Welcome yeah write virgins!

Since last week, we’ve gained 10 new subscribers! Facebook sent a few our way, and most of them came through word of mouth. Thanks in advance to the virgins who plan to jump right in and submit a post this week. Even more thanks to those of you who’ve been spreading the good word about this place you love called yeah write. Without the newbies and the old heads, we yeah write editors wouldn’t have anything to distract us from life’s harsh realities. No pressure.

If you have any questions at all, please feel free to email Erica M or email Flood G, our submissions editor. If it’s the middle of the night, you may have to wait until early morning for an answer. If it’s morning, you may have to wait until our little moral obligations are someone else’s problem for the school day. By mid-morn, we are settled and standing by just for you. All times US eastern daylight.

$100 Amazon gift card challenge

Three weeks through the $100 Amazon gift card challenge, there are five blogs holding the five highest point totals ranging from 33 points to 19. Out of 53 blogs so far, nearly 65% have at least one point. It’s a tight race with no runaway winner, yet. 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 five to one point(s) 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, as long as there are at least 12 entries, you can earn from five to one point(s) depending on your final grid row, plus an extra 10 points for finishing in the top three.

It’s a wait-and-see on how tropical storm Sandy will affect our east coast writers. If they can’t link up because of Internet connection issues, we may have to suspend the final week of the challenge until yeah write #82. I’d rather them concentrate on staying safe than finding a hot spot somewhere just to upload a blog post. 

Current results for $100 Amazon gift card challenge

You can view the entire challenge results through yeah write #80 by clicking here for the public spreadsheet. The challenge is just our fun way for saying thanks to our regulars for sticking with us throughout all of the recent changes here at yeah write. It’s also a fun way to numb the shock of our newcomers. Once the card is yours, you can buy what you want, but we are recommending the 10 books suggested in this Brain Pickings article How to Read Like a Writer. 

Giving the card away? We’ll make it $150

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, we’ll add $50 to the amount and forward the card to your designated recipient on your behalf (anonymously if requested).

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. 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 today’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.

Voting on the grid?

You are welcome to join the yeah write editors in scoring each yeah write entry and choosing the jury prize winner. Download the vote-o-rama tracker and fill it out completely including notes about what you liked about each entry and what you didn’t like. You don’t have to be on the challenge grid to vote by spreadsheet—readers and lurkers can vote. If you’re on the grid, don’t forget to score your own entry.

Most importantly, do not wait until Thursday afternoon to get started. Completing the tracker requires more than checking a few boxes then going about your business. The process is mainly for the editors, but we figured, hey, if writers and readers wanna join us, they can. It’s absolutely voluntary, so please don’t tweet or email any complaints about the process. If you’re gonna do it, you gotta do it right.

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. The photo prompt:

Yeah write #81 is open. Bring us your best stuff. Bring us the best stuff on the grid.

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