| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: Norris, who found himself a ganger on the line in the regular
staff of navvies. His camp was pitched in a grey wilderness of
rock and forest, far from any house; as he sat with his mates
about the evening fire, the trains passing on the track were their
next and indeed their only neighbours, except the wild things of
the wood. Lovely weather, light and monotonous employment,
long hours of somnolent camp-fire talk, long sleepless nights,
when he reviewed his foolish and fruitless career as he rose and
walked in the moonlit forest, an occasional paper of which he
would read all, the advertisements with as much relish as the
text: such was the tenor of an existence which soon began to
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: The introduction of these details developed a particular
ability of hand; and that ability, childishly indulged, has
led to the works that now amaze us on a railway journey. A
man of the unquestionable force of M. Zola spends himself on
technical successes. To afford a popular flavour and attract
the mob, he adds a steady current of what I may be allowed to
call the rancid. That is exciting to the moralist; but what
more particularly interests the artist is this tendency of
the extreme of detail, when followed as a principle, to
degenerate into mere FEUX-DE-JOIE of literary tricking. The
other day even M. Daudet was to be heard babbling of audible
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Case of The Lamp That Went Out by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: has to linger in torture for weeks. No, Bormann, the best I can
say about Winkler is that his death makes one nonentity the less on
earth."
The older man turned to his desk again and the two younger clerks
continued the conversation: "Degenhart appears to be a hard man,"
said Fritz, "but he's the best and kindest person I know, and he's
dead right in what he says. It was simply a case of conventional
superstition. I never did like that Winkler."
"No, you're right," said the other. Neither did I and I don't
know why, for the matter of that. He seemed just like a thousand
others. I never heard of anything particularly wrong that he did."
|
