Yep. The Birthday Bash is Still Rocking.

Our birthday celebration continues, because we like parties, and we like to stretch them out as long as possible. This week, we had four virgins on the grid and one born-again who returned after a sabbatical. Welcome and welcome back! We’d love to see you here again next week.

Jury prize winner—invitational grid

“Happy Drunk” by Michelle Longo at The Journey

When I first read our Jury Prize winner this week — Michelle Longo of The Journey’s “Happy Drunk” — I dashed off a note to her that read: “You need to write your memoir stat. Mary Karr has nothing on you.” Not to make this blurb all about me, but typically when I read the grid I’m jotting comments here and there on my spreadsheet, even on the best posts, to highlight strengths and weaknesses. I made no notes at all on this post. To my mind, Michelle raised the bar so high that there was simply nothing to be said. It was that compelling.

When you read a piece and don’t even think about the writing – when you don’t think about how the author created the structure or the characters or the setting – when instead you simply experience the story and the emotions and the scenery – well, then you know you are in the presence of something very special. This might be the best post I’ve read in the almost-year I’ve been visiting this dysfunctional cheese shop.

And it’s hard to pull out just what made it work – good writing is like that. You can deconstruct it, sure, but the magic lies in how it hangs together as a whole. Was it the “sticky fingers”? The mom’s simmering anger finally exploding? The friend scampering home to ask for permission to stay? The child’s eye view of how happy the “good” drunk father made her feel? It was all and none of these things. Truly excellent scenes hide their bones so that we see only the flesh, and this efficient less-than-500-words scene evoked an array of images and reactions and backstories we will never know the whole of. Michelle, I’m simply blown away. Congratulations and grab your badge.

 *** Hey, there’s somethin’ new!!! Erica is constantly finding ways to celebrate the best of yeah write each week. So for those of you who made the cut and were selected by the editors for our invitational grid, we have a nifty NEW BADGE for you over in the sidebar. Robbie, Mary, Cyn, Daffodil, Ann, Christie, and Zoe? Grab your Editor’s Pick badge and display it proudly on your blogs. You earned it.

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Crowd favorite

“Happy Drunk” by Michelle Longo at The Journey

Not surprisingly, Michelle also wins Crowd Favorite this week for her post. Congratulations on the double win, and grab your second badge over in the sidebar. Brava!

More Prizes! Random winners of yeah write #102 birthday gifts:

We’re still handing out gifts for our birthday celebration! We combined the challenge grid storytellers with the speakeasy writers and anyone who sent us a virgin to either grid. This week’s winners:

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• Deana Burson (over at the speakeasy) won The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
• Amber won Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little

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Congrats, Deana and Amber. Email us your mailing address so we can send your gifts. For the rest of you, the party continues next week. We have more goodies for our friends.

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Weekend moonshine grid opens today at 6 p.m. eastern time!

Tell your friends! Yeah write is now open on the weekends—no editors, no voting, no writer’s block—just hanging out in the clearing among the trees and discarded moonshine jugs. Use this chance to show the yeah write community the other side  of your blog—your top 10 lists, your stream-of-consciousness posts, that hilarious text message exchange with your brother. No commercial or sponsored posts allowed, but this will be a good space for letting us all know when you have a cool blog event coming up.

The moonshine grid opens at 6 p.m. eastern time each Friday and will close by 12:01 a.m. each Monday. Grab the badge from the sidebar and go find the perfect post to share!

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Win-win

The thumbnails are now sorted in the grid from most votes to the least. In the case of a tie, the thumbnails are additionally sorted by page views. Part of the top row five? Please grab a winners’ badge from the sidebar and display it proudly on your own blog. Congrats!

Do not be discouraged if your blog has landed near the bottom of the grid; it is always a tight race. 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 writing challenge. And for making yeah write the most welcoming spot on the Interwebs for writers who blog and bloggers who write.