| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: 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
who should never have made a run. Anybody can write a short
story - a bad one, I mean - who has industry and paper and
time enough; but not every one may hope to write even a bad
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs: fierce inmates of the palace into the most frightful uproar
I have ever heard.
I feared that it would not be long before intelligence or
instinct would draw them from the interiors and set them
upon our trail, the river. Nor had we much more than
reached it when a lion bounded around the corner of the
edifice we had just quitted and stood looking about as
though in search of us.
Following, came others, while Victory and I crouched in
hiding behind a clump of bushes close to the bank of the
river. The beasts sniffed about the ground for a while, but
Lost Continent |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: of which, though serving for food in various ways, lay in
heaps decaying on the ground. In front of us there was an
extensive brake of wild sugar-cane; and the stream was
shaded by the dark green knotted stem of the Ava, -- so famous
in former days for its powerful intoxicating effects. I
chewed a piece, and found that it had an acrid and unpleasant
taste, which would have induced any one at once to
have pronounced it poisonous. Thanks to the missionaries,
this plant now thrives only in these deep ravines, innocuous to
every one. Close by I saw the wild arum, the roots of which,
when well baked, are good to eat, and the young leaves
The Voyage of the Beagle |
