Under Pressure
I don’t know about you, but I put a lot of pressure on myself to produce exquisite work. If what I create is less than stellar, I mentally flog myself. This is not necessarily a useful mental habit, but hey, I’m working on lightening up on myself.
In fact, I’ve even taken to writing poetry every day just for me. No one ever reads it. It just sits in the little journal, the one with the sketches of colorful Parisian rooftops, on my nightstand. That way, I am practicing, but there is no pressure to perform. I am not staring at the blank page on my screen, intimidated by the essays and stories I am not writing. If you are, like I am, a perfectionist when it comes to your writing, I highly recommend removing the performative aspect of writing, and just write. Just for you.
August Poetry Slam: Prompts
We’re wrapping up our summer break with a break from poetry and looking forward to our next Super Challenge as Rowan breaks down what a prompt is and how to use it from the other side of the judging table. Looking for ideas? She’ll even throw in some prompts at the end to stretch your brain. We’ve got your Slam right here.
Prompt Up!
Prompt Up is our optional weekly writing prompt for the fiction|poetry challenge! Here’s how it works: we choose a sentence prompt from last week’s winning nonfiction post and announce it in the kickoff. It’s your job to use that prompt in your poem or story and then run with it. The prompt is just a springboard, though: feel free to use it as your first sentence, move it, change it, or float it down to other territories.
Your prompt up this week is brought to you by Margaret of Unfolding from the Fog with her post, The Change. The prompt up is: I’m not really helpless.
How to submit and fully participate in the challenge:
Basic YeahWrite guidelines: 750 word limit; your entry can be dated no earlier than this past Sunday; fiction or poetry only.
1. In the sidebar of this week’s post, please grab the code beneath the fiction|poetry badge and paste it into the HTML view of your entry;
2. Follow the Inlinkz instructions after clicking “add your link” to upload your entry to this week’s challenge grid;
3. Your entry should appear immediately on the grid if you don’t receive an error message;
4. Please make the rounds to read all the entries in this week’s challenge; and
5. Consider turning off moderated comments and CAPTCHA on your own blog.
Submissions for this week’s challenges will close on Wednesday at 10pm ET. Voting will then open immediately thereafter and close on Thursday at 10pm ET. The winners, as always, will be celebrated on Friday.
Thank you for sharing with us your hard work! Good luck in the challenge…
Loading InLinkz ...About the author:
An English Professor living in Southern California, Natalie enjoys too many hobbies to be a practical person. When her children give her a minute, she writes essays, fiction and poetry on her personal blog, The Cat Lady Sings. Natalie is a Contributing Editor here at YeahWrite.
