| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: had got patted on the back and paid for them - though not
enough to live upon. I had quite a reputation, I was the
successful man; I passed my days in toil, the futility of
which would sometimes make my cheek to burn - that I should
spend a man's energy upon this business, and yet could not
earn a livelihood: and still there shone ahead of me an
unattained ideal: although I had attempted the thing with
vigour not less than ten or twelve times, I had not yet
written a novel. All - all my pretty ones - had gone for a
little, and then stopped inexorably like a schoolboy's watch.
I might be compared to a cricketer of many years' standing
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: tried the locked door leading to the stairway. That pedlar told
the store loungers at Dunwich Village that he thought he heard
a horse stamping on that floor above. The loungers reflected,
thinking of the door and runway, and of the cattle that so swiftly
disappeared. Then they shuddered as they recalled tales of Old
Whateley's youth, and of the strange things that are called out
of the earth when a bullock is sacrificed at the proper time to
certain heathen gods. It had for some time been noticed that dogs
had begun to hate and fear the whole Whateley place as violently
as they hated and feared young Wilbur personally.
In 1917 the
The Dunwich Horror |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: simply tired, more than usual, after the day's labour. Then in
the hot nights of the south-west monsoon she slept dreamlessly
under the bright stars on the platform built outside the house
and over the river. Inside they slept too: Bulangi by the door;
his wives further in; the children with their mothers. She could
hear their breathing; Bulangi's sleepy voice; the sharp cry of a
child soon hushed with tender words. And she closed her eyes to
the murmur of the water below her, to the whisper of the warm
wind above, ignorant of the never-ceasing life of that tropical
nature that spoke to her in vain with the thousand faint voices
of the near forest, with the breath of tepid wind; in the heavy
Almayer's Folly |
