Does anybody remember life before yeah write? Yeah, neither do I, and that’s the way it should be. Thanks for being here week after week, cheering each other on and driving me to drink. Good thing the liquor store is just around the corner.

Virgins!

Four of you spent the week with us either sorely confused or fitting right in, but no more or less than any of the rest of us usually are. Thanks for joining in and please come back next week.

Editor’s choice by Erica M

This week, Greta hosted a guest blogger in her brand new space at gfunkified. While each wearing their sassy pants, guest blogger Cindy from Reedster Speaks grabbed me first with her title We’re Gonna Get This One Pregnant! then with her quite funny yet quite touching post on her experiences with infertility and adoption. Cindy had actually already won me over last week when I clicked through to her blog from Twitter and landed on a Hunger Games version of the media-branded Mommy Wars. She’s an excellent writer who tells important stories with just the right amount of pathos, never going overboard with it. Congrats, Cindy, on the win, and thanks, Greta, for introducing her to us.

Lurker’s favorite by Flood G

Flood chose Jack B’s post on people-watching and writes:

In The Rhythm Of Life, Jack visits an L.A. coffee shop, contemplating his past, present and future as he people-watches. It’s fun to read Jack’s thoughts about his life as he sets the scene around him. He has a special perspective, since he was a teenager in L.A. during the height of 80s culture, but he describes the universal worry of my generation as our children look back on those days. I feel his excitement at discovering a couple on a blind date, sizing each other up while Jack gives us a secret play-by-play. There’s a longer story here, somewhere, and I have a feeling I would enjoy reading it. People-watching is a favourite past-time among writers and Jack’s experience made me want to pull up a seat at my local cafe and start writing.

Lurker’s favorite by Emma T

Emma picked Cathy at Cathy’s Voice Now:

Courage. Bravery. Faith. Strength. Determination. All those words came to mind as I read Cathy’s story Walking Down Another Street. It takes a strong individual to make such a huge decision in a situation such as hers. What’s more impressive is that she was able to share that story!

It’s nice to hear of people trudging through the swamps of life and then sharing their success with others. It’s even more great to hear that other people were there to help them through…pushing them along when they couldn’t go any more…giving them the strength and faith through words of encouragement.

Cathy, congratulations on 25 years! And you’re absolutely correct when you say that you’ve learned many great lessons and are the person today because of where the paths of your life have led. Keep spreading that happiness!

Lurker’s favorite by Jennifer W

Jennifer loved on Kristin’s addition and writes:

This week I picked Kristin’s Irisha’s Mantra. Once in a while you happen upon a blog post that speaks to exactly where you are in your life and you call yourself lucky for reading it. I was doubly lucky because not only did this post do a great job evoking the emotions that huge life changes can bring but it was crafted beautifully.

I could completely relate to the anger Kristin described as well. Her feeling of “All the travel and education and experiences and adventures and past lives I’d lived were gone, trapped in two-dimensional photographs or written onto dead leaves of paper—and then relegated to the back of a dresser drawer.”

The writing in Kristin’s Irisha’s Mantra is raw, honest, and moving. As a fellow person who balks at self-affirmations and crystals, I could feel her discomfort when she wrote about leaving her first Zumba class in tears. But how brave she was to return, to try again, and to try to embrace this thought: “I am a rare and magnificent gift to the Universe. Behold, and cherish me.”

Congrats, Kristin, on the win.

Popular vote by the entire Internet if the entire Internet is made up of 250 people

Congrats, Zannah Brown (have you ever noticed that any and every name on Earth goes with the name Brown? Gallahad Brown, Zuperiferous Brown, Chiquita Brown…it all works) on your popular vote win with your funny-as-usual weekly post, this time about the people of Facebook v. the people of Twitter. Just like the bathroom is where we go to hide from rude bosses and whiny kids, Twitter is where we go to hide from our friends on Facebook, and you expressed that perfectly. Thanks for the laugh.

Random drawing winner of the week-long ad space on yeah write

Random.org chose the number 75 before we even had 75 blogs on the grid this week and, post-voting, Lolo holds the 75th spot. Congrats on the ad space, Lolo. Don’t you have a new book that we’d all love to buy? My sidebar would be the perfect place to show it off. Email me and let me know how you’d like to use the ad square.

Win-win

The thumbnails are now sorted in the grid from most yellow star votes to the least. In the case of a tie, like if four blogs all got seven votes each, the thumbnails are additionally sorted by page views. 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 voting. And for making yeah write the most welcoming spot on the Interwebs for writers who blog and bloggers who write.

Yeah write #55 opens Tuesday.