Category Archives: Writing

Student Essay Winners Announced in Wilmington, Ohio: Second Place Winner

by Editor

essaywinnersCandlelight’s favorite children’s author, Artie Knapp, working with the Wilmington News Journal, sponsored a fourth grade student essay writing contest and the winners have been announced! The students were asked to write about Clinton County, Ohio where they live. Their essays were judged by education majors at Wilmington College.

This is one of those encouraging activities that can really make a kid feel like they’re at the top of their game. It makes them want to keep writing and reading and learning. Artie tells me that Clinton County has been absolutely devastated by high unemployment since DHL moved out. Rachel Ray and Jay Leno have recently done free shows there to help feed some of the people who are hurting. I think these three kids who can write so well are really helping everybody in their county to feel good this holiday season.

Excellent job, kids! Keep up the fantastic work and keep writing!

Here is the second place winner by Erin Wilson, a student at Blanchester Intermediate School.

What I like best about Clinton County
By ERIN WILSON

wilson, erinThere is a lot of places that I like in Clinton County, but here are some of my favorite places.

First there is the Clinton County Fair. I like the Clinton County Fair because I like to look at the animals. I like to show animals too. I like to show goats and chickens at the fair. I love the fair food too. That food is so good I don’t want to go home and eat.

The second thing is the corn festival in Clinton County. The corn festival is cool because there is lots of fun crafts to do. There is lots of good food to eat and cool stuff to buy. I like to look at all the cool tractors too. There is tons of them there. I love going with my family and running a booth.

The third thing I like is Cowan Lake because it is so pretty. I love to go fishing too at Cowan Lake. I love to go sailing also. The water is so pretty. I just love it at Cowan Lake. I like to camp there too. I like to camp there because you can ride your scooters or bikes there and you can have camp fires. You can also just hang out with your family too.

The fourth thing I like in Clinton County is Walmart Super Center. I like Walmart because the food that you buy from them is really good. I like to buy toys from Walmart too. I love to buy clothes from Walmart.

The fifth thing that I like is the Murphy Theatre. I like the Murphy Theatre because it is really old. They have a lot of good plays. I like it also because it is really pretty inside because of all the decorations.

The sixth place that I like in Clinton County is Denver Park. I like Denver Park because it is really fun, and the playground is really cool. I like the Denver Park also because you and your family can hang out there all day and maybe even have a picnic. Or you and your friends can hang out there just for fun.

Another thing I like is the Caesar Creek Flea Market. I like the flea market because there is a lot of cool and interesting stuff to look at and buy. I like the flea market also because all the traditional stuff is there.

The last thing I want to talk about is my church. My church is the United Methodist Church. I love my church because it has a lot of really nice people and my best friends. I have a big church. My church has an upstairs and a downstairs. I love my county, Clinton County.

Student Essay Winners Announced in Wilmington, Ohio: First Place Winner

by Editor

essaywinnersCandlelight’s favorite children’s author, Artie Knapp, working with the Wilmington News Journal, sponsored a fourth grade student essay writing contest and the winners have been announced!  The students were asked to write about Clinton County, Ohio where they live.  Their essays were judged by education majors at Wilmington College.

This is one of those encouraging activities that can really make a kid feel like they’re at the top of their game.  It makes them want to keep writing and reading and learning.  Artie tells me that Clinton County has been absolutely devastated by high unemployment since DHL moved out. Rachel Ray and Jay Leno have recently done free shows there to help feed some of the people who are hurting. I think these three kids who can write so well are really helping everybody in their county to feel good this holiday season.

Excellent job, kids! Keep up the fantastic work and keep writing!

I am going to post the three winning essays over the next few days.  Here is the first place winner by Jared Penick, a student at Roy E. Holmes Elementary School in Wilmington.

What I like best about Clinton County
By JARED PENICK

Penick, JaredI moved to Clinton County Sept. 18, 2005. My mom’s job moved from Kentucky. I really liked my new school, Holmes Elementary. When I began kindergarten at 5 years old, I loved how I wrote letters to my mom and dad.

I like the Clinton County YMCA because I learned how to swim at Summer Day Camp. I took fun field trips to Kings Island.

I love Clinton County’s library because they have interesting books, movies and music tapes. The hill across the street is the best place to go sleigh riding because you can make ice ramps and ramp off them. At the end of the hill boys and girls make snowmen. Children enjoy playing inside the tree that is there.

Tractor Supply is so awesome. I wish I could have everything in the store. I like how Tractor Supply has baby chicks to pet and sell. I like how they sell farm supplies like fence, feed, wires, hats, shoes, gloves, buckets, halters, lead ropes, whips, bridles, toys, go carts, four wheelers, lawn mowers, dirt bikes and wormer for animals.

I like Clinton County’s beautiful farms. I like the big crops of soy beans, corn and alfalfa hay fields. Their animals are called pigs, cows, dogs, goats, sheep, horses and chickens.

I like Clinton County’s sports like football, baseball, basketball, bowling, soccer ball, put put golf, volleyball, track, tennis and lacrosse.

The rock that is in front of the Wilmington College is huge and fun to watch. It also gets painted once a month. When they paint it, the rock looks like it gets thicker. Sometimes people make good designs and words like go Hurricanes and this is the best college ever. Also the rock sits up on a hill for everyone who drives by.

Denver park is one of the best places to run and play. I like to play on the equipment like slide, swing, monkey bars and the tires stacked on top of each other. I like the pond because kids can fish without a license.

