| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum: occasions -- when he wore a coat at all -- and the
pockets always contained a variety of objects, useful
and ornamental, which made even Trot wonder where they
all came from and why Cap'n Bill should treasure them.
The jackknives -- a big one and a little one -- the bits
of cord, the fishhooks, the nails: these were handy to
have on certain occasions. But bits of shell, and tin
boxes with unknown contents, buttons, pincers, bottles
of curious stones and the like, seemed quite
unnecessary to carry around. That was Cap'n Bill's
business, however, and now that he added the candles
The Scarecrow of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: book. Knowing well that I have never had one hour of
inspiration since it was begun, and have only beaten out my
metal by brute force and patient repetition, I hoped some day
to get a 'spate of style' and burnish it - fine mixed
metaphor. I am now so sick that I intend, when the Letters
are done and some more written that will be wanted, simply to
make a book of it by the pruning-knife.
I cannot fight longer; I am sensible of having done worse
than I hoped, worse than I feared; all I can do now is to do
the best I can for the future, and clear the book, like a
piece of bush, with axe and cutlass. Even to produce the MS.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Heritage of the Desert by Zane Grey: through the cedars to come upon the dry hole where the pool had once
been. There was no water in the flume. The bellowing cattle came from
beyond the cedars, down the other side of the ridge. He was not long in
reaching the open, and then one glance made all clear.
A new pool, large as a little lake, shone in the sunlight, and round it a
jostling horned mass of cattle were pressing against a high corral. The
flume that fed water to the pool was fenced all the way up to the
springs.
Jack slowly rode down the ridge with eyes roving under the cedars and up
to the wall. Not a man was in sight.
When he got to the fire he saw that it was not many hours old and was
The Heritage of the Desert |
