Round One Closes in:
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Hey, crew, welcome to Super Challenge #9! We’ve got thrills, chills and spills headed your way, so hang tight and… and you know what? Actually we don’t. We’ve mostly got good, solid prompts, followed by feedback you can actually use. You know: the stuff that matters to you as a writer and competitor.
Speaking of the stuff that matters… how about that prize money?
All the entries are in and counted, and that means we can announce how this pot gets split:
First Prize: $100
Second Prize: $75
Third Prize: $50
Cool. Let’s get to the prompts.
This round, you’ll spend the next however-long-the-countdown-timer-says-is-left working on personal essays: the mostly-true stories of your life. Each group has an assigned subject. Make sure that you center the subject, although the entire essay doesn’t have to be about the subject. For example, if the subject were horses, you could write about your first horse, about how much you wanted a horse, about a plastic toy horse, or about your summer camp experience on a horse ranch in the Rockies. What you shouldn’t do is write about a road trip your family took and casually mention that you drove past a horse in Nebraska along the way.
A quick tip about personal essays in general: while it’s always tempting to grab The Most Dramatic Thing That Ever Happened To You and try to see how you can attach the prompt to it, you’ll get a better essay nine times out of ten by writing about something less dramatic but more personal, and spending the time you would have spent trying to figure out how to jam the prompt into that other essay on making sure that your essay is written with your unique and powerful voice.
Now that that’s cleared up, let’s get to the topic assignments:
Group 1
Comfort Food
We’ve all got something we turn to when we’re feeling down, whether it’s pizza with ranch dressing or mango with Tajin. Tell us about yours.
A few tips and tricks:
- DO NOT START YOUR ESSAY “My comfort food is _____.” I mean, you could. You wouldn’t be disqualified. But why start by separating yourself from the reader?
- If you find yourself writing about your (or someone else’s) eating disorder, consider a content warning.
Group 2
Packing for a Trip
Whether it’s summer camp or Broadway auditions, you can’t go naked, right? What did you bring? Did your mom always fold shirts with tissue paper to keep them from wrinkling? Do you always sew labels with your name into your clothes? We want to know.
A few tips and tricks:
- It’s a trip, not a move. Packing for a journey with an end, when you’ll come home.
- You don’t have to be the person going on the trip.
- Again, trip in the sense of a journey. Not in the sense of using drugs. Thanks. (We’re not going to censor you if you did use drugs on your trip, or if you were on drugs while packing, but if things got gnarly, consider a content warning.)
Wait, wait, there’s more!
Don’t post your story anywhere on the Internet until after our judges are done and you get your feedback! But if you want to talk up the competition or live-tweet your writing process, use the hashtag #YWsuper. Just remember not to include identifying details about which story is yours!
Your essays are due Sunday at 10pm US Eastern Time. Remember to check the rules for formatting, including all those fiddly details like title page, font, and filename. Don’t get disqualified on a technicality! We know it seems really useless at times, but all those rules have a purpose, from helping get your file where it needs to be to making sure you’re read anonymously and fairly.
Email your questions to superchallenge@yeahwrite.me—we will not be reviewing other email addresses or social media for your questions over the weekend and we want to make sure you get the answers you need!
You’ll receive your feedback on July 25, and we’ll announce who’s moving on to the next round that day at noon US Eastern Time.
We hope you have as much fun with the prompts as we had picking them out. Good luck, and good writing!
About the author:
Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.
