Welcome, virgins!

There were three virgins on the challenge grid this week, plus a speakeasy regular dipped his toe into our waters. 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.

No post-birthday blues here

Our birthday week might almost be over, but the celebrations continue into next week. We are welcoming the start of our third year with open arms and more incentives to join us. We’re doing everything we can to make yeah write an easy sell to your friends, so let them know about our community.

39 smackaroos

We met and exceeded the minimum of 30 entries to give away one online shopping dollar for every submission on the grid. Jury prize this week is a $39 gift card of choice and the crowd fave wins $39 gift card of choice. We’re one entry shy of 40 to win Jacq’s Playhouse custom doll.  We’ll offer each of these prizes again for yeah write #105 and hopefully we’ll meet or surpass 40 entries. Everyone bring a friend!! Or, at least some of you. Let’s meet this week’s winners.

Jury prize winner—invitational grid

“We Chose the House” by Kianwi of Simply She Goes

This week’s Jury Prize from a birthday party-sized invitational grid is Kianwi of Simply She Goes for her post “We Chose the House.” In only 481 words, Kianwi creates – in a single unadorned scene – a complex plot of a failed marriage, with children of an alcoholic caught in the middle of arguing parents, drawing and quartering them in a power battle. She deftly creates five fully developed characters – children, parents, and the house itself (six if you count grandma’s spidery basement). With just a smidgen of flashback, we learn so much about what led up to this moment, and we are in suspense for how it will be resolved – will the kids move out with mom? Will they stay and choose dad? Or will Kianwi ignore both of their pleas, opting instead to remain in the privacy of her “cozy, pretty bedroom” with her clothes, toys, and pets intact. Never overwritten, she authentically retains her tween voice until the end, deeply affecting us not by playing to our emotions, but by simply relating, as all good stories do, what happened next. Kianwi, let us know from where you’d like your $39 worth of online shopping.

Editor’s Picks

Thirteen of you made it to the invitational grid as editors’ favourites. It was the first time in a while that we all had a different top 3 from one another, which means the posts are speaking broadly and touching each of us in different ways. Congratulations! Please grab your editor’s pick badge from the sidebar and add it to your writer’s showcase. Thanks for bringing us the best of the grid this week. 

Crowd favorite

“More Than A Jacket” by Dawn of Happiness Cubed

 Who doesn’t remember begging their parents for that one cool thing that would make them fit in? For me, it was a pair of red canvas adidas with white stripes, and I never got them. I’ll always have a red adidas sized-hole in my heart because of it. Dawn at Happiness Cubed has a much more powerful story and takes Crowd Favorite this week for her post “More Than a Jacket.” She got the jacket, and it was so much more than an item of clothing.  With Dawn’s lyrical writing, the jacket becomes a symbol of her mother’s selfless dedication to her daughter, despite financial odds. The jacket allowed Dawn to blend seamlessly with her peers at school, no longer branded as the poor girl who didn’t fit in. And though it kept her much less than warm, she wore it for years, piling sweaters beneath its synthetic wool exterior. Just a coat? Nah. That jacket has been imbued with maternal love. We should all be so fortunate.  Go grab your Crowd Favorite badge over there =>, on the right and don’t forget to let us know where you would like to spend your $39 gift card.

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

Let the party continue into the wee, small hours. 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!

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.