The Write On! club recently attended PenOhio, a regional creative writing competition, which took place at Cuyahoga Community College.

Linda Corman, the Write On! club’s coach, traveled with a Varsity and Junior Varsity writing team to the PenOhio competition. Teams from four different regions of Ohio competed in this timed writing competition. The competition is set up in a similar way to the Power of the Pen, the original 7th through 8th grade version of PenOhio.

“Students write to the prompt for 40 minutes. During our meetings there is time for everyone to read aloud their stories and the club members give critiques. PenOhio also uses the 40 minute time limit for each of three rounds of writing,” Corman said.

The results of the competition were thirteen ranks of one, the highest rating for a story, out of the thirty three stories written. Corman shared some more specific results.

“Freshman Lilly Cowie earned the first place individual writer trophy for JV. Revere was one of ten JV teams. Out of ten Varsity teams, Revere placed third for the team trophy,” Corman said.

The team faced some scoring mix-ups with wrongly awarded trophies at the conclusion of the competition, but Corman still feels the competition went well for Revere’s writing team.

“I felt great about the competition and very proud of the writers! Our students were well prepared and excited to compete against some strong competitors,” Corman said.

Sophomore Stephanie Altier, a two year Write On! veteran, attended the competition at Cuyahoga Community College. Altier described how she did during the competition. In terms of quality points, superior is the highest ranking one can receive.

“I got a one, a three and a four, which is pretty okay. My quality points were two superiors and a good,” Altier said.

Altier shared her writing style and the most trouble she runs into during a writing competition.

“[The most trouble comes from] adapting to prompts and pleasing judges. I tend to do more historical [stories],” Altier said.

Altier closed with a message for the students of Revere High School.

“I would encourage all students interested in writing to come to come to the club to write and to share their stories with peers. Not only had this established many of my friendships, but it has also enriched my writing by providing different people’s perspectives and reactions to it.,” Altier said.

Senior Lucy Zhang competed in the PenOhio competition last year and has been a part of the Write On! team for all four years.
She shared, from prior experience the level of difficulty that young writers face during this competition.

“Sometimes the prompt is really vague [and] you get thirty minutes for each [round],” Zhang said.

Zhang joined the Write On! team freshman year due to the suggestion of her ninth grade English teacher, Leigh Haynam. Zhang spoke of the Write On! practices and how they helped her and others improve their writing for competitions.

“It was good writing practice. At the practice Mrs. Corman times us, so we get to pretend it is the actual competition.”
The Write On! clubs meets every Friday after school for students who enjoy timed writing and group sharing.