Our first challenge of the summer writer’s series! How does it feel?

I am so proud of those in the moderation queue who received the infamous “your yeah write submission” email asking them to rework their posts or to whittle them down to the summer series’ 500-word limit who actually reworked their pieces and resubmitted. That takes such courage to feel rejected, regroup, get back in there, then try it again. That’s one of the best things I’ve witnessed on the grid in a long time.

Oh, wait, another great thing: how about the new and improved blog designs on the grid and people moving to self-hosted platforms? Bravo, you guys. You should be proud of yourselves for taking that next big step in your blogging extravaganza.

We’re not exactly bringing back the lurkers’ faves this week. Those will return the week of yeah write #71. However, we’re handing out the honorable mentions a little differently than we have been the past few weeks. Let’s get after it.

Flood’s honorable mention

Studio Liz (formerly Shiftless Mommie): The Punchline. A well-worn performer is distracted among the new girls bustling backstage. Some great phrasing: “Her mind felt like it was hidden under burlap.” “Dabbing concealer under her eyes was the closest thing to sleep she could arrange this week.” I don’t know the mystery punch line the protagonist is searching for, but we find the proverbial old dog learning a new trick by the end of this short fiction. Perhaps there were too many unanswered questions, for the sake of brevity, that left readers to flounder a little. The lost line noted at the beginning and the discovered bottle at the end might be perfect bookends of ambiguity to get us thinking, but a clearer idea of where we are, and why, could give more impact to each.

Unrelated, but showing that she’s been reading summer series, Shiftless Mommie’s blog is now Studio Liz. It has a great new look that showcases all the creative, wondrous bits that are Liz. Looks fantastic!

Kristin’s honorable mention

I found Fellow Traveler from A Place of Greater Safety thought-provoking and well told. The inner monologue of the young protagonist is strong and genuine. But the descriptions and dialogue with “Peter” is what captured my imagination. I especially love these lines: “His smile vanished, and his eyebrows creased together. ‘Seriously, why not you? Is there something wrong with you?'” In this story, writing in the third person works especially well. We don’t get too much of the girl’s emotional baggage; we learn just enough for this story. And the hints that someday the bus trip she takes will be a longer, more serious one bring up both dread and resignation in me, as a reader.

Yeah write #67 guest editor Deb’s honorable mention

Reedster’s Do the Right Thing does to its readers what it enacts: blind-sides us. We get an innocent opening paragraph about mountains and a trip to Tarjay, and then all hell breaks loose. She does the whole “show don’t tell” thing beautifully. Her thoughts on seeing the naked running women are what we’d all think, although we might not be honest enough to admit them to a wide audience. It’s a powerful story, with important questions, all distilled into a compressed (and thus more powerful) piece.

Crowd favorite

Those damn add-a-beads. Mamarific’s winning post Some Girls Have All the Beads effectively took us all back to middle school in the 80s: designer handbags for 13-year-olds, the fruitless effort of blending in and those damn add-a-bead necklaces: a conspicuous display of how much our parents loved us—the more beads, the more love, right? Reading as a piece of fiction, Jennifer’s prose is tight, never melodramatic and it’s lyrically self-aware. She takes her readers exactly where they need to be in this tale of mean girls without leading them down a rabbit hole. It’s a well-deserved win.

Yeah write #67 jury prize winner

Reedster wins here as well. Congrats, Cindy! Please email me your shipping address so we can send you a copy of Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, the jury prize chosen by this week’s guest editor.

Win-Win

The thumbnails are now sorted in the grid from most yellow star votes to the least. The top row five badges will return for yeah write #71. For this week, because the grid had 27 entries, think of it more as a top row three.

In the case of a tie, 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. 

With Flood as the guest editor, yeah write #68 prompts will be published Monday and the grid will open Tuesday. I love you guys.