September is family-free month at yeah write
My immediate apologies to those who do not allow themselves to use or promote mild profanity on their blogs: it’s family-free month, dammit, and it says so right on this week’s super cool button badge.
No, I did not make a substitute badge.
Anyway, we’re gonna grow as writers for the entire month of September and put away our favorite fallback subject if your favorite fallback subject happens to be your kids or wife/spouse/significant other or your parents or anyone marked by a blood, marriage or otherwise legal relationship with you. It’s not that we don’t care. We just don’t care about them this month. For 30 entire days.
Need other ideas? Close your eyes and think of them. It’s not that hard.
Badges are in the sidebar. Grab the code of the one you want, either for the challenge grid or the speakeasy. Â You may wanna double-check with Flood, but I don’t think she cares about your family for the month of September, either. Speakeasies and bars are no places for children, you know.
It’s bring a virgin to work week
If someone subscribes to the weekly email blast at your recommendation and gets published on the yeah write #73 challenge grid, the editors will toss your name into a jaunty fedora among others who do the same. Before the yeah write #73 winners’ post, we’ll draw the name of a winner and both that person and the guest will win a copy of Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little published by W.W. Norton, one of our challenge grid sponsors.
Open to U.S. residents only unless one of the random winners is willing to pay international postage.
The yeah write virgin must be new to the “yeah write is open” list as of today or by 9/6/2012 without being a current or former subscriber or, god forbid, having ever marked  a yeah write email as spam. The person recommending the virgin must be a current subscriber to the “yeah write is open” list as of 9/6/2012 or any date before the virgin subscribes.Â
When the grid gets back to 50 published entries, we’re offering one writer a $100 Amazon gift card
Once we get back to a full grid of 50 published submissions, we will kick off a four-week challenge for the blogger with the most accumulated points to earn a $100 Amazon gift card which I would recommend go toward the purchase of these 10 books suggested in this Brain Pickings article How to Read Like a Writer. We’ll get there with or without you. May as well be with you ‘cuz you’re witty and can tell a pretty good story.
Oh, and one other thing—ixnay on the opular-pa oating-vay
Opening the grid entries to a public, popular vote has been the hallmark of yeah write from its very beginning 18 months ago. There have always been pros and cons to it—pro: it’s our best marketing tool, con: it caused some people to have weekly nervous breakdowns—but it’s now become more trouble than it’s worth. Beginning this week, for the first time, yeah write voting is closed to the general Internets and the final grid order will depend solely on the the four contributing editors and me, the managing kahuna. This is not to say the popular vote will never return, but it’s gone for now. We’ll award three contributing editor picks, one managing editor pick and one jury prize each week. That’s enough, right? Especially since our recent changes have chased half the grid away.Â
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- No family posts. For the month.
- No popular vote. For the foreseeable future.
- Moderated submissions. Forever.
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You still with us? You’re a true writer who blogs and blogger who writes.
Yeah write #73 opens Tuesday.
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- Do not mention anywhere in your post, either as intro or footnote, that you are writing to a prompt.
- We want the story the furthest away in your imagination from the original prompt. Let your imagination loose.
- Keep your writing style! Do you tell stories with humor? Prose? Verse? Photos? Illustrations? Keep doing that.Â
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I love the lack of popular vote. Not that it’s horrible to develop a thick skin, but I’d get 30 positive comments on a post and then one vote. There’s a funny disconnect there that lessons the value of the comments, I think. I haven’t been able to carve out enough to time to participate as fully as I’d like, but I hope to be back!
Oh screw. I wrote a blog to submit but it’s about my kid. I’ll have to scrap that sucker. The blog post, not the kid.
Don’t scrap it…just publish it later in the week. 🙂
Okay, I’m up for the challenge! I’ve been writing all weekend. I hope I don’t get turned away again, but don’t worry, I’m a tough nut. I’ll keep coming back! I love it here!
You said “tough nut.” Teehee.
i was writing about a child, written in third person, caught in the middle of divorce. it’s not about my family but it is about a child. is that still off limits?
In the interest of reason and fair-play, you would get more mileage out of the challenge grid with a post that didn’t refer to children in any capacity, yours or otherwise. It would be an easy trick to write about one’s children under the guise of fiction. Not that you would do that, but someone will test the limits, citing your post. I recommend not writing about any children at all.
Kids are also under strict prohibition this month at the speakeasy.
Bring a virgin to work week? Hmmm… I work on a college campus and this is the first week of classes, does that count? Plenty of new frosh stumbling through my hallway, looking sideways to see if anyone is watching.
And YAY! No family sounds so fun, so adult… so naughty…
Excellent. I think this is totally amazing. I’ve been meaning to write about Claude Gibson, this guy I don’t know.
