E.B. White wrote in Elements of Style:

Vigorous writing is concise. … This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

It’s true that it takes extra time to distill and condense your thoughts into their purest form. One thing we can all do is to go over our work with a fine-toothed comb, eliminating unnecessary filler words and tightening our phrasing. Think about this when you are editing your next post: Did you use three words where one would suffice? Does that adverb or adjective really have an impact, or is it just taking up space?

To get you started, have a look at this article: Ten Words to Cut from your Writing. How many of these words can you strip from your next post? Thanks to Jo-Anne of Going for Coffee for tipping us off!

Have you come across an article that you think would benefit your fellow yeah writers? E-mail the link to Christine and it might make a future kickoff post.

The ultimate question

This week’s ultimate question was suggested by Erica M, and comes from Alice Munro’s short story A Real Life.

Have all your clocks stopped?

Give us your answer in 42 words. You don’t need to include the question in your response, but make sure your answer stands alone. What do we mean? Write down the question. Write down your response. Now cover the question with your hand and read your answer out loud. Does it still make sense when you don’t know the question? That’s what we’re looking for. Be creative, and remember: no family allowed!

The grid opens at midnight on Monday and closes at midnight on Tuesday. Yes, that’s only 24 hours to post, so you’d better get writing now! We’ll announce winners on Wednesday.

Challenge schedule

There’s a lot going on around here lately. To make it simple, we’ll lay out the multi-grid schedule here:

• Sunday midnight: the gargleblaster prompt is announced in the kickoff post, and the speakeasy prompt is announced over at the speakeasy.
• Monday midnight: the gargleblaster grid opens for submissions.
• Tuesday midnight: the gargleblaster grid closes, and voting begins. The challenge grid and the speakeasy grid open for submissions. 10:00 PM: gargleblaster voting closes.
• Wednesday by noon: the gargleblaster winners are announced.
• Thursday midnight: the challenge grid and speakeasy grids close, and voting begins. 10:00 PM: voting for both grids closes.
• Friday by noon: the challenge grid and speakeasy winners are announced, and the moonshine grid opens.
• Saturday and Sunday: moonshine grid is still open, writing, editing and rewriting happening for upcoming week!

Family free month continues

We’re on week two of family-free month. We want you to write about anything and everything except your kids or wife/spouse/significant other or your parents or anyone marked by a blood, marriage or otherwise legal relationship with you. You have a really great family-centered post? Submit it to the moonshine grid, where anything goes and the grid is always rules-free.

Get your badges!

To make it a little simpler for folks, we’re going to start putting the badges into the kick-off posts and grid posts. Here’s the badge for yeah write challenge #159 and this week’s gargleblaster. Copy the code under the appropriate badge and paste it into the html or text view of your blog editor. Having trouble? Contact christine@yeahwrite.me for tech support.

<a href="https://yeahwrite.me/writing-challenge-159/"> <img src="https://yeahwrite.me/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/challenge159.png"> </a>

 

<a href="https://yeahwrite.me/gargleblaster-159/"> <img src="https://yeahwrite.me/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/gargle159.png"> </a> 

New to yeah write?

Welcome! This is a special kind of place, and we hope you will dive right in. If this is one of your first visits to yeah write, please take a look at our page detailing how yeah write works. If you’re having trouble figuring it all out, feel free to email us, and we’ll help get you started along your way. We think this is the best community on the web for writers who blog and bloggers who write. We’re thrilled to have you join us.

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