All these passages, then, explore different approaches to writing about the
power of the mirror. Now try your own!
CONCLUSION
Playing with language and running with referents are fundamental
approaches to writing, and can be used by beginners and more advanced
writers alike. Although these strategies are introductory ones, they will
form the bread and butter of your writing as it develops, and you will be
able to add many more such techniques to your repertoire. You may use
them to generate finished texts, or simply as ways of starting the process of
writing. Over a period of time, they can be integrated into your writing
with various degrees of complexity, for example a text will usually run with
several referents at once, while language- and referent-based strategies are
not mutually exclusive and will often be used together. This book builds on
these fundamental strategies and they are implicit throughout, but some-
times return more directly. Chapter 8, for example, suggests many more
exercises for playing with language, while Chapter 12 helps you to develop
a particular referent, the city, in considerable depth.
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