LORDSTOWN Regional winner has pen power

The eighth-grader is considering a career as a writer, but she has realistic expectations.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
LORDSTOWN -- Eighth-grader Marissa Gomes is on a roll.
The Lordstown High School pupil finished first in the eighth-grade division of the Power of the Pen regional competition earlier this month in Massillon.
She was the runner-up in the Trumbull County spelling bee and she earned second place in a Women Making History contest, sponsored by the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, for an essay she wrote about astronaut Sally Ride.
Marissa, 13, will travel to Columbus next week to receive a $50 savings bond for the essay.
About the contest: This marked her first Power of the Pen competition in which seventh- and eighth-grade pupils compete in three rounds. Competitors came from schools throughout Northeast Ohio and had to place in the top 50 of the 200 pupils competing in local contests to advance to the regional event.
Each round includes six pupils. They're given a prompt and 40 minutes to write a story. Judges then rank each story, with 1 being the best and 6 the lowest.
Marissa earned straight 1's.
One of her prompts was to write a narrative about a tree that evokes special memories.
"I wrote about a little girl who wants to climb a tree and she wants her dad to help her, but he has to go to work," she said.
The dad doesn't come home, but the girl's mother climbs the tree with her and the two bond.
"That one I was happy with, but the other two I didn't think I'd organized them well and I didn't think I'd done well at all," Marissa said.
Her ideas: Prompts for the other two rounds were to write about something that no longer exists, and to write about a new technique to get on the right side of your teacher.
For the story about currying a teacher's favor, Marissa wrote about a boy who regularly goofs off in class, incurring his teacher's wrath. The teacher instructs him to clean up his act but instead he begins to mimic a "Little Miss Perfect" in his class.
His teacher mistakenly thinks the boy has seen the error of his ways and begins to reward his new behavior. The boy eventually realizes that following the rules is the way to go.
Judges commented on her good use of emotion and the relatability of the characters in her stories.
Marissa would like to continue writing, possibly as a career, but she's realistic.
"I want to have a steady job first so I can have some money," she said. "I don't want to just write something and have it flop."
She writes in her spare time, opting for fan fiction, when the writer takes characters from another work and inserts them in new stories.
Marissa chooses characters from "Gundam Wing," a Japanese cartoon she stumbled upon while watching the Cartoon Network.
Her family: The eighth-grader remembers developing an affection for writing in first grade. A short story she wrote was selected for publication in a book while her family was living in Wappingers Falls, N.Y.
The family moved to Lordstown six years ago when Marissa's parents, John and Esther, who work at GM, were transferred after the plant where they worked closed.
Her parents emigrated from Portugal. Her mother was 7 and her dad was in his 20s when they each came to the United States. They both speak Portuguese, but except for a few words, Marissa doesn't.
Her grandparents, a few aunts and some cousins remain in Portugal and Marissa has traveled twice with her family to visit, most recently two years ago. She's not anxious to go back, saying she didn't like the towns she visited.