| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: "What a fellow Popovitch is for a joke! but now--" But the Cossacks
had not time to explain what they meant by that "now."
"Fall back, fall back quickly from the wall!" shouted the Koschevoi,
seeing that the Lyakhs could not endure these biting words, and that
the colonel was waving his hand.
The Cossacks had hardly retreated from the wall before the grape-shot
rained down. On the ramparts all was excitement, and the grey-haired
Waiwode himself appeared on horseback. The gates opened and the
garrison sallied forth. In the van came hussars in orderly ranks,
behind them the horsemen in armour, and then the heroes in brazen
helmets; after whom rode singly the highest nobility, each man
Taras Bulba and Other Tales |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: purple with the strain of yelling; the voices sounded blank and
cracked like a mechanical imitation of old people's voices; and
suddenly ceased when we turned into a lane.
I saw them many times in my wandering about the country. They lived on
that road, drifting along its length here and there, according to the
inexplicable impulses of their monstrous darkness. They were an
offence to the sunshine, a reproach to empty heaven, a blight on the
concentrated and purposeful vigour of the wild landscape. In time the
story of their parents shaped itself before me out of the listless
answers to my questions, out of the indifferent words heard in wayside
inns or on the very road those idiots haunted. Some of it was told by
Tales of Unrest |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: it only to a single reader. He will be unfortunate, indeed,
if he suit no one. He has the chance, besides, to stumble on
something that a dull person shall be able to comprehend; and
for a dull person to have read anything and, for that once,
comprehended it, makes a marking epoch in his education.
Here, then, is work worth doing and worth trying to do well.
And so, if I were minded to welcome any great accession to
our trade, it should not be from any reason of a higher wage,
but because it was a trade which was useful in a very great
and in a very high degree; which every honest tradesman could
make more serviceable to mankind in his single strength;
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