
to my astonishment, when I came to look round me, neither house
nor garden were to be seen. I had been lying in an angle of the
hedge close by the highroad, and just a little lower down was a
long building, which proved, upon my approaching it, to be the
very station at which I had arrived upon the previous night. Were
it not for the ugly wound upon my hand, all that had passed
during those dreadful hours might have been an evil dream.
"Half dazed, I went into the station and asked about the morning
train. There would be one to Reading in less than an hour. The
same porter was on duty, I found, as had been there when I
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: English language, then, that was an instrument of one string,
but Macaulay that was an incomparable dauber.
It was probably from this barbaric love of repeating the same
sound, rather than from any design of clearness, that he
acquired his irritating habit of repeating words; I say the
one rather than the other, because such a trick of the ear is
deeper-seated and more original in man than any logical
consideration. Few writers, indeed, are probably conscious
of the length to which they push this melody of letters.
One, writing very diligently, and only concerned about the
meaning of his words and the rhythm of his phrases, was
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