![By Paolo Neo [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons](https://i0.wp.com/yeahwrite.me/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/High-speed.jpeg?resize=1080%2C675&ssl=1)
Bits and Pieces
Sometimes it feels like that’s all the time we have: the time before work, or school. The time between shower and shoes. Fitting big writing into little pieces of time is a huge challenge. Some days we struggle to even fit a paragraph into those slivers of hours.
Fortunately, there’s no lower word limit on good ideas. One of my favorite pieces ever to appear on our nonfiction grid tipped the scales at just around 200 words. And I’m sure you’ve heard the buzz in the coffeehouse about our returning microstories challenge. The real trick is distilling a big idea into such a small space. Sometimes that process looks like spewing two thousand words out in a frenzy and then cutting fifteen hundred of them. Other times it looks like mulling the idea over in your head for a few days, coming up with the perfect one-sentence distillation of your thoughts, and scrambling out of the shower still dripping wet and looking frantically for a piece of paper to write it down on. However you do it, try making more of less this week. Trust me: you’ll want the practice.
YeahWrite Super Challenge
Our third Super Challenge is officially over! Congrats to Robin Quackenbush, Tamara Oliver, & Amy Palen on their top three finishes. Did you miss out on registration? Sign up for our email blast so you don’t miss out on any announcements for our Super Challenge #4. Next time, we head back to the land of fiction. Keep your eyes peeled this week for more news on that!
Who’s on Fourth
This month we invite you to learn more about Tara over at Laissez Faire! The interview will publish Monday at 12pm ET, but in the meantime, head over to her page and catch up on all of her awesomeness.
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: Constructive Criticism
Enough about writing; let’s talk about reading. For this month’s Nonfiction Know-How, we want you to take a little break from your own writing. We’re always harping on how being a better reader will make you a better writer. But how do you become a better reader, and what do you do with that reading skill once you have it? Well, it’s for those two little words that strike fear and joy into a writer’s heart: constructive criticism. Learn more from Rowan here.
Is fiction more your thing?
The Fiction|Poetry Challenge 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 it down to other territories.
Danielle’s mother found herself at the center of an emergency in Danielle’s post, Her Bravery. This week’s Prompt Up taken from her essay is: “You stay here,” she said, using her voice that meant business.
March Poetry Slam: Blank Verse
We want to get back to the basics this month. The basics of poetry, that is. It’s been almost two years since we first delved into blank verse for a poetry slam, and while we’d like to pretend all the new folks go back through our writing help section regularly, even we don’t do that. But blank verse is one of the building blocks of great poetry, and even if it’s not your favorite form, there’s tremendous value in learning to do it well. So this month we’re going back to the blank page to write some blank verse. Learn more from Rowan here.
Winners’ Round-Up
In case you missed them, you can find last week’s YeahWrite 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.
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.
