Week four of the fall writing season at yeah write weekly writing challenge
In my first year of college, I was assigned Jane Smiley’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Thousand Acres. The book stayed with me for a long time and became one of my inspirations for writing. Naturally, when I saw that Publisher’s Weekly had run an article featuring five writing tips from Ms. Smiley herself, I was all over that. I’m not sure I ever want to be a novelist, but the words of wisdom work equally well for non-fiction essayists and writers of memoir. Pop over and give it a read (when you’re done here, of course) and hopefully you’ll draw some inspiration as well.
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Ready to go and just looking for the basics?
Today the grid opens for our non-fiction writing challenge. There is a limit of 500 words plus 100 words grace. You must tell a compelling story. If we get bored or can’t figure out what’s going on, you’ll get a nicely detailed note from our submissions editor explaining where we fell off. You can rewrite it, rework it and workshop it. We’ll be happy to read it again in a few weeks.
The non-fiction challenge closes Wednesday at 11:59 p.m. US eastern. If your entry is accepted, our editors will move you over to the invitational grid open to voting both by our readers and our editorial staff. On Friday, we will publish editorial picks and announce the popular vote winner.
The ultimate question: what would your mother say?
While there’s no mandatory prompt for the non-fiction challenge, we invite you to use the gargleblaster’s ultimate question as an optional prompt here. An optional prompt means you can use this question to generate an idea or you can tuck it in your pocket for use at another time. We don’t need to know if you used it or didn’t. Do with it what you will. Just submit us a compelling essay and we’ll be happy.
Fall season writing contest coming October 19
We’ve been talking it up for a few weeks now but we’re not quite ready to kick off our big writing contest. Soon though. Soon.
We have cash and prizes for stand-out writing and a prize for the writer who refers the grand prize winner to us. So make sure to invite your friends and start working on your winning essay today.
The yeah write #182 weekly writing challenge is open for non-fiction: personal essays, creative opinion, mostly true stories based on actual events. You can check out the submission guidelines and join us with your essay using the link below.
