We’re 7!!!

Can you believe it? I hardly can, and yet I feel like I barely remember life before YeahWrite! Rather than get all nostalgic on you, I’ll jump right into all the special stuff we have planned to celebrate our birthday. We came up with too many ideas to cram into one special week, so we’re going to make this party last all month long!

First up, take note of our special badge. Thank Rowan for those. You’ll also notice the Nonfiction Know-How and the Poetry Slams have a theme of seven. Our Microprose challenge which opens on Wednesday will incorporate seven, but I can’t tell you more than that because it spoils the fun of that lightning-fast grid. Both the Nonfiction and Fiction|Poetry grids will have a special increased word count: 777! Below you’ll find the special seven-y prompt for Fiction as well as an optional sevenified prompt for Nonfiction. Make sure you keep an eye on the kickoff posts every Sunday in April for more details.

But wait, there’s more! What’s a birthday celebration without a giveaway? You all recall our awesome new Swag Shop, right? Well one lucky winner is going to get to pick out their very own t-shirt! Here’s how it will work: Every popular vote winner and editor’s pick will receive one entry into the drawing. Win on more than one grid or in more than one week? Get more entries! The more you write, the better your chances! We’ll select one random winner from that pool on or around April 27. Don’t worry, we’ll let you know when it’s happening. The winner will select the t-shirt they’d like and submit their proof of purchase (your invoice number will do) for reimbursement of the price of the shirt. (You’ll pay your own shipping costs, sorry!)

And speaking of swag, once your YeahWrite gear arrives, we want to see! Send us a picture of you with your swag and we’ll add it to our forthcoming Swag Gallery! We’ll share a link to it each Sunday so we can watch it fill up together. Picture emails can be sent to editors@yeahwrite.me.

Last but not least, we have an extra special surprise for you in the final week that we’ll announce in the April 23rd kickoff post. Trust me when I tell you that you are going to love this and you will definitely want to participate that week. Clear your schedules and get ready to write, because it will be worth it!

Thanks for being a part of this community! See you on the grids!

Welcome to Week 364

We’re kicking off the week in style at YeahWrite with both our competitive challenge grids in one post, plus prompts, tips, tricks and more. You asked, we answered! Keep scrolling down cause it’s all right here.

Submissions for this week’s challenges open on Monday at 12 midnight and close on Wednesday at 10pm ET. Voting will then open immediately thereafter and close on Thursday at 10pm ET. The winners, as always, will be celebrated on Friday.

Having trouble getting started? Hop on over to our quick guide. And don’t forget to doublecheck the full submission guidelines before you hit that button.

Microprose Challenge Opens Wednesday

This week has the first Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means: our tiniest challenge will be open for under 24 hours, starting Wednesday at midnight! Every microprose challenge has different rules, so you’ll need to keep your eyes peeled and your fingers fast. Need a quick link to the challenge? This one goes live when the microprose grid opens.

Micro weeks are moderated weeks!

That’s right – with the microprose grid comes moderation on all three grids. That means that on any grid with more than five entries, we’ll be looking for more than just the bare minimum required to meet the submission guidelines. We want to see your best writing, with a strong so-what on the nonfiction grid and smooth prompt integration on the fiction|poetry grid. We’ll also be checking adherence to the poetry slam form, and keeping an eye out for persistent grammar issues in your work. That doesn’t mean you need to write the way your eighth grade English teacher told you, though! That would be pretty boring. Voice is the way in which a writer breaks the rules of grammar deliberately to advance a point. So break the rules – but do it on purpose and know which rule you’re breaking.

It’s not as scary as it sounds! If your writing is struggling in a moderated week, one of our editors will send you a “love letter” explaining where you lost us and making a few editing suggestions. We won’t move you forward to the vote, but you’ll get specific, personal feedback on your writing. And don’t worry. All of our editors have gotten at least one “love letter” on a post too!

So what are we looking for?

• Posts for the nonfiction grid should be anecdotes that contain one clear idea, the reason for telling the story. More than a journal entry, submissions are required to have what we refer to as a “so what.” Posts can also be personal or persuasive essays that give your perspective on the world and communicate a clear idea to the reader. All nonfiction challenge posts must adhere to the basic rules of grammar and punctuation.
• Posts for the fiction|poetry challenge must be self-contained stories or poetry. Chapters or ongoing work can be submitted so long as the submission tells a complete story and does not require knowledge or understanding of the remainder of the work in order to read the individual submission that week.
• Poetry must be structurally sound within the rules of the form chosen; that is, a sonnet must follow the form of a sonnet and not have errors in rhyme and scansion.
• Posts for the microprose grid must adhere to the microprose rules laid out in that month’s challenge.
• And of course, all the ordinary submission guidelines like word count still apply!

