Writing!
Ilooked excitedly at the small pam- phlet that my sister had taken off the library’s bulletin board. It was a writing contest, with a $5,000
cash prize and a trip to Washington
D.C.! I was ecstatic, but I wasn’t in the
right grade group. So I phoned the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) National
Headquarters, and discovered that they
also hosted a contest for grades nine to
twelve. By that time, the deadline was
past, so fast forward to October 2014 . . .
I had a week left until the November 1st
deadline, so I talked to my parents about
the contest. They agreed to let me off my
normal schoolwork for that time—under
the condition that I’d catch up on algebra
when I was done. So I grabbed my pen, a
dictionary and thesaurus, my laptop, and
a brand new notebook.
I started out the way I had learned
through reading one of my favorite writing manuals and my IEW (Institute for
Excellence in Writing) program. I began
with a list of reasons Why Veterans Are
Important to Our Nation’s History and
Future, since that was the assigned theme
of the contest.
Then I made a list of things I could do
to improve my chances, like watching the
video of the national winner presenting
her essay, reading her essay and the essays of other winners. I also listened to the
winners of the state level competition. I
came up with a hook to draw in the judges, and a plan for the paragraph content.
After that, I got down to actual writing. I use a computer because I can get
my ideas down quickly and legibly. I
typed up a first draft, remembering what
my manual said. It’s a first draft; the point
is to throw down all your original ideas
without worrying about precise word
choice. Now that I look back at the first
draft, it’s much different than my final,
seventh draft! That’s okay, since it allowed me to get all my ideas on paper
and go back to change and edit and polish. I read it over and over, making draft
after draft. When I got to the last draft, it
was mostly little changes: a word here, a
semicolon there.
Then I faced another challenge:
recording the essay, which was the
by Cassandra Barthuly
Writing Contests:
Veterans!
Our veterans are living history books of the wars that have shaped us as a nation.