Submitting your work through our moderated queue

Last week we witnessed the return of the moderated grid. Some of you received love letters from our new submissions editor, Obed M, but fifteen of you made it through. The grid may have been smaller, but the entries were stronger. We’re okay with that. As a community of writers, the submission guidelines and moderated grid force us to think twice about hitting publish on a post before it’s time. As always, we’re looking for your best work, and we’re here to help pull that out of you.

Sweetening the pot with prizes

Are you worried about getting your submission sent back to you? Rejection is hard, for sure. But don’t think of it as rejection, think of it as some gentle encouragement to bring your piece to the next level. To encourage you just a bit more, and to show you how much we want you in this community, we’re adding a little bonus:

Thanks to ML Philpott over at I Miss You When I Blink, we have a little something for you. If your submission is returned to you, but you incorporate the suggested revisions from submissions editor Obed’s love letter then submit it to Friday’s  moonshine grid, you will be entered into a drawing for a coffee mug featuring ML’s random penguins.

If you stick around to read and comment on the pieces that did make it through*, that’s another entry for you. If you vote fairly and on merit, that’s one more. For the math-challenged, that’s three chances to win a random penguin mug just by showing off your yeah write community spirit.

Shipping available only to winner with US or Canada mailing address.

*reading the entries that were accepted will give you a better feel for what we’re looking for, and that’ll be good for next time, right?

And sweetness for the jury prize winner

But wait, there’s more! If you make it onto the grid, and we have at least 30 published entries, the invitational will open and a jury prize will be awarded. The winner of this week’s jury prize will win a random penguin mug of his or her very own! Shipping available only to winner with US or Canada mailing address.

Note to those who have won mugs recently: We’re a little behind on the delivery of the aforementioned mugs. Anticipated delivery time is approximately six weeks. For now, you’ll have to use whatever mug you have hanging out in the mug cupboard.

Stay tuned for the voting post for your number of votes this week

Not only is February a traditionally slow month for Internet traffic, the number of published entries on the challenge grid will vary because of our return to the moderated queue. We could have as many as 50 in the challenge or as few as ten. We are more about quality than we are quantity in our humble reader’s circle, and that commitment sometimes affects weekly participation. So, we are going to adjust the votes for now to reflect the number of published stories in the challenge. The one vote during yeah write #147 really tightened up our choices, and we liked that. Let’s do it again on a measured scale. 

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• 01-10 submissions: one vote
• 11-20 submissions: two votes
• 21-30 submissions: three votes
• 31-40 submissions: four votes
• 41-50 submissions: five votes

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Welcome Tipsy Lit editors and writers!

We often have writers on the challenge grid and, especially, over at the speakeasy who are active members of other writing communities. During NaBloPoMo, we discovered Tipsy Lit, a writer’s community run by Ericka Clay that features interviews and writing tips as well as prompted writing challenges. For this week and next, Tipsy Lit, yeah write and the speakeasy will be participating in each other’s challenges. Tipsy Lit will be writing for either the challenge grid or the speakeasy this week and, next week, we are asking the yeah write/speakeasy community to hang out with us at Tipsy Lit. If you’d like to compete in the Tipsy Lit prompted fiction challenge the week of February 17, please say yes in comments!

Are you a member of a writing forum or literary blogging community? Please leave a link with your friends over there telling them all about us. If you don’t have another writing home online, be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook where you can easily share or retweet us. The more we grow, the more we can learn from one another.

Odds, ends, reminders

• The badge you will need to add to your planned submission is over in the sidebar
• This immediate past Sunday is the earliest your submission can be dated
• Your post can be no longer than 600 words
• Personal essays or traditional blog anecdotes only
• There are no weekly prompts; the topic is yours. Be compelling
• The grid is open from Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. to Wednesday at 11:59 p.m.
• There is voting. Voting will take place Thursday from midnight to 10:00 p.m. US eastern
• The challenge grid is limited to 50 bloggers
• The winners’ post will be published by noon on Friday
• No self-promotional posts are allowed on the yeah write grid, including those containing links to other blog events and Internet contests

Yeah write #148 is open…

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