Welcome to the fourth fall writing season at yeah write weekly writing challenge

Hey, do you like the new design? Streamlined, a little sparse, all the pages and pages of extraneous explanation moved into the ether. We have always been super available to our readers, so we figured if you have questions about who what where why, you can email us or meet us on Facebook or on Twitter. For those of you who just want to jump right in, you can do that. A few basics: today the grid opens for our non-fiction writing challenge. There is a limit of 500 words plus 100 words grace. You must tell a compelling story. If we get bored or can’t figure out what’s going on, you’ll get a nicely detailed note from our submissions editor explaining where we fell off. You can rewrite it, rework it and workshop it. We’ll be happy to read it again in a few weeks.

The non-fiction challenge closes Wednesday at 11:59 p.m. US eastern. If your entry is accepted, our editors will move you over to the invitational grid open to voting both by our readers and our editorial staff. On Friday, we will publish editorial picks and announce the popular vote winner.

The ultimate question: why do you keep doing this to us?

Are you looking for the pangalactic gargleblaster? It’s moved to Wednesdays! Please see our Sunday kickoff post for details and our new schedule. The ultimate question will still be released on Sundays, but you now have two extra days to craft the perfect piece of microfiction or micro-true story. Did you know short story writing gets a little harder as the word count gets smaller? You still need a beginning, middle and end, subtle and clever implications are perfectly fine, amorphous ambiguity is not, in exactly 42 words. If you feel up to the challenge, you’ll have until Wednesday at 11:59 p.m. US eastern to answer the question “why do you keep doing this to us?” as an actual story or true event, not just a salad of words. Not sure what we mean? You can read, read and read some more about it starting with this link.

The traditional challenge grid, now better described as the non-fiction challenge, opens today.

Fall season writing contest coming October 19

To celebrate our fourth fall season and the return of our fiction/poetry challenge to yeah write, we will be hosting a four-week writing challenge on each grid: non-fiction, fiction/poetry and microfiction. The winners of the challenge can win a gift card worth at least $50 to the online retailers of their choice $100 cash. If you invite a friend to the challenge and your friend wins instead of you? You each get the $50 gift card$100 cash: your friend for winning and you for referring the winner to yeah write. At this writing, there will be one winner across all three challenges, and you can enter all three throughout the four-week period. What I would do, though, is concentrate on entering 2-4 really solid pieces during that time (as opposed to 12) and bringing in as many writer friends as possible. Either you will win outright, earning the winner’s 100 bucks or one of your referrals will win, earning you 100 bucks.

Right now, we have $200 in prizes, but hopefully by the time the contest kicks off, we’ll have more to award the best writers on each grid. If the winner arrives at yeah write without a referral (or has been around so long, we are the referrer), we’ll keep that money for another writing contest. Spread the word. More details and explanations coming by yeah write #180, including news of loosening up someone else’s wallet. Spirits are generous around good writing.

Edited to add: wallets are loosening already. If you have any prizes you’d like to donate for second and third places (remember, we’d need two of each) please contact us. Thanks!

The yeah write #179 weekly writing challenge is open for non-fiction: personal essays, creative opinion, mostly true stories based on actual events. Submit yours using the link below.