Beautiful, painful poem. It stirred emotions in me and your words made it very easy to connect with you.
Thanks for sharing this. Love how you channeled your pain and longing into a well-written and touching tribute to the most important woman in your life.
Very interesting article. The challenges seemed insurmountable but you prevailed. I had a couple of cousins who we used to call "holy terrors" when they were kids because those kids were "off the chain" hyper and just all over the place. Now they are also productive members of society so I think there's hope out there for people with this condition.
Happy for you that you kept your boy on track and he turned out great.
Good essay. You’ve picked a topic that is relevant and actually at the forefront of what’s going on in our country right now. People are going to be very interested in reading this piece.
Your work was listed as a “newbie” piece so maybe that’s what made me want to read it in the first place. There’s a lot of potential in your writing and I want to help you develop a bit so that you can avoid making the same “newbie” mistakes that we all made when we first started. The less mistakes in your work the more it will be taken seriously.
I’m not a rich, published author living off my millions in royalties but I have a decent grasp of the concept of writing and I like helping others out when I can. You can take this constructive criticism however you want but I think if you take it into consideration it’ll really polish up this essay.
First the good:
It’s obvious when I read the essay the first time that you feel very strongly about this topic and like I said earlier the topic is very relevant and has been for a very long time even if it tends to fall off the radar in certain areas of the country.
Your style of writing is almost…I’ll call it conversational. It sounds like I’m hearing you speak. This is a good thing. This makes for good natural flow.
Now the stuff to work on:
I’m one of those readers who cringes a little bit when I see a big, fat, honkin’ paragraph full of words. For your next essay keep this in mind: Although you’re writing about one particular theme (racism), try to separate the individual ideas within the essay. It tells the reader that you’re not just ranting. You’ve actually got ideas that are worth reading and you can still maintain the same passion you had when you first put it down on paper (let’s call that version the 1st draft).
* With more writing comes a better understanding of grammar, punctuation and spelling. You’ll be able to avoid common errors that most of us as newbies made all the time. The biggest ones I see here are the words that sound the same but spelled differently. It’s and its. They’re, there and their. Stuff like that. Using spell check and grammar check within a good word processing program will help immensely.
* There were only a couple of things you wrote that I didn’t understand.
1) …acts like no one knows what its like to feel racism.
How about “…acts like no one knows what it’s like to be the victim of racism.”
2) Some think its not like what they’ve experienced.
Are you talking about experiencing racism? Not sure you even need the sentence because you’re so clear about it in the sentences before it.
3) irrognat
Did you mean arrogant or ignorant?
4) I’ve had many issues growing up…
Racial issues?
5)…your also saying that everyone is like that, when you know its not true.
Not sure what you’re trying to say here but after seeing my edit maybe you can fix up this part of the sentence to make it clearer.
6) And I understand that what the cops did was wrong but it truly should have anything to do with race…
Earlier you said you weren’t picking a side so I would change it to something like “I understand that many people feel that what the cops did was wrong…” This way you can maintain your impartiality.
What I’m going to do is email you the edits I made of your work because it’s probably easier this way for you to see the tweaks I made. You can also see the way I broke down the essay into easier to read paragraphs. You can also see what may or may not sound better to you when you read the essay out loud.
One thing that helped me out when I started taking writing seriously (and it still helps) was to read. Read novels not just for enjoyment but to pick up on style, point of view, etc. You’ll pick up on what sounds good and you’ll also see good grammar, spelling, etc. It’ll just happen kind of naturally—the more reading and writing you do, the better you’ll get!
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