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Week Seven: fly, fly fly on your own, no flying monkeys
Please welcome guest editor Jane D who tweets as @greatersafety and blogs at A Place of Greater Safety. If you have any questions or need any clarification on today’s post or prompts, please feel free to begin a discussion in comments.
Your judges this week for the final summer writer’s series jury prize will be Michelle L at The Journey, Cindy R at The Reedster Speaks and Liz R at Studio Liz. Flood will continue as submissions editor, moderating the challenge grid and managing the hangout grid.
The yeah write #70 summer challenge grid will be open for submissions until Wednesday at 9 pm US eastern. Voting will open at that time and will close on Thursday at 9 pm US eastern [-4 GMT]
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When I jumped up and down in the comments to be included this week, Erica was, I think, a bit bemused. She may have said “I’m glad you’re excited,” more than once. I was excited. Then she sent the login, and I got nervous. I figured, as a two-month newbie, I’d better work hard not to screw this up. I decided to do some research.
No, I didn’t start drinking vodka.
I clicked through the entire yeah write archives. I don’t recommend this. By week 40 when lovelinks became yeah write, I had long begun to regret my little project, but my compulsive streak won out.
When I finished at three in the morning, here’s what I had figured out:
Erica is a goddess. Actually, Erica is Kato, constantly tinkering in the garage so you can have a car with rocket launchers and an espresso machine (or a chance for a text ad with the Bloggess) so you, yes, you, can be a superhero.
She has a vision, and she has repeatedly found ways to keep things interesting, even rebooting the whole system when she felt necessary.
Welcome to the summer writers’ series
Managing editor Erica with contributing editors Kristin and Flood (Jen is on summer hiatus) and all their brilliant guest editors created a writing guide at least as valuable as any of the books given as prizes. Perhaps more valuable, since it’s specifically aimed at bettering your blog writing.
Bookmark it, use it, love it.
Of course, this writing guide also comes with a community of incredibly awesome people. Every person has been kind and encouraging as I and others have stepped out from the safety of the hangout grid or linked for the first time ever. The number of comments that started with “I reread your post several times…” continues to shock me because of the amount of time and attention that shows is being lavished on these blogs. I know I speak for more than one new and nervous writer when I say a huge “thank you.” You’ve changed my writing and, by extension, my life.
Now, as we head into the last week, I sort of feel like I’m at preschool graduation with all of us taking our turn on the stage and cheering each other on from the stands. We little birds are testing our wings as we get ready for the final plunge into the big bad world of the returning challenge grid.
Or not. The hangout grid will always be there, no voting required.
A few reminders as you prepare to link up:
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- No new tutorials. Review a week you missed, or that you could still use some work on.
- This is the last week for the strict 500 word limit. Next week it will be 1,000.
- Prompts are provided, but they are optional.
- If you’re confused, please visit the summer writing faq.
- If you’re still confused, try the opening post from last week.
- Bring your best stuff!
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Yeah write summer challenge grid #70 is open. Write your hearts into it.
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the prompts are now optional; if you need one, grab one
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- If the prompt takes you from thunderstorms to watching TV at your grandma’s house to how much you love Pat Sajak to the oldest person you’ve ever kissed, we want that story the furthest away in your imagination from the original prompt. Let your imagination loose
- Do not mention to your readers you are writing to a prompt, either as an intro or as a footnote. It’s your job to make the post interesting without “explaining it away”
- Keep your writing style! Do you tell stories with humor? Prose? Verse? Photos? Illustrations? Keep doing that
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[divider_header_h3] This week’s prompts [courtesy of Tom Slatin] [/divider_header_h3]
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- Describe the longest amount of time you have ever been away from home.
- Write about something you know now that you wish you knew earlier in life.
- What music medium did you grow up with; vinyl records, CDs, or digital?
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Missing you guys this week! Was on vacation and didn’t have a chance to get my “best stuff” together. Will still try and read & vote, though!
I am very impressed that you read the WHOLE backlog. Wow. That’s a lot of catching up. I confess. I was not so diligent!!
Nice work, Jane! I am impressed by your researching skills — I haven’t the time nor ambition, which I why I played dead until all of the jobs this week were taken. I promise to step up next time, though. And I’m not even crossing my fingers behind my back…
No one would know you are a newbie Jane! You’ve got double my experience with your two months..You did an awesome job and kudos for reading the entire archives. Wow!
Great job on the kick-off post, Jane. I relate to over-complicating things (or at least thinking that’s what I’m doing). I’m also sad to see this end. I’ve enjoyed the summer series and appreciate all the hard work everyone has put in. Yay, us!
Thank you for the post, Jane! And I’m so impressed with your research. I joined up here back on February 28th, and I still feel like a newbie. I have yet to find the time (compulsion?) to get all the way to the beginning. But I think I must.
I’m hoping to pop something onto the grid, but really, I am terribly nervous. It’s much harder to judge, and much easier to judge. Hopefully I’ll find time to do yeah write justice in the next day!
I just have to say – I have loved the couple of posts I missed the first time around because you put them on the hangout grid – they sure seemed challenge grid worthy to me. But, as you’ve said to me, feel free to ignore my opinion.
I had something, but I think I’m going to save it for next week because it’s way over 500 words and I need to weed through it.
This has been very well worth it. I am writing more and more in the style of Yeah Write for all my posts. (More story less journal). Awesome series. Hopefully the peeps who missed it will go back and read the tutorials as they are really great!!
I had so much fun this summer doing this. I’ve been sick and been laid up, this has been the only fun thing I’ve gotten to do! Thanks for all the great reads judges and submitters!
Great post Jane! I’m weirded out to be on the flipside of the grid this week. Also: I totally want to read the history of Yeah Write now.
Oh, there were so many fun things I wanted to say about the archives that I ended up cutting due to length. I hope at some point to get Erica’s perspective on all of it.
did i submit? Grandma has Landed?
i really suck at this.
http://icescreammama.com/2012/08/14/grandma-has-landed/
This is the link that needs to be in your post: https://yeahwrite.me/70-open-summer/
Then come back and click the blue button beneath the thumbnails and follow those instructions.
Sad to see it go. I’ve really enjoyed it and like to think I became a stronger writer. Thanks everyone for the hard work!
Wow – you read through all of it! That is impressive! I’m kind of sad to see the summer series go, it’s been great!
You can call it impressive, and that would be nice of you. Or you could just call it me making things far harder on myself than it needed to be, and that would probably be closer to the truth…
I have a tendency to overcomplicate things as well, so I appreciate the effort put in when someone else does too 🙂
I went and read the ones you linked back to and now I want to read them all.
Great intro to the week, Jane! I hope that not having tutorials this week will encourage people to go back and read some of the excellent advice from previous weeks: Deb’s now-famous “so what” post, Kristin’s fearless examination of her own writing style (Was that just last week?), Saalon Muyo’s lovely piece about finding your ending and steering toward it as if you have the North Star in your sights. And the rest. Erica, I hope your “week off” is truly a week off; you’ve left us in good hands.
Thanks. I completely agree with you – there is some fantastic advice in those tutorials.