Love ’em and leave ’em
I’m in love with my own words. I admit it. There are times I look at a page and I cannot quite fathom cutting a single syllable. But my job as a writer is to figure out what’s at the heart of my words and to whittle away everything around that. I keep my darlings in a separate file. To use later, I tell myself. To repurpose. But really, I just love them too much to leave them behind.
Get yourself free
This month, let’s take some advice on the subject from a truly gifted songwriter. Paul Simon says there are fifty ways to leave your lover. We all know that there are many more than that, and we’re asking you to tell us about one of them. That’s right:
Give us exactly one way to leave your lover–in exactly fifty words.
While you’re writing, I’ll leave you in Paul’s capable hands. Never written microprose before? Need a refresher? Check out our primer on microprose.
This is the badge you need:
Below is the YeahWrite badge you need for this month’s microprose challenge. Below the badge is a few lines of code. See that? Copy it and then paste it into the “text” or HTML view of your post editor. If you don’t copy it exactly, the image will not appear correctly in your post, and you will receive an error message when you submit the post to Inlinkz. If you have any questions regarding adding this code to your post or website, please contact us at editors@yeahwrite.me.
How to submit and fully participate in the Microprose Challenge
Basic YeahWrite guidelines: must be a response to the prompt found in the introductory post; your entry can be dated no earlier than this past Wednesday; fiction or nonfiction, told in exactly 50 words; no poems, please. You may enter only one microstory per weekly challenge.
How to submit and fully participate in the challenge:
- In the sidebar of this week’s post, please grab the code beneath the microprose badge and paste it into the HTML view of your entry;
- Follow the Inlinkz instructions after clicking “add your link” to upload your entry to this week’s challenge grid;
- Your entry should appear immediately on the grid if you don’t receive an error message;
- Please make the rounds to read all the entries in this week’s challenge; and
- 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:
Christine Hanolsy is a (primarily) science fiction and fantasy writer who simply cannot resist a love story. She joined the YeahWrite team in 2014 as the microstory editor and stepped into the role of Editor-In-Chief in 2020. Christine was a 2015 BlogHer Voices of the Year award recipient and Community Keynote speaker for her YeahWrite essay, “Rights and Privileges.” Her short fiction has been published in a number of anthologies and periodicals and her creative nonfiction at Dead Housekeeping and in the Timberline Review. Outside of YeahWrite, Christine’s past roles have included Russian language scholar, composer, interpreter, and general cat herder. Find her online at christinehanolsy.com.
Hey, gang! If you ever miss a deadline for the micro challenge, don’t be afraid to add that post to the weekend writing showcase or drop it in a comment on the micro opener post (the post like this one) – we love to read work like this: https://thepigmentsoflife.wordpress.com/2017/05/04/all-the-way-to-heaven/
I have the badge showing up on my post but it won’t post to the link up. Any suggestions?
The badge says “312” but the challenge is #316. I edited the badge to fit the URL here and I added a backlink in the prompt explanation at the end of my story. That might help you.
The badge is now fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience!