| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the
same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.
Chapter 5
In the low-ceilinged canteen, deep underground, the lunch queue jerked
slowly forward. The room was already very full and deafeningly noisy. From
the grille at the counter the steam of stew came pouring forth, with a sour
metallic smell which did not quite overcome the fumes of Victory Gin. On
the far side of the room there was a small bar, a mere hole in the wall,
where gin could be bought at ten cents the large nip.
'Just the man I was looking for,' said a voice at Winston's back.
He turned round. It was his friend Syme, who worked in the Research
1984 |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: hired lawyer Royall's buggy to go on his sketching
expeditions; but that too was natural enough, since he
was unfamiliar with the region. Lastly, when his
cousin was called to Springfield, he had begged Mr.
Royall to receive him as a boarder; but where else in
North Dormer could he have boarded? Not with Carrick
Fry, whose wife was paralysed, and whose large family
crowded his table to over-flowing; not with the
Targatts, who lived a mile up the road, nor with poor
old Mrs. Hawes, who, since her eldest daughter had
deserted her, barely had the strength to cook her own
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: might go on for ever, through all my abortive novels, and down to
my later plays, of which I think more tenderly, for they were not
only conceived at first under the bracing influence of old Dumas,
but have met with resurrection: one, strangely bettered by another
hand, came on the stage itself and was played by bodily actors; the
other, originally known as SEMIRAMIS: A TRAGEDY, I have observed on
bookstalls under the ALIAS of Prince Otto. But enough has been
said to show by what arts of impersonation, and in what purely
ventriloquial efforts I first saw my words on paper.
That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write whether I have
profited or not, that is the way. It was so Keats learned, and
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