Post to Lulu Essay (Creative Non-Fiction 04-12-12).

I would like to first offer as my piece of advice, is to read your words aloud. Brooks Landon, a professor of writing at the University of Iowa, recommends reading your essays aloud to yourself, before you read them to the class. You must first understand that we will hear your essay in our heads as we read, your words and sentences must carry our attention. If our attention is not carried along, but instead having to pass over words like obstacles, of characterization, narrative, descriptions, events, etc., that stop and start our attention then it is very difficult to read. Your words must flow from the tongue, as they should flow from the paper. A piece of writing is like a one sided conversation with the reader. As John Mayer says, "say what you need to say" but don't get it confused and go overboard. Perhaps one needs to write an essay, read what we have, and then decide upon what we want to accomplish with our piece of writing. What doesn't fit into this criteria, may probably need to be tossed.

Some suggestions:

1). You need to break up your piece into coherent sentences that state a complete idea. Once that idea is complete, and you have enough sentences, you must develop coherent paragraphs.

2). "The war affected the children who grew up during that time". How? Why? In what ways can you give to give a more detailed perspective of the time. How did the children play and amuse themselves?

3). Remember that your verbs and adjectives can be used for descriptors of characteristics to paint the people that you are writing about. Look at you words and then look through a thesaurus to more sharply define and fine tune what you are trying to say. Look for the word that feels right, or the words that feel honest, as words in the thesaurus may give various people various impressions. That is why you have to find the right words to settle upon to what you want to attach to the people in your writing.