Family-free? I’m in! Why you ask? MY KID IS BACK IN SCHOOL AND I HAVE MY LIFE BACK… well sorta. Any way I like the idea of family-free month! Heard of fiction? Yeah, it still exists! Fellow writers/bloggers: If you are having anxiety over writing a family-free piece, try a “free-writing” exercise. You’ll have to look in the writing books you have stashed in your lovely, picturesque writing nook.. or bookcase. Of course, you could Google it. I am submitting a free-writing piece I wrote at a writers conference way back when I could afford to go to conferences! P.S. Any spelling mistakes in my comment were intentional.
Hi Lisa, nice to see you! In case you’ve missed other changes at yeah write during your time away, you can visit the FAQ and a blogger’s guide to writing a yeah write post. Posts are moderated now, and I would hate to see you miss the grid this week because you weren’t aware of the criteria.
Looking forward to reading your post!
I used to ban my juniors from writing about their mothers and/or mother-figures for their college essays. And whenever April rolled around, no one was allowed to choose “Still I Rise” to recite or write about. Basically, they had all already written and read about those things since 7th grade, and we all needed some fresh air.
Being banned from certain topics is a fantastic way of stretching our grey matter into new and interesting shapes. Can’t wait to see what happens.
I’m sure I had an instructor or 12 ban Langston Hughes’s Mother to Son. Only so many times can you hear the line life ain’t no crystal stair. Thank you very much for the reminder and the encouragement.
When I taught Technical Writing I spent almost an entire hour on banned topics for research paper: no abortion, no global warming, no childhood obesity, no nursing shortage…
I wasn’t having nervous breakdowns, but my overly defense husband sure was ha ha! “Quit posting there if no one is gonna vote for you!” Calm down dear, its just for fun. Ok, that was my last mention of family all month!! 😉
Defensive…
Your husband sounds awesome! Tell him we always take good care of his girl.
Well, I guess I should have read the new guidelines before adding badge #73 to my post on Meno-Poise. Given the nature of my blog, it looks like I could be taking a one-month hiatus.
What remains the same is that posts can be dated no earlier than the Sunday before the challenge grid opens. Meno-Poise would not have been eligible for the the grid this week, based on its date. However, the speakeasy would enjoy your kid-free post, and there you will find as much fun as the challenge grid, since there is no longer a popular vote. Hope you’ll join us on Tuesday!
Fair enough. I’m going to have to pay better attention to when I publish. I’ll go back to my notebook and see if I have anything in the Kellieless category.
So if there is no voting to give me a nervous breakdown, what shall I obsess over? I know, I’ll obsess over finding a new thing to obsess over! I’m kidding. I won’t obsess. I must confess, the voting did something great for me. When my kitten post tanked 2 weeks ago, I didn’t care. I wasn’t upset. I thought I would be and I wasn’t. What a liberating feeling to not go into a shame spiral over a post for a change. Hooray for growth!
I like the no-family challenge. Great idea.
Also, Erica – I ‘m thinking maybe my post about my 4yo’s poop habits put you over the edge on stories about people’s kids???
If you could find a way to work a non-relative’s poop habits into your blog, I promise to vote you queen of the internets.
My friend Carrie at Cannibalistic Nerd managed to do this: http://www.cannibalisticnerd.com/disney-world-has-winnie-the-pooh-universal-has-poo/
I figure it’s kind of like exercise. If you don’t change it up, the benefit is not as great. So bring it!
Love family-free month! Another way for y’all to stretch as writers. Looking forward to my new gig as contributing editor starting NOW. I’ll be on the speakeasy, holding court with my long-neck O’Doul’s at the big table in the back, blasting Eminem.
Do my dogs count as family? If so I may have to summon the flying monkeys. . .
You’re doing a brilliant job, Erica; every change has been for the better, and this one will be, too.
I would like to marry the new rules, but then they would be related to me….crap!
I am so happy about the changes you are making here! I am not sure if I’ll be able to participate again this week… you have all helped me fine tune my writing so much that I am doing two guest posts and I now have weekly articles to write for a website!
I know that I have you to thank for all of it. Oh, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster, because I am a woman of faith after all. 😉
Good luck this week, team! I can’t wait to read everyone’s entries!
Impressive! I’m jealous and proud. 😉
Go Dawn, rocking the new gigs!
Works for me. As a new writer and new blogger, Yeah Write has been the #1 most useful tool on the interwebz for me to hone my new skillz. I applaud you guys for making the (likely challenging at times) choices about how to make this community run better/faster/harder for the folks it’s here for. Like my mama always used to say: you’ll please some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but you are never gonna please ALL of the people ALL of the time. Well, I’m some of the people and you’ve managed to please me all of the time. Thank you.