Is this your first time here? Or have you been gone awhile?

Welcome! Please take a look around, click on a lot of stuff, decide if yeah write seems like the right fit for you and your blogging style. If it feels good, please grab a badge from the sidebar, add it to your post, then come back to submit your post to the grid. Sunday’s post is a good place to start for specific details on this week’s challenge. We’re glad you’re here.

The final moderated grid of 2012!

Your yeah write editors are all about letting you celebrate Christmahanukwanzaakah the best way you know how. If you celebrate the holidays by writing your little heart out and visiting all your favorite blogs, yeah write will be here for you with three weeks of open submissions. If you celebrate off-line and don’t give a goshdarn about a “so what” then you are free to take three weeks off, starting December 18. Today’s grid will be moderated by our submissions editor, then after that, the editors won’t be directly involved on the grid until the opening of yeah write #91 on Tuesday, January 8, 2013.

What yeah write is and what yeah write is not

Some of you have read this before. It’s linked at the top of this page in the main menu always available for yeah write virgins, newbies and the forgetful. For this final week of moderation and for the next three weeks of open submissions and for when the editors return in January, here is a reminder:

Yeah write is:

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• the smaller blogger’s long lost tribe, the Okaformee Moonshiners. Mascot: four beautiful people soaking in a bubble bath of gin. Official flower: the iPad. 
• when we are on our best behavior, a blog reader’s paradise. There are no commercial or gimmicky sponsored posts snuck onto the grid. The casual surfer can stumble over us, click a thumbnail and start reading what we know will be a pretty decent personal narrative.
• a surprisingly fun way to spend Tuesday through Thursday in good company while other, more dramatic, yet somehow less important, shiz is going down on the Internet.
• experienced writers helping emerging writers helping beginning writers struggle with the decision of writing for a public audience. We do not abandon our beginning writers who speak up and don’t quit.
• an open community where writers and bloggers can submit when they want and not submit when they don’t want. When you finally get bored with our shenanigans and unsubscribe, we heal our broken feelings with a new design element. True story. Typeface, graphic or WordPress template. Sometimes sushi.

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Yeah write is not:

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• for everybody. And that’s okay. We all have personalities and working styles best taken in small doses, and ours come with a really long list of contraindications. Take our managing editor, especially, with food, hard liquor and big chunks of dark, cynical humor.
• your writing partner. If you don’t have one, find one. Start looking here if you like, search a few writing groups, but beware the hidden agenda. Some people live to discourage the dreams of others. And some don’t know enough about the process, about the art, to be considered your writing equal. You need a writing partner, not an intern.
• a replacement for a writer’s workshop or an instructor-led class. Sometimes, you just need to be in the same room with the person you’re trusting with your hard work.
• your first drafts folder. Bring your best stuff doesn’t always mean bring it right now. It never means bring the best you happen to have on you, cohesive narrative be damned. Bring us your best stuff when you know it’s gonna be the best on the grid.

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Challenge grid v the speakeasy

The challenge grid is for traditional blog anecdotes, personal essays and creative non-fiction pieces. Your submission is limited to 1,000 words, although we’d encourage you to keep it around 500. Our submissions editor will return your post if it’s dated any earlier than today (Dec 9). Voting is closed to all but the yeah write editors and those willing to complete and submit our voting tracker, scoring each entry.

The speakeasy is for your fiction and poetry submissions. There is a weekly writing prompt with a cool opening sentence to get you started. Voting is open, no spreadsheet tracker required.

The challenge grid is moderated submissions following these guidelines. The speakeasy is open submissions following the prompt.

Here’s the spreadsheet each editor uses as a guide when selecting our weekly picks. If you’re having trouble making the grid or you’re swinging for the jury prize, you can use it to structure your pieces as you draft them. It contains exactly what we’re looking for as we read each entry. If you don’t make it on this week, it’s probably not an indictment of your writing, but on how it simply wasn’t a yeah write submission. We’re sure your readers would still enjoy it.

Yeah write #87 is open for submissions. Bring us your best stuff.

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