Circle all the nouns

 From Verlyn Klinkenborg's "Several Short Sentences"...

Copy or print out a couple of pages by an author whose work you like.
(For example, the opening of John McPhee's Coming into the Country.)
Gather some colored pens or pencils.
Choose one color and circle all the nouns.
Pause to consider them.
Then choose a differenct color and circle all the verbs.
Ditto the articles, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections."

***
Now perform the same experiment with an author whose work has a different feel.
(Try Joan Didion's essay "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream" in Slouching Towards Bethlehem.)

Try it again with a page from a different context --
A business article or a best seller or a critical essay in an academic journal.

What do you find?
Different patterns of usage, different lexicons,
Which create, in turn different textures and rhythms in the sentences themselves.

Try the same experiment on some pages of your own prose.
What do you notice?

Make some comparitive lists:
How does the menagerie of Didion's nous compare
with the menagerie of McPhee's nouns or the nouns in a critical essay or a business article -- 
or omething you're writing?