Yeah write virgins!

There were four virgins on the grid this week, the most we’ve had in weeks. Thank you to everyone who’s been spreading the good word of yeah write and thanks to the virgins for working your way around the grid. Please join us again next week.

Reader votes

Two writers from the challenge grid submitted complete yeah write vote-o-rama tracking spreadsheets and their votes, along with three yeah write editors, combined for this week’s jury panel prize. Thanks, guys, for your commitment and hard work.

Let’s do some mathin’

Real quickly, let’s put your editor scores into perspective. There were five scoring writers and editors this week. So if you take your total score beneath your thumbnail and divide it by five, you’ll get an idea of where you landed in the yeah write criteria.

Intangibles, such as a reader’s emotional connection to the theme of the piece, can sometimes override pure numbers and push the reader toward selecting an actual favorite from lower scoring entries. Which is how editors’ picks very often than not come from the middle of the grid instead of the top.

[check_list]

• 12         The author meets all of the criteria for a winning yeah write submission
• 10-11   The author meets most of the criteria for a winning yeah write submission
• 7-9       The author meets more than half of the criteria for a yeah write submission
•   6         The author meets half of the criteria for a winning yeah write submission
•  3-5      The author meets few of the criteria for a winning yeah write submission
• 0-2       The author does not meet the criteria for a winning yeah write submission

[/check_list]

 

Gina of Does Anyone Care What I Write earned 54 points. Dividing by 5, she earned a 10.8 on the editors’ scale: the author meets most of the criteria for a winning yeah write submission.

Kianwi of Simply She Goes earned 54 points for a 10.8, also meeting most of the criteria. Her scoring tie with Gina was broken by number of page views. Yeah write editor Cindy earned 52 points for a 10.4 on the scale. 

A few weeks ago, the grid’s Achilles heel was the central conflict which ranged from weak to not-as-weak. This week, the trouble spot seemed to be transitions. Some of our posts shifted ideas and subjects without warning, jarring our readers out of the story. Still others didn’t seem to be stories at all. The average score was 8.6: meeting more than half the criteria of a winning yeah write submission.

We each take notes on the entries, which I call liner notes. For the managing editor’s pick and the jury prize winner, those liner notes will replace the summaries written on the picks by our contributing editors so you can get a better feel for our thought processes.

 

[divider_header_h3]Jury prize winner[/divider_header_h3]

There’s This Club You Belong To…

Gina Freyn at Does Anyone Care What I Write

Editor 1 liner notes: Well done from Gina! Thought the second “act” could have been edited more—a little less reliance on pure conversation, weave the dialogue into a prose story structure—but nicely told.

Editor 2 liner notes: I wept. So beautiful. And the telling is solid. She and Stacie have grown a lot. The set-up, the moment in which she chooses to approach, and the resolution are nicely shown. I’d suggest cleaning up some details, but very nicely told.

Editor 3 liner notes: “What are you giggling at?” “What? Are you crying now?”—questions I was asked while reading Gina’s story. Personal, well-told, evocative without manipulating the readers’ emotions or being self-indulgent.

Voters’ mean average: 10.8

 

[divider_header_h3]contributing editors picks[/divider_header_h3]

[image width=”125″ height=”130″ align=”left” lightbox=”true” caption=”” title=””]https://yeahwrite.me/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Kristin_profile.jpg[/image]

editor’s pick by Kristin W

Crushed by Kianwi

I’m choosing Kianwi’s “Crushed” this week. I actually felt tension in the pit of my stomach while the 3rd grader was spinning around – and liking it. I wanted to shake her and tell her to leave him in the dust. Thankfully, for my stomach pit, she did at the end. This story had a clean, classic story arc – and while it didn’t need to have a satisfying conclusion to be effective, it was such a relief! Kianwi used familiar images like an abandoned piñata and cow-licked hair without dipping into cliché.

