The Old Schoolhouse Magazine

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.