Did you guys know I’m still on the road? Thank you thank you to Flood, Cindy, and Kristin our editors and to Chris our statistician for keeping yeah write moving forward while I’m vacationing with my husband Q—forgetting we ever had needy children or dumb dogs.
On my trip, I’ve gotten to catch up with my lifelong friends Michele and Jackie and meet for the first time the infamous Arnebya of What Now and Why. Michele and Jackie and I told old stories and bought my kids “Future Howard University Alum” t-shirts (As if. Take it from an actual Howard alum: never pay good private school money for chaos and confusion) and Arnebya and I clicked over afternoon cocktails as though we’d been lifelong friends.
Over the Blu-Ray of Joss Whedon’s Avengers with Q, I remembered I had a Sunday yeah write post to write and Amazon gift card challenge points to calculate, so here we are.
Hi.
Challenge grid v. the speakeasy
The challenge grid is primarily for blog anecdotes, personal essays and creative nonfiction pieces. Quick primer: for yeah write purposes, the personal anecdote is the well-told blog story we love to read, the personal essay centers around the person writing the essay and should reveal a new perspective on the original topic before the essay concludes. Creative nonfiction, though it may contain a personal story, has more of a global focus with a subject matter requiring research.
The challenge grid is moderated by our submissions editor for quality control for lack of a better term (I’m on vacation, remember?) Check all the helpful links further down in this post for details if you need them. Another micro-primer: 1,000-word limit, no fiction or poetry but it still must tell a story.
The speakeasy is reserved for fiction and poetry. It’s open submissions with Flood checking only if your post meets genre requirements.
Challenge grid and speakeasy badges
For Tuesday’s challenge grid and speakeasy, there are badges in the sidebar for you to grab by copying the code from the box below the graphic then pasting it into the HTML view of your post draft. It’s better if you not only paste into the HTML view, but hit publish while still in the HTML view. That should solve some of the difficulties some of you have been having getting the badge to show in your published post.
$100 Amazon gift card challenge
The challenge kicked off last week, and there are three weeks to go. Meaning there is plenty of time for you to join in even if you’d never even heard of us until today.
On the challenge grid, you can earn from one to five points depending on your final grid row once voting closes, plus, if you win an editor’s pick, you get 10 extra points.
At the speakeasy, you can earn from one to five points depending on your final grid row, plus an extra 10 points for finishing in the top three.
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Gift card leaderboard
Although it’s an impetus for A-game bringin’ when the yeah write editors join the grids from time to time, they are ineligible to receive points in the gift card challenge. Their being on the grid and at the speakeasy makes things more interesting as you’re competing against professional writers, but they do not earn points and cannot earn the $100 gift card. Keep in mind, however, their presence can affect your final grid position, so write hard, write well, this ain’t no slouching contest.
Don’t forget, you can always enter this contest for charity or a school classroom or a family in need just in time for the holidays. If you earn the card and plan to give it away to someone who could put it to better use than your downloading the past 50 years of Willie Nelson covers, I’ll add $50 to the amount and forward the card to your designated recipient on your behalf (anonymously if requested).
You can view the entire challenge results from yeah write #78 by clicking here for the public spreadsheet. Based on the first week, combining the challenge grid (votes determined by readers and editors) and the speakeasy (votes determined by popular vote), our top five are:
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- The Authentic Life 15 points challenge
- IA Soup Mama 15 points speakeasy
- Snaps and Bits 15 points speakeasy
- Simply She Goes 14 points challenge
- Pesky Pippi 10 points challenge
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Helpful links
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- FAQ
- a blogger’s guide to writing a yeah write post
- what yeah write is, what yeah write isn’t
- vote-o-rama tracker
- weekly winners’ posts
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Optional supernatural prompt
Just as the speakeasy is joining us for the gift card challenge, we are joining the speakeasy in its Broken Magic promotion with an optional writing prompt for our blog anecdotes, personal essays and creative fiction. Here ya go:
Yeah write #79 opens Tuesday. Bring us your best stuff. Meanwhile, lemme go see what my man is doing…
