| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: these swaddling mists, puts on expressive lineaments, and
becomes at length that most faultless, but also, alas! that
incommunicable product of the human mind, a perfected design.
On the approach to execution all is changed. The artist must
now step down, don his working clothes, and become the
artisan. He now resolutely commits his airy conception, his
delicate Ariel, to the touch of matter; he must decide,
almost in a breath, the scale, the style, the spirit, and the
particularity of execution of his whole design.
The engendering idea of some works is stylistic; a technical
preoccupation stands them instead of some robuster principle
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum: 14. The Winged Monkeys
You will remember there was no road--not even a pathway--
between the castle of the Wicked Witch and the Emerald City.
When the four travelers went in search of the Witch she had seen
them coming, and so sent the Winged Monkeys to bring them to her.
It was much harder to find their way back through the big fields
of buttercups and yellow daisies than it was being carried.
They knew, of course, they must go straight east, toward the rising
sun; and they started off in the right way. But at noon, when the
sun was over their heads, they did not know which was east and
which was west, and that was the reason they were lost in the
The Wizard of Oz |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: 'Damien's Chinatown.' 'Well,' they would say, 'your Chinatown
keeps growing.' And he would laugh with perfect good-nature, and
adhere to his errors with perfect obstinacy. So much I have
gathered of truth about this plain, noble human brother and father
of ours; his imperfections are the traits of his face, by which we
know him for our fellow; his martyrdom and his example nothing can
lessen or annul; and only a person here on the spot can properly
appreciate their greatness."
I have set down these private passages, as you perceive, without
correction; thanks to you, the public has them in their bluntness.
They are almost a list of the man's faults, for it is rather these
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