At the Murphy Theatre is a very cool building with the stage of talent where people sing, dance and act. It gives Clinton County residents a chance to be a star for the night. In the third grade my class went to the theater to watch a movie called Hotel for Dogs. The seats are comfy and sized just right. I had a fun time with my class mates watching that great movie.

There is a really cool horse arena called Roberts Arena. One of my favorite things to do is horse pull competitions. Some of the horses are black, bay, sorrel, brown, white and redwhite. Some of them are big and strong muscles to help them pull. They have light weight and heavy weight competitions. Horses pull over 9000 pounds to win. Horses also sometimes strain themselves so they can pull. Horses wear harness to work them and control the horses.

These are the things I like best about Clinton County.

Essay on the Editing of ‘The Great Gatsby’

by Editor

gatsbycover1The excellent literary blog called The Elegant Variations has a 4-part post that reprints an essay by Susan Bell about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s revisions to The Great Gatsby through his close work with editor Max Perkins.  Bell discusses the absolutely crystal sharp writing in Gatsby that was the result of meticulous rewrites from Fitzgerald and a strong editorial viewpoint from Perkins that the author was more than willing to acknowledge after publication.

Critical reaction at the time of the novel’s publication noted its incredibly polished writing:

For H. L. Mencken, the novel had “a careful and brilliant finish. . . . There is evidence in every line of hard and intelligent effort. . . . The author wrote, tore up, rewrote, tore up again. There are pages so artfully contrived that one can no more imagine improvising them than one can imagine improvising a fugue.

Here’s another quote from Bell’s essay:

In autumn 1924, Fitzgerald sent Perkins the Gatsby manuscript. The editor diagnosed its kinks, then wrote a letter of lavish praise and unabashed criticism. “And as for the sheer writing, it is astonishing,” wrote Perkins. “The amount of meaning you get into a sentence, the dimensions and intensity of the impression you make a paragraph carry are most extraordinary.” A crucial problem, though, was the hero’s palpability. Perkins explained:

Among a set of characters marvelously palpable and vital—I would know Tom Buchanan if I met him on the street and would avoid him—Gatsby is somewhat vague. The reader’s eyes can never quite focus upon him, his outlines are dim. Now everything about Gatsby is more or less a mystery, i.e. more or less vague, and this may be somewhat of an artistic intention, but I think it is mistaken.

Does the Strunk & White Book Suck?

by Editor

25style480These folks are all in an uproar about The Elements of Style by Strunk and White which has been a mainstay for writers and students for many decades in many colleges and writers’ studios and lawyers’ offices and high schools and elementary schools where lots of people have made their first adventuresome forays into writing and take me for example who can never remember the definition of an adverb and can never understand a past participle or what the heck a conjunctive phrase is so you see I actually need a book like The Elements of Style very badly and cannot really understand why anyone would have such hard feelings about such a small book I mean after all it does contain some pretty useful little references about the english language that can be quite helpful when you are in a grammar jam and the authors of the little tome were perfectly willing to admit that sometimes rules can be broken or stretched or ignored altogether and even rejected out of hand I guess.

Podcast of Henry David Thoreau on Poetry and Writing

by Editor

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In 1839, Henry David Thoreau and his brother made a river voyage in a boat that they built themselves. This voyage became the subject of Thoreau’s first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, published in 1849 at his own expense. In this thirty-three minute excerpt, Thoreau finds himself describing the incredible beauty and serenity of the natural scene around him. But his mind wanders into a profound examination of poetry and the requirements of good writing. His call to man for a life of poetry and his demand that writers create simply from an impulse to action are powerful and true. I don’t think there is a better piece of advice that exists for writers and readers alike.

Thoreau frequently quotes from Homer’s Iliad and other sources in this piece. I have tried to separate his quotes with pauses and a change in reading tone. You might want to glance at the actual words as you listen for clarification.

Here is the text of the reading:

What would we not give for some great poem to read now, which
would be in harmony with the scenery,–for if men read aright,
methinks they would never read anything but poems. No history nor
philosophy can supply their place.

Continue reading …

Podcast Discussion of Thoreau’s Walden

by Editor

486px-henry_david_thoreauI was very interested in a post about Henry David Thoreau at BoingBoing this weekend.  I got into one of those wonderfully dignified arguments in the comments with other Thoreau lovers and haters.  But one of the commenters posted a link to this fascinating podcast episode in which a Thomas Jefferson fan and expert named Clay Jenkinson discusses Thoreau’s masterwork and its connection to the thinking of Jefferson.  It’s a great listen and has me all excited about Walden again.  In fact, I think I’m going to do a full reading the book right here.  Perhaps I’ll start it this week.  We’ll see.  But I certainly think it needs to be read with all the punkish attitude and brilliant observation that I see in the book.  If you want to read Walden, you sort of have to become Henry David Thoreau for a while.  Not an easy task.

Meanwhile, you really should listen to this marvelous show about Walden.

Roald Dahl’s Writing Hut Virtual Tour

by Editor

This makes me laugh every time I see it.  It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on the web related to a famous writer.  So, it would seem that the great children’s author, Roald Dahl, wrote all of his books, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, James and the Giant Peach, and Danny the Champion of the World, in a tiny, dilapidated, filthy old shack in his backyard.  Here’s a picture of his ratty worn-out armchair.  Imagine what went on in this tiny room!  His brain was exploding with all those stories and fantastic characters and he was probably fighting the drafts and killing bugs the whole time.  I can totally understand what he must have loved about his little ‘writing hut.’  It was probably his perfect little creative world.

You can look all around Mr. Dahl’s hut with the online virtual tour at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Center web site.