This week we are posting the third of our three winners in the fall 2010 Writing It Real contest. Rhonda Wiley-Jones has been a traveler since her teen years and, it seems from her essay, has learned to make good use in her writing of cultural surprises she’s encountered. This article contains the essay she…
Category Archives: Revisions – Sample Successes
Revising Pam Robinson’s Essay “Table of Plenty”
Pam Robinson’s entry into this fall’s Writing It Real contest is an essay about her memories of her mother’s cooking and life on a farm. Pam’s initial entry appears below along with my notes on the text. Pam’s revised entry and our contest judge’s complimentary words follow. With the coming of harvest, my memory takes…
“In The Fragments” by Sindee Ernst
When guest judge Anna Quinn selected Sindee Ernst’s essay as our Winter No-Contest Contest winner, she wrote, “A wonderful piece. Writer uses specific sensory detail beautifully to evoke feelings of leaving one’s childhood home and discovering another. Strong ending.” Sindee wrote back: Thank you so much for this great news. I enjoyed working on that…
“The Cheetah, The Spider and Me” by Gloria Orlando Ives
So often as writers we know we have captured something in our drafts and have brought the work as far as we can at the moment, but sometimes we miss seeing what our writing is leading us toward. That’s when we need an outside reader who can help us identify the core energy in our…
“He Was Surprised And So Was I” by Meg Hannah House
Meg Hannah House won third place in this winter’s Writing It Real No-Contest Contest for her personal essay “He Was Surprised And So Was I”. Our contest was designed so that entrants wrote in response to words they came across in print or heard on TV or the radio or overheard in conversations. All of…