Announcing our First Annual Youth "Dream Rig" Essay Contest

Re-read the contest rules in the original post.

 

I am a youth to. I'll be entering!

 

Will absolutely be entering. Hope to catch more youth on the air.

73 ya'll!

 

Me to HF is so fun!

 

Now now: Land Before Time Characters are not eligible

Keep the entry clear, heartfelt, factually accurate, and understandable--and have someone else check for grammatical errors. Having read hundreds of youth applications, that's my advice.

GL!

 

t-o-o

Grammar counts.

Take the following example:

Let's eat Gramma!
versus
Let's eat, Gramma!

GL!

 

I remember learning that only a couple of years ago. It made me laugh.

Gotta love writing and English grammar!

 

Lol! Learned this in grammar class, never forgetting it.

 

Clarity and articulation --with at least a stab at proper grammar--take years and years of effort to be 'intuitive'. No one faults the younger generation for making mistakes, except, perhaps, your teacher(s)!

I think Hunter Thompson said something to the effect: 'learn how to write well, then you can manipulate language any way you want'.

Could be wrong on the attribution, but the thought is spot-on.

 

Great project.

73
JF1IRQ

 

Guess we'll have to wait for Al Gore to invent the Internet so attribution can be checked before posting.

 

Read some 300 classic books in your childhood. Worked fine for me, many different teachers, from the craddle of our civilization to dystopians. For this littérature DXCC, I worked all countries several times, no doubt.

 

Why stop there?

 

YW please, you are able to do some calculations, between 1 book a night (contest style, no coffee) to 1 book a month, during, say, 8-10 years? As of today, wished eagerly I was able to read in german too, as I consider Germania litterature and way of thinking as much important as French ones. As for technical knowledge, Germany is, still, THE leading country in the whole World. I will not bet the essay contest subject of this thread could be held in Brazil, simply for language reasons. Yet to understand the existence of portuguese, isn't technical, nor philosophical, its litterature is obsolete, just mother tongue of a few populations... but, prove me wrong, I'd be happy.

 

Reading, as a 'writer', can be misleading. When you read a book, or an article, it has been edited and corrected, likely many times, by more than one person. It's like showing you a painting but not showing you how the strokes, paint, and so on, were applied and corrected for the final result.

IOW you can't 'just' read to become a good writer. It can show you good writing, but not how to 'make good writing'.

James Michener published a book chapter about his wife cooking rice pudding. The ultimate of form over content, so well written that it drew you into the most insipid of subjects and kept you 'glued' to the page. Then he showed the first draft, which would have taken the most interesting of subjects (if that was it) and made an instant turn off.

In this essay, my young friends, have something to say (first), and then read it to yourself out loud. Does it define what you want to say? Does it expand on that one idea? Does it show interesting stuff? What does it tell the reader about you as the writer (this is called 'style')? Did you spell-check?

No one expects you to be John Steinbeck (who himself had moments of crap-titude, such as the book 'Sweet Thursday' , versus brilliant gems such as 'Cannery Row'). But you can't be the kid who wants the BB gun in a Christmas Story either.

MO anyway.

73
Chip W1YW