Editor picks and invitational grid
Oh, October. You’re so 12 hours ago. Let’s stick a fork in last month by wrapping up our spooky Halloween-adjacent, if not Halloween-themed, grid. We hit the 30 post mark, which means the editor-curated invitational magically opened, and your yeah write editors selected eight posts to compete for this week’s jury prize. Congratulations to all our Editors’ Picks this week: Alisa, Ken, Sam, Karen, Bill, Christie, Dana, and Gwen. I do believe we have editor’s pick badges for you in the sidebar. Slap those suckers on your blog with pride.
Jury prize winner
“Reality TV” by Bill Dameron at The Authentic Life
Reading a post like this week’s Jury Prize winner — Reality TV by Bill Dameron of The Authentic Life — is like taking a master class in flash nonfiction. With a combination of exceptional writing and unique symbolism, Bill elevates a tale of the mundane act of watching TV into a reflection on the fraternity of brothers.
It’s a delicate balance between writing well and overwriting, and Bill deploys memorable turns of phrase that never scream “I’m writing here!” His younger brother is a “biological remote” for the family’s old Zenith TV. Children “were thrown about the floor like scatter rugs” watching it. His mother, trying to detect forbidden viewing, would turn her hand into a heat sensor, “moving it around like a doctor with a stethoscope searching for a pulse.”
The television is a central character in this story as it ages along with the family — a symbol of time passing. The brothers go out into the world, buying televisions “for every room in [their] homes,” never again to bond together in a Herculean effort to avoid their mother’s wrath. In a single beautifully crafted sentence, Bill sums up: “There was a beautiful zenith of synergy that peaked around the flickering green light and then like the TV faded to black.” We may move on from childhood, but man, we miss the days spent together convincing our younger siblings to flip the channels with that damn wrench.
Crowd favorite
“Reality TV” by Bill Dameron at The Authentic Life
It’s Bill again, with a well-deserved double win as “Reality TV” also takes crowd favorite this week and earns another badge. Thanks, Bill, for challenging all of us to kick our writing up a notch. Congrats also to the rest of our Top Row 5: Gwen, Karen, Sam, and Ken. You guys rocked too in a close competition on a deep grid this week. We have Top Row 5 badges for each of you—grab one if you earned one.
Weekend moonshine grid opens today at 6 p.m. eastern time!
It’s the weekend, and yeah write guest editor Natalie D is setting up her moonshine grid and bathtub gin just for you. If you have a favorite post to share or just wanna hang out drinking a little apple cider, please catch up with Natalie starting at 6 p.m. eastern time today. She’ll be wiping down the bar by midnight on Monday. The weekend crew is a fun group, you should stop by.
BlogHer’s NaBloPoMo at yeah write starts Nov. 1. That’s today.
If you’re planning on joining us, please add your blog to the special yeah write grid set up specifically for experiencing this blogging challenge along with your family and friends here in the yeah write family. It’s a great opportunity to develop a daily writing practice in community with other writers. There will be perk packages and camaraderie and an all-around good time. Check out today’s Day 1 post for instructions on how to badge up your blog and play along at home.
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; especially if it was a tight race. The fun lies in getting better exposure for your blog and, in the spirit of competition, an incentive to improve your writing and blogging skills. It’s a win-win for everybody involved.
Thanks again, everybody, for submitting, 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.
Before you go…
As always, take a moment to congratulate our winners. And go a step beyond. Tell your favorite bloggers this week – no matter where they ended up on the grid — what moved you about their posts. And keep coming back. We’ll be here all month.
Congrats to Bill & the rest of the fab 5! I didn’t vote this week b/c I didn’t manage to read all the posts but the ones I did read were amazing.
Thank you all and thank you for that very, very kind write up! I love reading all of the posts and learning so much from everyone.
Congrats to all the winners this week! Great, great week for reading & writing.
Congratulations to Bill and the rest of the Top Row 5 and to all the Editors Picks! Another great week of reading!
Congrats EVERYONE who came out this week. Y’all are winners in my book. Bill blows me away with just about everything he writes, but I have a ton of other writers I want to acknowledge this week for inspiring me.
–Gwen, I cannot believe you are only 20 and that I could have given birth to you and not even have been a teen mom. Thank you for your moving portrayal of a side of OCD I wasn’t familiar with.
— Ken, I love reading your stuff because you bring set a different set of experiences to the grid for this city girl. I thought The Wedge was the best piece I’ve read of yours.
— Christie: Like Bill, you are always at the top of your game and this week I took away the simple phrase “confectionary hair” as the kind of descriptor I wish I came up with myself.
— Sam, what made your post so memorable for me was its pacing. Slowly, slowly you inched toward the terrible conclusion.
— And Alisa, your post’s structure added so much to its already emotional impact. Moving back and forth between your and your father’s experience of getting “lost” – literally and metaphorically — gracefully set up your final moment of empathy.
Thank you all for being the best writing family I could hope for. #NABLOPOMO STARTS NOW.
Cindy, thank you a million times! Hard to believe it’s been a year. Those days are burned into my brain forever and ever.
Yay! I knew I didn’t have a winner, but I’m glad I edited my little post and linked up so we could reach 30 and open up the editors’ picks. Eight picks! That says something about the quality of the writing this week.
Grats to Bill on his double win and to the rest of the Top Row 5.
My first badge – thank you editors! It’s not often that I feel like my writing is worthy of submission, but I’ll be back when I think it is!
Exceptional writing this week. Congrats all around!!!! Off for NaBloPoMo (that’s how you spell it, right?)
Top row and editor’s picks – you guys rock my socks off! Congratulations!