So what’s going on here at yeah write?
We’re knee-deep into the summer series, and man is there a lot going on here! We’ve got a little something for everyone, and it’s been a blast so far.
First off, there’s the yeah write lounges, where you can really shape up your writing. Starting with the bronze lounge, this is the place for a smaller yeah write community to give and receive peer feedback. Upload a post that you’d like fine-tuned, revise according to feedback, and walk away with a shiny new submission-worthy piece. It’s free, and you can register for that here.
The more advanced lounges, the silver and gold ones, are where you will get to work with an editor. The silver lounge, designed for those who want to get a little more up-close-and-personal with a piece, includes a smaller group workshop plus an editor, where you can work those pieces a little more thoroughly for the price of $25 per week. The gold lounge is for those who want an in-depth critique and one-on-one feedback from an editor for only $50 per week. Register now, before they fill up!
Want to just hang out and get to know everyone? Grab a cup of joe at the coffeehouse and get chatting.
Finally, we have the yeah write supergrid, a melding of the gargleblaster, the challenge grid and the speakeasy. To add your submission to this bad boy, scroll down to the bottom of this page, read the instructions, then submit.
Get out of the rut
When I was a brand new blogger, I just wanted to get my point across. No muss, no fuss, just straight-up word-vomit. Sounds gross, huh? Well, that’s because it was. The longer I wrote and the more I participated in the yeah write challenges, though, the more I saw that what I was doing was sort of like writing in a public diary with slightly more pizazz and a little less whining (because, well, it was public). Take it from me, no one wants to read your diary.
When you write from a desire simply to communicate information — as in a diary — you tend to write differently than when you’re working creatively, whether you’re writing fiction or otherwise. There are tried-and-true phrases you recycle out of habit and stale, boring sentences told from the same point of view every time. I myself did not put too much thought into making my sentences interesting, or creating an arc to my story. I just wrote, and I was lazy.
Reading lazy writing is boring, people. Think of all those letters from your great-aunt Erma and how you zipped through them so you could get on to more important things like building mud forts and tricking your sibling into eating a slug. You don’t want people to zip through your writing as a courtesy read; you don’t want to be boring. In order not to be boring, you cannot be lazy.
I’ve noticed that many bloggers who are stuck in a rut tend towards laziness. They just plug away, doing the same old thing in the same old way, without ever challenging themselves to grow as writers. If you aren’t stretching your limits you will never cultivate an audience and draw people to your writing simply because they love reading your words. Ultimately, that is what writers hope for; for people to love their words.
Composing better sentences is as good a place to start as any when it comes to shaking up the writing routing. That’s a bit what we’re going to cover this week, as Christine mentions in the kickoff post. This week’s optional prompt, why don’t we do it in the road?, may be a good place to start stirring up the routine, so dust off that ol’ creativity and get out of the rut!
