| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: We hemstitched all the tablecloths and pillow-cases, and some of the sheets.
Old Mrs. Shimerda knit yards and yards of lace for her underclothes.
Tony told me just how she meant to have everything in her house.
She'd even bought silver spoons and forks, and kept them in her trunk.
She was always coaxing brother to go to the post-office. Her young man
did write her real often, from the different towns along his run.
`The first thing that troubled her was when he wrote
that his run had been changed, and they would likely have
to live in Denver. "I'm a country girl," she said, "and I
doubt if I'll be able to manage so well for him in a city.
I was counting on keeping chickens, and maybe a cow."
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: I wondered what my double there in the sail locker thought of
this commotion. He was able to hear everything--and perhaps he was able
to understand why, on my conscience, it had to be thus close--no less.
My first order "Hard alee!" re-echoed ominously under the towering
shadow of Koh-ring as if I had shouted in a mountain gorge.
And then I watched the land intently. In that smooth water
and light wind it was impossible to feel the ship coming-to. No!
I could not feel her. And my second self was making now ready
to ship out and lower himself overboard. Perhaps he was gone
already . . . ?
The great black mass brooding over our very mastheads began to pivot away
The Secret Sharer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Burning Daylight by Jack London: He had heard of stenographers before, who refused their
employers, and who invariably quit their positions immediately
afterward. But Dede had not even hinted at such a thing. No
matter how baffling she was, there was no nonsensical silliness
about her. She was level headed. But, also, he had been
level-headed and was partly responsible for this. He hadn't
taken advantage of her in the office. True, he had twice
overstepped the bounds, but he had not followed it up and made a
practice of it. She knew she could trust him. But in spite of
all this he was confident that most young women would have been
silly enough to resign a position with a man they had turned
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