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Drumroll, please
That’s right, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: we’re about to announce who’s moving on to round two of the yeah write super challenge! Oh, and what the prizes will be. You probably want to know that, too.
Before I do that, though, writers, if you don’t have your feedback yet, please send us an email at superchallenge@yeahwrite.me, because we definitely sent those emails out last night. And make sure we’re in your address book so we don’t get sent to your spam folder, OK? (I know, you know, and I know you know, but I have to say it anyway.)
I’ll drag this out a little longer to thank all of you for participating, and to send a special shout-out to our admin team: Arden, Christine and Stacie, we couldn’t have made it this far without you guys. Folks, anything that’s going well for you is all them; anything that’s screwed up behind the scenes is almost certainly my fault.
We had an eclectic field of essays for round one, and you should all be proud of yourselves for participating. Remember, we’re grading on a curve so just because you didn’t advance doesn’t mean your piece wasn’t good or that you shouldn’t polish it up and submit it somewhere, ok? I hope the feedback you’re getting from the judges is helpful not just in analyzing this particular story but in taking a look at patterns in your writing and seeing what you’re doing well and where there’s room for improvement.
Speaking of feedback: when we recruit judges for our super challenge we don’t just make sure that they’re qualified professional writers and editors, we talk to them about the judging process and whether they have any general feedback for the whole group as well as for individual writers. One thing we consistently hear is “wow, it was harder than I thought to distill what I liked or thought needed improvement into only a few sentences.” I know personally as a judge I often wish I could take a red pen and go through a piece to really tune it up. Then I remember that this is also my day job and that I’d have to charge $50/hour for it at standard industry rates.
So how do you take your feedback from a few high-level suggestions for overall improvement to the level of detail you need to make those bottom-up changes to your essay or story? With online tools like the Purdue Online Writing Lab, which I love for more reasons than just the fact that every time I talk about it I get to say “the OWL.” For example, every judge I spoke to mentioned that most of the essays they read needed some work on sentence structure and commas. If there’s a term in your feedback that you think you’re familiar with, but aren’t entirely sure how that applies to your work, just use the search bar to find comma splice. Or, you know, whatever the term is. The OWL has fantastic examples and even writing exercises to help you work on those pesky grammatical issues. Got a favorite online tool that’s not the OWL? Let us know, or tell your friends in our coffeehouse.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Who’s ready for the results?
Six writers from each group will be moving on to round two. We’ll release the prompt on Friday, but this round you’ll be writing a persuasive essay, so dust off your silver tongue (er, keyboard?) and get ready to convince your readers that you’re right! In alphabetical order, our round two writers will be:[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Ellen Behm
Colleen Byers
Danielle Dayney
Amy Issadore Bloom
Nancy Koziol
Annmarie Lockhart
Nancy Lowell
Clodagh McMeel
Tamara Oliver[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Amy Palen
Robin Quackenbush
Lisa Shaw
Genna Shelnutt
Shelby Spear
Karen Vernon
Paige Vest
Leah Vidal
Janice Wilberg[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
You said something about prizes?
That’s right. We finally have all the entry money in and the split calculated. As promised, we’re paying out half that money in prizes! (The other half, minus our donation to the ACLU, keeps the lights on over here and helps us run our free weekly nonfiction, fiction and poetry challenges.) For our third super challenge, the top three writers will take home (in US dollars, so if you’re not in the US just cross your fingers and hope for a great exchange rate):
Winner: $150
Second Place: $75
Third Place: $50[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
Wait, wait, there’s more!
First of all, writers, congratulations and keep your eyes peeled for that email Friday at 10pm US Eastern time with your group and prompt assignments.
Second, all writers are now free to share their round one essay any way they like. Just to make it easy, we’ve made a round one grid. If you want to put your work on your blog (or anywhere on the ‘net) and link it up here, we’re sharing this grid on this post and the main page for the super challenge. Just click the submission link below and enter the URL where you’ve posted your work. Please use the same email you used for the super challenge so we know it’s you, and don’t worry if you don’t see your post right away: we’re moderating entries to make sure only our round one writers link up to this grid.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
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