He dug the hole, in a sport where there were no strawberry plants, before he studied the pigeons. He had never seen a bird this close before. The feathers were more wonderful than dog's hair, for each filament was shaped within the shape of the feather, and the feathers in turn were trimmed to fit a pattern that flowed without error across the bird's body. He lost himself in the geometrical tides as the feathers now broadened and stiffened to make an edge for flight, now softened and constricted to cup warmth around the mute flesh. And across the surface of the infinitely adjusted yet somehow effortless mechanics of the feathers, played idle designs of color, no two alike, designs executed, it seemed, in a controlled rapture, with a joy that hung level in the air and behind him. Yet these birds bred in the millions and were exterminated as pests. Into the fragrant open earth he dropped one broadly banded in slate shades of blue, and on top of another, mottled all over in rhythms of lilac and gray. The next was almost wholly white, but for a salmon glaze at its throat. As he fitted the last two, still pliant, on the top, and stood up, crusty coverings were lifted from him, and with a feminine, slipping sensation along his nerves that seemed to give the air hands, he was robed in this certainty: that the God who had lavished such craft upon these worthless birds would no destroy His whole Creation by refusing to let David live forever.

WRITE LIKE A PERSON, NOT LIKE A MACHINE.   Sometimes writing is a machinelike assembling of words, an automatic response. You could write a letter, for example, without doing any original thinking at all. If a machine  had recorded the burying of six pigeons it might have written something like this:  "Today I buried six pigeons. They had beautifully colored feathers." The machine has given an account, but it has not responded to it. It has not taken the outside event within itself and mixed it with complex and absolutely personal memories, ideas, bits of information, ideas. There has been no personal response.  If you're going to write anything that is "real" than  you must not write like a machine.  Good writing can come only from creative thinking.
REFLECT BEFORE YOU WRITE.  Sometimes people get the idea that writing well is just a matter of taking pen in hand and assembling sentences. It isn't. An idea has to be born before there can be any good writing. And ideas are born only from the depths of our thinking minds. The sentences come at the end of our very personal assembly line. Otherwise an automaton may as well be doing the writing. You may find that you need to jot down some ideas for a piece of writing, then let them be for a little bit while you attend to something else. Or you might want to set aside some specific time to explore your thoughts and ideas on a particular issue. Whichever way you choose,  time for reflection is integral to good writing.

ASSIGNMENT.  Think about some thought, description,  event , or passing comment /quote that you might record in a journal entry and write a paragraph  that gives a full, detailed account of what was in your mind.