If Kianwi chooses to work on this story more, I’d advise her to look at the very beginning – or even just cut out the first paragraph. Also, images like “scamper like a monkey” could be made clearer by thinking about whether a monkey actually scampers. I was expecting some form of swinging.  I also would have liked to hear more tactile description of what the rope felt like. Did it cut into her waist? Constrict? Strangle? Bruise her ribs? Or did her adrenalinized meeting with “Tarzan” Beard keep her from feeling it – did she discover bruises only later? But absolutely keep the end.

Voters’ mean average: 10.8

 

[image width=”125″ height=”130″ align=”left” lightbox=”true” caption=”” title=””]https://yeahwrite.me/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Reedster_profile.jpg[/image]

 

editor’s pick by Cindy R

How Bizarre by Ashley Austrew at Ashley, Etc.

I, for one, am glad that Ashley Austrew made her wildly colorful tree way back in kindergarten, if only so that I could select her post “How Bizarre” for my editor’s pick this week. Ashley authentically captures the creative process of a little girl’s heartfelt attempt to conjure in paint the wonder that is each unique tree, only to have her spirit stomped on by the uniformity required by the majority, with their sea of green lollipop trees.

I loved the illustrations, which brought this story to life, and the tension building as the teacher flipped through the pile of sameness while young Ashley begged, in her mind, to be spared. I thought the ending was a little too neat – with two paragraphs of “learning” that told us rather than showed us how to feel about the whole experience, but she saved it all with the best last lines of the week, which elevated her story into a metaphor to resonate for a lifetime: “Make your tree as many different colors as you want to because you know what? It’s your goddamn tree, and you’ve only got one sheet of paper.”

 Voters’ mean average: 10.4

 

[divider_header_h3]managing editor’s pick[/divider_header_h3]

[image width=”125″ height=”130″ align=”left” lightbox=”true” caption=”” title=””]https://yeahwrite.me/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Erica_profile.jpg[/image]

editor’s pick by Erica M

That’s Me in the Corner by Azara at Tesseract

Editor 1 liner notes: Grabbed me from the very beginning. Hard, powerful truths expressed in hard, powerful language. Sacrificed clarity for emotion, forgivable in this case.

Editor 2 liner notes: I enjoyed reading this, and it wasn’t what I expected. It got a little less focused the longer it went. I think there are actually two stories here.

Editor 3 liner notes: I don’t get the headline. SO MANY STORIES going on here, but none of them clear enough—practiced vagueness takes away from the impact. Love the last line.

Voters’ mean average: 8.2

Honorable mentions

In no particular order, these bloggers were mentioned in the editors’ notes as close runners-up:

[check_list]

• 50 Shades of Peach
• A Teachable Mom
• Michelle Longo
• The Outlaw Mama

[/check_list] 

$100 Amazon gift card challenge updates

Check this space on Sunday for current results. Everything you’ll need for the week will be in that one post: new badges, optional supernatural prompt, updated Amazon gift card tracker and helpful links.

Did you leave a thoughtful comment on all 32 posts? This badge is for you.

Thank you thank you to those of you who braved work hours, firewalls, CAPTCHA and comment moderation to comment on every single one of the 32 posts on the grid.

Please grab that green badge out of the sidebar and display it proudly. You are one of the best parts of yeah write and our community thrives on your enthusiasm.

Win-Win

The thumbnails are now sorted in the grid from most editor points awarded to the least. 

In the case of a tie, the thumbnails are additionally sorted by page views. Do not be discouraged if your blog has landed near the bottom of the grid; just getting on the grid is an accomplishment these days. The fun lies in getting better exposure for your blog and in the spirit of competition as incentive to improve your writing and blogging skills. It’s a win-win for everybody involved.

Thanks again, everybody, for linking up, for reading, for accepting the weekly challenge. And for making yeah write the most welcoming spot on the Interwebs for writers who blog and bloggers who write.

Yeah write #80 opens Tuesday. Bring your best stuff. Until then, please stop by Flood’s speakeasy for even more posts to read and enjoy.

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