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Yeah write weekly writing challenge turns two years old!

This is the perfect time to say thank you, both to those bloggers who helped get us started and to those who have kept us going. I’m glad there is no orchestra music around here to play me off the stage because it’s a long list. Not so long you’ll need to start skimming, mind you. Just too long for me to stand in your living room wearing a loaner designer gown and WonderBra while reading it from a teleprompter, which I completely considered doing.

Lovelinks era

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  • Jacqui from the now-defunct blog ChickTuition first encouraged me to go for it when I told her I wanted to create a space for writers who blog and bloggers who write, and one that properly teaches the art of writing for an online audience. She did her best to keep me in line when I would go off the rails with crazy ideas from week-to-week.
  • Alison Lee at Writing, Wishing was lovelinks’ biggest cheerleader. She is a mom blogger with a professional PR background. If you’ve been around more than a year and you can’t remember how you first stumbled upon yeah write, it was probably through Alison.
  • Julie from Bitches in the ‘Burbs coined the phrase “lovelinks virgin”. To this day, we are still welcoming yeah write virgins to the grid.
  • Deb at MannaHatta Mamma was the first to make the process of submitting to the grid a verb. She called it lovelinking. Then we called ourselves lovelinkers. The name changed, and we haven’t recovered that ease of language since.
  • Even when not on the grid, Stasha at Northwest Mommy and Julie at Mamamash faithfully read and voted every single week. Stasha also told me what the hell people were asking for when they were asking for lovelinks sidebar badges. I knew nothing, it was Stasha to the rescue, and the weekly post badge and winners’ badges were born.
  • Ado at The Momalog made people bring their A-game every week by crushing the competition in writing and votes. Her daughter Fiona asked her to bow out of the voting one week, and Ado still came in seventh place out of 50.
  • My friend Flood stepped in during lovelinks #31 and started the lurker’s fave writing award given to her favorite blog on the grid. Seventy-three weeks later, she’s still here whipping us all into shape.
  • My husband Q began notoriously plucking the food bloggers from grid obscurity and awarding them with his lurker’s favorite until his job took over any extra lovelinking time. Trivia: He has now sacrificed 104 Thursday nights with his wife to the lovelinks/yeah write voting process.

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Yeah write era

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  • Jett Superior from Alphabet Junkie gifted me with a consulting session when I needed advice of how to reach a broader audience. Her main suggestion: lose the “lovelinks” name, lose the personal blog look and tone. We went from 100 subscribers to 300 in two months, and the grid is filled with many more genres of blogging and writing than it was before the changes.
  • Alexis from Troublesome Tots encouraged me to keep the natural, slightly crusty “inconvenient truth” aspect to my personality when handling the politics inherent in managing a community of beginning, emerging and experienced blogging writers. Alexis says you are welcome.
  • Jen Weinberg who delights us on Twitter as runaway cupcake, then one of our strongest writers on the grid, ushered in the new editor’s picks in yeah write #52. Jen faithfully read each post and submitted her picks each week until life took her back to school. Ugly cry her final week as an editor.
  • Kristin Wald from That Unique Weblog, another one of our strongest writers on the grid, stepped in and took Jen’s place. Kristin now manages our social media presence and writes the Sunday kickoff post each week.
  • Cindy Reed from The Reedster Speaks, oh my God, arguably the most popular writer on the grid, became an editor. Cindy jumped in with both feet and introduced our objective measuring system of what had become a very subjective process of choosing the best on the grid.
  • Deb from MannaHatta Mamma helped us distill the nebulous concept of central conflict to its “so what” essence and we will always be grateful for her summer series lesson.
  • Melisa Lunt from Just Begin from Here designed the avatars and header for the yeah write layout right before this one. Her work is still on our Facebook and Twitter pages. We only changed layouts because the old one was no longer supported by its developer, wouldn’t update when WordPress patched security holes, and I was not going down to hackers ever again. Melisa understands.
  • Shannon Fisher at Truthfully tried to slap some sense into me about that old layout even before the developer stopped supporting it. It was purty, but dysfunctional. Hard to navigate, made no sense. I kept it around because it reminded me of me until I had a technical reason for getting rid of it. And you know it’s hopeless when @saalon throws up his hands.
  • Louise Ducote, Courtenay Baker and Stacie D becoming editors put a stop to the practice of “no yeah write editors on the grid”. The grid needed their strong narratives and their constant willingness to top their previous best, and I thank them and all the editors for strengthening the competition every week.

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We haven’t forgotten about you. Yes, you.

It’s always been our way of saying thanks for writing, for reading, for hanging out with us by sharing your challenge grid, speakeasy, and, now, the new weekend moonshine posts through other social media outlets.

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  • If you’re on Twitter, we personally share your grid post at least twice: once to get it read, then again to get it some votes.
  • Many of our people love Facebook, and the most compelling narratives are shared by our readers in their timelines, broadening the reach of yeah write.
  • If you’re on the grid, we share your post on Google Plus whether you use G+ or not.
  • The weekly yeah write reach is nothing to sneeze at. Bring the best on the grid, and somebody is gonna visit your space and chat with you for a while. The crowd favorite over a three-day period could receive about 800 unique visitors.

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If you have a smaller blog looking for an audience, and you are willing to follow a few submission guidelines specifically designed to make yeah write a better place for everyone involved, this is the spot for you. Thanks for subscribing and growing our community.

What? Even more thanks? Thanks!

If you’re not already a supporting subscriber or your subscription has expired, please visit our supporting subscriber page to review all the subscription plans and their various perks. Since we’ve started offering the goodies to those helping us keep the lights on, the editors have:

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  • previewed challenge grid entries, providing suggestions for strengthening the subscribers’ narratives and making their entries more competitive
  • lined up comprehensive blog evaluations for design and content 
  • arranged for a complete blog redesign and migration from Blogger to WordPress
  • given out countless wet and sloppy kisses or at least paid for lunch

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Please visit and follow our current supporting subscribers

Currently a supporting subscriber as of April 2013? Here you are on your very own grid with your thumbnail linking to the home page of your blog. Thank you for ushering in Year Three of the yeah write weekly writing challenge.

If you’re hanging out with us on the yeah write #104 grid, please start the celebration by reading Sunday’s kickoff post. Thanks again for everything. Yeah write #104 opens Tuesday…


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