| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: To those who know the literary world of London there was a sharp
stroke of ironic comedy in the irresistible verdict in its favor. In
critical literature there is one prize that is always open to
competition, one blue ribbon that always carries the highest critical
rank with it. To win, you must write the best book of your generation
on Shakespear. It is felt on all sides that to do this a certain
fastidious refinement, a delicacy of taste, a correctness of manner
and tone, and high academic distinction in addition to the
indispensable scholarship and literary reputation, are needed; and men
who pretend to these qualifications are constantly looked to with a
gentle expectation that presently they will achieve the great feat.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: that rattled in the chimney and dislodged the tiles on the roof, she
imagined that he was being buffeted by the same storm, perched on top
of a shattered mast, with his whole body bend backward and covered
with sea-foam; or,--these were recollections of the engraved geography
--he was being devoured by savages, or captured in a forest by apes,
or dying on some lonely coast. She never mentioned her anxieties,
however.
Madame Aubain worried about her daughter.
The sisters thought that Virginia was affectionate but delicate. The
slightest emotion enervated her. She had to give up her piano lessons.
Her mother insisted upon regular letters from the convent. One
A Simple Soul |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: throughout by Rosalind and Orlando; compare, for example, the
first speech of all, Orlando's speech to Adam, with what
passage it shall please you to select - the Seven Ages from
the same play, or even such a stave of nobility as Othello's
farewell to war; and still you will be able to perceive, if
you have an ear for that class of music, a certain superior
degree of organisation in the prose; a compacter fitting of
the parts; a balance in the swing and the return as of a
throbbing pendulum. We must not, in things temporal, take
from those who have little, the little that they have; the
merits of prose are inferior, but they are not the same; it
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