| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: "But the grotesque inhabitants of this forest?" I urged.
"Surely they have no counterpart in the earth's history."
"Who can tell?" he rejoined. "They may constitute the
link between ape and man, all traces of which have been
swallowed by the countless convulsions which have racked
the outer crust, or they may be merely the result of evolution
along slightly different lines--either is quite possible."
Further speculation was interrupted by the appearance
of several of our captors before the entrance of the hut.
Two of them entered and dragged us forth. The perilous
pathways and the surrounding trees were filled with
At the Earth's Core |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: the Islands," it is told in the same breath (with what was left of it,
that is, after the end of "An Outcast"), seen with the same vision,
rendered in the same method--if such a thing as method did exist then
in my conscious relation to this new adventure of writing for print. I
doubt it very much. One does one's work first and theorises about it
afterwards. It is a very amusing and egotistical occupation of no use
whatever to any one and just as likely as not to lead to false
conclusions.
Anybody can see that between the last paragraph of "An Outcast" and
the first of "The Lagoon" there has been no change of pen,
figuratively speaking. It happened also to be literally true. It was
Tales of Unrest |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: She conceived him as rich, but as fearfully extravagant--
saw him all in a glow of high fashion, of good looks,
of expensive habits, of charming ways with women.
He had for his own town residence a big house filled
with the spoils of travel and the trophies of the chase;
but it was to his country home, an old family place in Essex,
that he wished her immediately to proceed.
He had been left, by the death of their parents in India,
guardian to a small nephew and a small niece, children of a younger,
a military brother, whom he had lost two years before.
These children were, by the strangest of chances for a man
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