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…
Congrats on the big 2nd Birthday!
And thanks to whoever chose that pic of me! It’s one of my faves. My, uh, personality looks AMAZING.
The whole crew of editors are incredible. Thanks for all that you do!
Hahahahaha…your personality is wearing that red dress, Dawn. Thanks for the birthday wishes!
You have done SO much in SO little time – and that’s on top of your near constant theme tweaking 😉 You’ve got such an authentic voice and I hope you always REMAIN so. It’s the best friends who are willing to tells us that sometimes these jeans DO make us look fat. Someday I hope to put together a less pedantic post so I can come back and play with the cool bloggers here 🙂
That would be awesome! I got your email and I’m passing it along to the proper editor. I’m still editing tomorrow’s post!
Everything about this community is amazing. Erica, you created something truly wonderful. Congratulations on this milestone. When I started linking up here, I was just getting back to writing and I was nervous as hell and I didn’t know what to expect. What I found were writers who, although part of a competition, were always eager to cheer on all of the other participants. I’ve learned so much from being a part of this. I’ve found bloggers I wouldn’t have found otherwise, I have regular readers even for my posts that aren’t on the grid, and best of all, I have made friends here.
Thank you and everyone else who is a part of this for making this such a wonderful place for me to spend my time.
The best part about it is the friendships. I’m glad you found us.
I still feel like a newbie, so this was a really fun historical recap!
I’m so blown away by what you have created here. I have learned so much in the last 8ish months, thank you thank you!
I love everything about it except that there aren’t enough hours in the day to organize my house, ’cause I’m busy reading all of the awesomeness on the grids.
Stacie, I’m ashamed to even bring in a housekeeping crew. There’s dust on my dust on my baseboards and there’s an entire bacterial community living under the microwave. I think it holds weekly writing challenges, I can’t be sure. Thanks for everything you’ve done for us since stumbling over us 8ish months ago. I deeply appreciate it.
Thank you, Erica, for the beautiful shout out. You and lovelinks gave me a reason every week to go out there and read blogs that I wouldn’t have stumbled across otherwise. Some of my best bloggy friends to this day have been former lovelinkers. For that, I thank you.
Julie is right, yeah write is so grown up now, and I feel a little old and uncool in my mom yoga pants, but I know that’s okay here.
Happy 2nd Birthday! Or 104th week!
I sometimes think of the matchmaking magic lovelinks performed back in the day. There are bloggers who are best friends who can’t remember how they met, but from a distance, I’ve watched their friendship take hold, and it’s a good feeling to know they found each other through this community. Thanks so much for stopping by today, Alison, and for that huge endorsement when we were first starting out.
Hell, this place looks so grown up now. I feel like I should put on a bra or something…
We have a strict no bra, no pants policy. At least one hole in the t-shirt you’ve been wearing as pajamas for 15 days. Thanks for stopping by, Julie.
I LOVE YOU GUYS!!! Seriously, Erica? That is the highlight of my blogging career, what you said. I’m making a t-shirt with that. Or whenever I do my “about” page, it’s going on it.
I love this community and what it has done for me as a writer and a blogger, and the friendships I’ve made across the US and up in to Canada. Canada even!
THANK YOU TO ERICA for keeping us going every week. From the small peek I get into the big picture, I know that it is a huge task. You do good in the world, sweets. ~ Cindy
I mean, LOOK AT THAT GRID, Erica?? Writers, who tend not to have a dime to their names, voluntarily ponying up bucks to support a community that supports them.
It’s both exciting and so overwhelming how supportive our community has become. And, yup, even those of us struggling to pay our own bills have come through to make sure this project will be around for years to come.
We need to build a testimonials page AND get us some t-shirts. Who can make that happen? The good we’re doing in the world could use some screen printing.
How does it feel to be two? Can you even believe it?
It feels like we’re 104 years old, not weeks, and no, I can’t believe it. Remember that night I fell asleep before making/uploading the new badges? Woo boy, thanks for taking over that part.
I love this history lesson! Thank *you* also, Erica, for bringing together blogging writers that I would otherwise never read. It has been an extreme pleasure to watch some participants go from “That was a cute post, and I almost got through the whole thing” to “Holy cow I have to read that post for the fourth time.”
I’m looking forward to seeing how the grid continues to improve and grow and shine.
That was the nicest thing I’ve woken up to in a long time, Kristin (damn those long-distance relationships). Thanks for being such an integral part of it all.