SELECTED WINNER
The winner of the 2020 Thought Tools Timpani Essay Competition is
Next on the Queer Agenda: House Our Siblings,
by
Ivis Whitright.
COMPETITION ANNOUNCEMENT
You are invited to submit an essay to the 2020 Thought Tools Timpani Essay Competition.
Topic: The essay can be on any topic.
Award for winner: $100
Maximum length: 500 words
Deadline: December 1, 2020
Everyone is welcome to participate.
How to Participate
Submit your essay in the body of an email to Thought.Tools.Timpani@gmail.com.
You may submit the work anonymously if that is your preference. We will not publish
anything about you without your permission. If you write a winning
essay and if you wish, we will include your name, age, location
(town or city), and a short paragraph about who you are, or some portion
of this information. If you are under 18, please seek advice from a
parent or guardian about how much information to provide about yourself
online.
From the Thought Tools Timpani standpoint, you are welcome to submit your
essay both to this contest and to other contests or publications. We claim no rights to the essay, except permission to post it on the Thought Tools Timpani website.
Please do not submit an essay that was written either partially or
entirely by someone else. The purpose of the Timpani writing
competitions is to encourage people of all ages to learn, grow, and expand their horizons.
We will not consider essays that include personal attacks or promote violence.
Guidance
If you are an experienced writer, you may prefer to skip the rest of this webpage. If you are an inexperienced writer, skip any guidance that would inhibit you from writing.
What
is an essay? An essay is a short piece of non-fiction, normally short
enough to be read in a single sitting. The type of essay we discuss
below expresses an opinion and attempts to convince the reader that the
stated opinion is reasonable, or true. Many papers we write for school
are in fact essays.
Why write an essay? Writing an essay allows you to focus, inform, improve and organize your thinking. It may improve your perceptiveness as a reader, and your skills as a conversationalist. A good essay will also link you to other people, both people you have met and people you haven't met. In influencing their thinking and receiving their feedback, you become part of a social web around a topic--perhaps even a cause--that interests you. In multiple ways, writing an essay makes your life more interesting and your mind more alert.
How can you tell if an essay is successful? The success of an essay is generally evaluated based on its effect on the readers. Here are some questions we will ask ourselves, as readers, when we select the winning essay or essays.- Is the message/opinion/theme clear? (a good place to start ... if not clear, the rest is unimportant)
- Did this essay change the way I think about the topic? (the author's desired outcome)
- Is the message/opinion/theme well supported by logic and facts?
- Is the essay well organized?
- Did I learn something?
- Is the writing lively and fun to read (or sober and engaging)?
- Did the piece surprise me, or make me laugh, or move me emotionally?
- Is there a particular fact or image that is likely to remain in my memory?
- Is the topic important to me?
- Will I want to share this essay with friends?
These questions may help you choose a topic and sketch an outline. The reader doesn't need to answer "yes" to all of these questions--and readers are by no means all the same--but the list may give you some ideas about ways to make your essay a success. It is up to you how you want to affect the readers, just don't forget them.
Reading EssaysIf you aren't used to writing essays
outside of a school setting, you may want to start by reading some non-academic essays with a sharp eye to what makes them effective. The opinion and editorial pieces in your favorite newspapers and magazines are a good place to
start. Which pieces and writers do you like best? Why? (Boston Globe opinion pieces: https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/ )
You might also enjoy reading through collections of essays. Here are a couple options:
The Lives of a Cell; Notes of a Biology Watcher, by Lewis Thomas,
1974. This is a collection of essays that were first published in the New England
Journal of Medicine. Lewis Thomas was ahead of his
time. His thinking still challenges us over 40 years later; The Lives of a Cell gains high consumer
ratings on Amazon to this day. Thomas demonstrated that part of the power of an essay lies not in the way an argument
is presented, but also in the thesis itself. His
theses are counter-intuitive to the average reader, and one might almost say
they are imaginative. But he pulls it off. He cares passionately about
his opinions, and by the end of each essay, so does the reader. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=
A volume of the Best American Essays is published annually.
These collections are easily purchased for this and recent years, either
new or second hand, on the internet. The contents span a wider variety of essays than the type described above. Which essays do you like best? What makes them effective? Highlight the remarkable facts, sentences, paragraphs, wording. https://www.amazon.com/Best-American-Essays-2020-%C2%AE/dp/0358359910
Sources of Advice
The internet offers guidance on how to write an essay, and many books are available on the topic. An example of online advice: https://www.wikihow.com/Write-an-Opinion-Piece A couple of our favorite sources:
The Lively Art of Writing, by Lucile Vaughan Payne, 1965.
Written by an English teacher, this small, lighthearted volume is filled with practical instruction on how to write an essay.
https://www.amazon.com/Lively-
If you would prefer to watch a provocative free lecture by a writing expert, try Writing Beyond the Academy: Advice for People Who Think They Already Know How To Write. The University of Chicago Leadership Lab, June 26, 2014. This lecture isn't strictly about writing essays, but it helps create writers who are alert to the importance of serving readers beyond the self. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Topics
If you have difficulty choosing a topic, you may want to consider writing about some aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic that has improved your life in a way that is likely to continue even after the pandemic is over.
Courage
Be brave when your draft seems as though it could use some improvement. Rewriting is a normal part of writing. Sculpting a fine essay is hard work, and it is an art.
Thank you for your interest in this competition.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at
Thought.Tools.Timpani@gmail.com.
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