Here for the first time? Welcome! Here for NaBloPoMo? Lemme esplain.

We’ve got two writing projects going on at the same time: our weekly writing challenge grid and the yeah write NaBloPoMo grid. If you’re here to share with us a personal essay, blog anecdote or piece of creative nonfiction, keep reading this post because you’re in the right spot. If you’re here to find your tribe and refine your crazy by blogging every single day for the month of November, click here to add your post to the BlogHer NaBloPoMo yeah write Frankengrid.

Need a place for your fiction or poetry? The speakeasy is waiting for you over here.

Challenge grid and speakeasy badges

For Tuesday’s challenge grid and speakeasy, there are badges in the sidebar for you to grab by copying the code from the box below the graphic then pasting it into the HTML view of your post draft. It’s better if you not only paste into the HTML view, but hit publish while still in the HTML view. That should solve some of the difficulties some of you have been having getting the badge to show in your published post.

Challenge grid v. the speakeasy

Like I told the virgins in the introductory paragraph, the challenge grid is primarily for blog anecdotes, personal essays and creative nonfiction pieces. Quick primer: for yeah write purposes, the personal anecdote is the well-told blog story we love to read, the personal essay centers around the person writing the essay and should reveal a new perspective on the original topic before the essay concludes. Creative nonfiction, though it may contain a personal story, has more of a global focus with a subject matter requiring research.

The challenge grid is moderated by our submissions editor checking for all of the yeah write storytelling elements. Check all the helpful links further down in this post for details if you need them. Another micro-primer: 1,000-word limit, no fiction or poetry but it still must tell a story. 

The speakeasy is reserved for fiction and poetry. It’s open submissions with Flood checking only if your post meets genre requirements.

$100 Amazon gift card challenge

We’re in the final week of the $100 Amazon gift card challenge courtesy of John Lunt Design. Even if you’d never even heard of us until today, if you bring us not just your best stuff, but the best stuff on the grid, the points from a couple of editors’ picks will throw you right into the thick of it. There are five blogs holding the five highest point totals ranging from 33 points to 19. Out of 53 blogs so far, nearly 65% have at least one point. It’s a tight race with no runaway winner

You can earn from one to five points depending on your final grid row once voting closes, plus, if you win an editor’s pick, you get 10 extra points.

Sorry for the delay

We had to postpone the final week of the Amazon gift card challenge because several of our regular participants were affected one way or another by Hurricane/Tropical Storm/super storm Sandy. This week, it will go forward no matter what, so this is your chance.

Don’t forget, you can always enter this contest for charity or a school classroom or a family in need just in time for the holidays. If you earn the card and plan to give it away to someone who could put it to better use than your downloading the past 50 years of Willie Nelson covers, I’ll add $50 to the amount and forward the card to your designated recipient on your behalf (anonymously if requested).

You can view the entire challenge results through yeah write #80 by clicking here for the public spreadsheet. Three weeks in, combining the challenge grid (votes determined by readers and editors) and the speakeasy (votes determined by popular vote), our top five point totals belong to:

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• The Outlaw Mama      33 points     challenge
• Simply She Goes         29 points     challenge
• In the Tesseract          25 points     challenge
• Snaps and Bits              22 points     challenge/speakeasy
• IA Soup Mama             19 points     challenge/speakeasy

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Helpful links

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• FAQ
• a blogger’s guide to writing a yeah write post
• what yeah write is, what yeah write isn’t
• vote-o-rama tracker
• weekly winners’ posts

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Optional photo prompt

In case you are bereft of writing inspiration this week, a photo for you.

 Yeah write #82 opens Tuesday. Bring us your best stuff. Bring us the best stuff on the grid.