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Oh my god you guys this is harder than it looks
Rowan here. Michelle left me in charge of writing the opening paragraphs for this week’s kickoff. Sometimes I can just sit down and start typing and the words flow. Other times I’m left staring at “this day in history” and hoping for inspiration.
So, yeah, happy birthday to Santiago, Chile, and Savannah, Georgia (our Georgia, not the other one – that Georgia had the Bolshevik Revolt on February 12). Happy birthday, too, to the NAACP.
Getting unstuck from writer’s block is often a matter of just sitting down and putting words on the page. No, really, it is. Trust me – you can edit them later. Don’t skip that step, though, and Cindy and I will be walking you through our editing methods this month with an extra special nonfiction tag team class. The important thing is to write, though. Whether you love fanfiction or biographies, read and write the things that make you happy. There’s no such thing as a “guilty pleasure” in my world – you shouldn’t feel ashamed of what you read and write. Because you’re Doing the Thing. And that’s so much harder than not doing it.
Yeah write super challenge
The second round of super challenge #3 is currently underway! Good luck to all of our participants as they finish up their submissions. Did you miss out on registration? Sign up for our email blast so you don’t miss out on any announcements.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
The basics
Yeah write gives you two competitive challenge grids — nonfiction and fiction|poetry — both of which are unmoderated. Everyone gets to the voting round on Thursday. (Remember, your post must be dated appropriately, not be offensive to our audience, and cannot be over word count.) Got a question? E-mail us, tweet us, ping us on Facebook, or visit our online community, the yeah write coffeehouse. You can learn more about yeah write in our FAQ. Please make sure you are familiar with our submission guidelines before you enter. We don’t have a lot of rules, but we do enforce them across the board. We’d hate to see anyone get disqualified by a technicality.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Bring us your personal essays and creative nonfiction!
The nonfiction challenge grid opens on Monday at midnight EST. This is the best place on the ‘net to showcase your best writing. Make us laugh, make us cry, make us think, and above all: make us care.
Nonfiction know-how: editing
This month’s nonfiction know-how is a little bit of a throwback. We’ve spent a lot of time lately talking about how to get writing that appeals to your audience onto the page; for Valentine’s Day we’re going to remind you how to show your writing a little additional love. Editing. It’s a task that makes the best of us cringe. We’ve talked about it before, and this month Cindy and Rowan are going to walk you through some specifics with the nonfiction posts and roundups. So what is editing, anyway, and how is it different from writing? Learn more from Rowan here.
Is fiction more your thing?
The fiction|poetry grid opens on Tuesday. Grab a mic and join our monthly poetry slam or check out our weekly prompt up!
Prompt up!
Prompt up is our optional weekly writing prompt for the fiction|poetry challenge! Here’s how it works: we announce a sentence prompt from last week’s winning nonfiction Post. It’s your job to use that prompt in your story or poem in some way. Feel free to use it as your first sentence, move it somewhere else, change it, or float down it to other territories.
Amy remembers a traumatic experience from her past in Remember These Things. This week’s prompt taken from her essay is: “It wasn’t love but it was fun.”
February poetry slam: the memoriam stanza
Now that we spent the last month learning about couplets, let’s take February’s post to the next level. For this month’s poetry slam, we’ll be taking everything we learned about writing in tight spaces and applying it to the four-line memoriam stanza. Learn more from Rowan here.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Winners’ round-up
In case you missed them, you can find last week’s yeah write staff picks and crowd favorites all laid out for you on Friday’s winners’ post. Leave the winners some love in the comments. They will love you right back, we guarantee it.
Weekend writing showcase
The weekend’s not over: the yeah write weekend writing showcase is still open. Have something to add? Old posts and new are welcome. No moderation, no voting. It’s a laid-back relaxed kind of place. Just leave your commercial or sponsored posts at home. Drop by, share your work, and while you’re there, visit your fellow yeah writers.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
