Welcome to yeah write #150 weekly writing challenge

Is this your first time here? Welcome to your new writing community! Please have a look around. If it seems like a good fit for you, we’d love for you to join the challenge grid with a non-fiction essay or join the speakeasy with a prompted fiction story. Getting lost in all the awesomeness? Please email us and we’ll help you on your way.

Where’s the writing prompt?

One of the questions we get most often is about prompts. There are no prompts on the challenge grid. That means you’re free to write about whatever you want. One reason for that is we want to see your best work and your best work takes time. When you are asked to write to a prompt, you’ve essentially been given a deadline. If you miss that deadline, you wouldn’t be able to save it for next week because we’d be on to the next topic by then. Without a prompt, you can write about whatever you choose and, if you want to take more time, the grid will be here when you’re ready.

Without a prompt, how will you know what to write?

What makes a grid worthy story? What topics are going to get you the most votes or an editor’s pick on the invitational grid (which opens at 30 published entries on the challenge grid)? 

Last week’s winner wrote about a personal cause intertwined with a story from her childhood. There was a time I won for a portrait of growing up with an alcoholic father, and another time I wrote about my son’s ridiculously silly babysitter. We’ve had winners that make us double over from laughter, reach for the Kleenex, or gasp in disbelief. Sometimes, a winning post will make us do all three.

Your submission need not be a wrenching, emotional tale. It needn’t be humorous. It doesn’t have to be a cathartic cleansing of your soul, and it doesn’t have to be a touching coming-of-age tale. What it needs to be is smartly crafted, free of overly flowery prose and cliches, and written in your authentic voice. Your opening paragraph needs to compel us to keep reading. Your middle paragraphs can’t wander off on a tangent. Your ending must be bring it all together, supporting your original intent. 

More submissions on the grid means more voting power

When we get to 30 or more entries on the challenge grid, the invitational  grid opens, and the yeah write editors select their favorites with the jury prize being chosen as the best submission of the week.

Our goal is to showcase good, solid writing. That means we won’t always hit 30 entries. We are okay with a small grid with the bar set high for all entries, and that means some weeks there will be no invitational. But, no matter what, we will host a popular vote which is not about popularity at all. Yeah write does not host a clicking contest. We believe in voting fairly, on merit, and only after you’ve read every single entry on the grid that week. To help you focus on the best of the best, the number of votes available are based on the number of entries:

• 01-10 submissions: one vote
• 11-20 submissions: two votes
• 21-30 submissions: three votes
• 31-40 submissions: four votes
• 41-50 submissions: five votes

We even made a new badge to reflect how, with this scaled voting, the top row may not always be five bloggers. Could be four. Might be three. We’d love it to be five, though. Tell your friends about us. Make it happen.

Spread the word of yeah write weekly writing challenge

Are you a member of a writing forum or a literary blogging community? Please leave a link with your friends over there telling them all about us. If you don’t have another writing home online, be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook where you can easily share or retweet us. The more we grow, the more we can learn from one another. Your endorsement of what we’re doing here is invaluable.

Odds, ends, reminders

• The badge you will need to add to your planned submission is over in the sidebar
• This immediate past Sunday is the earliest your submission can be dated
• Your post can be no longer than 600 words
• Personal essays or traditional blog anecdotes only
• There are no weekly prompts; the topic is yours. Be compelling
• The grid is open from Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. to Wednesday at 11:59 p.m.
• There is voting. Voting will take place Thursday from midnight to 10:00 p.m. US eastern
• The challenge grid is limited to 50 bloggers
• The winners’ post will be published by noon on Friday
• No self-promotional posts are allowed on the yeah write grid, including those containing links to other blog events and Internet contests

Yeah write #150 is open…

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