Think positive!
By now, all of our writers have been gnashing their teeth over their feedback for a few hours. It’s easy to focus on the negatives, but remember: the judges are specifically asked to point out what they see as the strong points as well as the weak points of a story. And our judges may be professionals, but they are also human. They have personal likes and dislikes, and what may be crystal clear to one human may be confusing to another. If you’re struggling with your feedback, especially if one piece of advice seems to conflict with another – and this goes for other venues, not just ours – take a step back and see if there are any commonalities between them. You also may just be too close to your story. Take a bit of time, or if you’re comfortable sharing your feedback with your beta reader or a trusted friend, see if they can spot what the judges did.
And don’t forget to look at the positives! Each and every writer has done something well – something that made their story unique and interesting. Hold onto that, and let it remind you that as hard as writing can be, it’s worth doing.
As usual, anything that went right this round is entirely due to our admin team’s untiring work behind the scenes, and anything you hate is probably my fault. Unless it’s your feedback—hating and loving your feedback is just kind of part of being a writer. (See above!)
Before we announce who’ll be moving on, let’s take a moment to chat about the next round of the Super Challenge. Starting Friday, the advancing writers will be working on combining tropes from two genres to make a blended-genre story. This is one of my favorite prompts, and the one that makes me REALLY wish I could write for this challenge. It’s also incredibly fun to judge! A few tips and pointers about this round:
- Look. Up. Your. Genres. Even if you know one of the genres well, even if your name is actually Ngaio Marsh and we assigned you “mystery,” it’s good to think about not only what you believe is in the genre but what your judges might be expecting to see. Both genres need to be easily identifiable, so think about which elements of the two will work together and which will not.
- Don’t go offroading with your genres. Sure, there are noir stories that don’t incorporate crime, femme fatales, or hardboiled main characters… but this isn’t the time to be trying to write one. Stick to the main tropes for your assigned genres and let the interplay between the two provide the sense of freshness and innovation you’re looking for to show off your creativity.
Need a little extra help? Check out our Navigating Prompts posts on genres: element-based genre prompts and style-based genre prompts.
Sound fun? Let’s see who’ll be taking on that, er, super challenge this weekend:
Congratulations to Our Advancing Writers
Let’s have a hand for the following writers, in alphabetical order, who will be advancing to the final round of the Super Challenge this weekend:
S. Barb
Alyssa Beatty
Katelynn Camp
Jennifer Gunner
Sam James
Susan Lamphier
David Price
Charlie Rogers
MM Schreier
Aeiris Sweven
Alyson Tait
Jessica Wilcox
Wait, wait, there’s more!
Writers, if you don’t have your feedback, please send us an email at superchallenge@yeahwrite.me, ’cause that email should have reached you about twelve hours ago.
Now that this round of the competition is over, you’re free to post your work anywhere on the Internet you like, or take our judges’ suggestions and rework your submission to send on to other venues and anthologies. If it finds a home, we’d love to hear about it in the Coffeehouse! And if you choose to post it to your personal site or blog, you can share that link in the Coffeehouse as well.
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.
It’s disappointing not to be advancing but, whatever. I suppose in the scheme of things, my story wasn’t very good and I probably shouldn’t have taken part. I realized that the reason the criticism about my stories lacking emotion feels personal is that I have been accused of being uncaring and a bad person for not showing overt emotion on occasions such as funerals or right after a person has died. The truth is, I am dying inside, but I would break down completely if I allowed myself to fully realize the pain.
I doubt this is the sort of thing you had in mind for such a workshop. I was supposed to take something away about the craft of writing, right? I always thought I was a good writer (even though I’ve never thought much else about myself was the least bit worthwhile) because I always got high marks on my writing in school. Perhaps I’ve focused on technical excellence over emotion which, in fairness, doesn’t serve me.
It sucks to have to admit to myself at nearly 60 years old and with multiple health problems that I’m actually a mediocre writer and always will be. I hoped I would have a merit-worthy skill that I could carry in my soul as I make my exodus from the world. Alas, it is not to be. However, the lesson I learned about why this kind of criticism stings so much is actually a bargain. It was cheaper than paying for a therapy session, so, thank you.
Another lesson I learned is that taking on too many projects at once erodes the quality of all of them. This story was one of four projects I worked on in April. I’m sure it will shock you to learn that one story I worked on was accepted for inclusion in an anthology, as were 25 of my poems. However, when I went back to create excerpts to promote the story and the anthology, I found several proofreading errors that would not have been there if I hadn’t been under so much pressure. Word count should not be the primary focus of any story, but all too many of us have learned to prioritize it to the exclusion of other more important aspects of writing. This focus is detrimental.
Again, I’m not sorry I took part because I learned something. It just wasn’t the “something” I expected. I don’t know if I’ll participate again, but the challenge is a useful resource.