Here is a thoroughly revised version of "Augusta, Kentucky," the draft paragraph on page one. Notice that this revised paragraph is not only more descriptive than the original but also more clearly organized.

River Street After the Flood

I will never forget that desolate spring morning when I saw River Street for the last time. On the east side of the street, the Ohio River waited menacingly. The west side was lined with a single row of flood-damaged houses, sitting dark and abandoned, so completely decayed that even the poor could no longer live in them.

Walls that once were pastel blue, green, or yellow were now layered with mud six or seven feet high. Paneless window jambs were opened like dark mouths to gulp down the muddy flood tides. Once sturdy beams that supported porch roofs stood shakily, missing chunks of molded wood from their damp middles. These rotting houses were still shaded by the enormous limbs of the old oaks. Fed by the rich river soil, the trees loomed over the streets like strange, dark mourners. Their massive gnarled roots had broken through the sidewalk, pushing up great chunks of jagged concrete. Tattered, dirty children played on these slabs while twangy country music drifted down from the bar at the end of the street. And that's where my memory ends, at the end of the street, lost in mud, weeds, and rubble. This was the last view I had of the street where I had grown up.