Nonfiction Challenge

Magnificent Seven

Forget cowboy movies. I’m so excited about our magnificent birthday month! Especially since that means a new optional prompt on nonfiction every week this month! Of course, “optional” means you don’t have to use them, but I really hope you do. Regardless of prompt utilization, you still get the gift of an extra 22 words, as Michelle mentioned above: 777 glorious words to tell us your mostly true stories. This week’s prompt: incorporate the word “seven.” That’s easy, right? Write!

[ed’s note: Magnificent Seven is not a cowboy movie, it’s a samurai movie. It’s a… well, a ripoff or homage, depending on your inclination, of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, and it’s worth a watch. The remake is startlingly good, possibly because it’s not hampered by having to pretend it’s not a Kurosawa flick. Also, Byung-hun Lee? 100% swoony. /rbg]

Technique Toolbox: What’s in the Box?

Every time you write, there are three groups of people involved: Writers, Readers, and Characters. The quickest way to confuse all three of them is to forget who knows what at which point in your story. Check out our tips and tricks for keeping that straight with a Se7en inspired question in this month’s Technique Toolbox!

Nonfiction challenge grid:

Basic YeahWrite guidelines: 777 word limit; your entry can be dated no earlier than this past Sunday; nonfiction personal or persuasive essay, creative opinion piece or mostly true story based on actual events.

Check the submission guidelines for our full set of rules. If you’re not sure how to link up, hop over to our quick tutorial for getting started at YeahWrite! Otherwise, click that blue button when the challenge is open, and good luck! Come back to vote starting Wednesday at 10pm, and check out our winners on Friday!

Fiction|Poetry Challenge

It’s my party

This month is YeahWrite’s birthday month, and mine too! YeahWrite turns 7, and I turn 7×7. We’ve got so many exciting things in store for you this month; our swag is out in the world, there are fun new Fiction|Poetry challenges, I think you’re going to love this month’s Microprose challenge, and the Nonfiction grid has been running some great optional prompt challenges recently that will continue into April. With so much going on, you’re bound to find a delightful gift of a challenge that’s just right for you. Come and celebrate our birthdays with your words!

April Poetry Slam: Rime Royal

It’s our seventh birthday and we’re celebrating with a seven-line form, the rime royal. This form’s heyday stretched from Chaucer to Shakespeare, but we think it’s time for a revival. With only three rules, what could go wrong? Stretch your poetic muscles and join us this month!

Prompt Up!

Prompt Up is our weekly writing prompt for the fiction|poetry challenge! Here's How It Works!

Since it’s our 7th birthday, we’ll be giving you prompts associated with the number seven all month.

The first prompt for our month of 7s is: incorporate one of the Seven Deadly Sins into your plot in an INTEGRAL way. In other words, your story wouldn’t work if the idea of the sin was taken out. As with last month’s defined words, you do not have to use the word in your story, but the definition of one of the sins must be a pivotal and identifiable element in your plot.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Seven Deadly Sins, you can click the link for more information, or you can find good resources here, here, or here. For our purposes, the Seven Deadly Sins are the following group of vices within Christian teachings:

• Lust: an uncontrollable passion or longing for bodily pleasures, especially sexual in nature.
• Gluttony: the overindulgence or overconsumption of anything, to the point of waste.
• Greed: the insatiable pursuit of material wealth or gain, to the detriment of the spiritual realm. Also known as avarice or covetousness.
• Sloth: a disinterest in, and inability for exertion, the avoidance of physical or spiritual work.
• Wrath: uncontrollable anger, rage or hatred towards another person.
• Envy: the resentful desire for someone else’s traits, possessions, abilities, experiences, or status.
• Pride: considered the original and most deadly of the seven deadly sins, and the sin from which all the others arise, pride is the excessive belief in one’s own abilities and importance to the exclusion of others and of the grace of God.

The second prompt, from YeahWrite #362 fiction|poetry winner Ruby Bastille (Laura Duerr), is a 7-word line of dialogue that your story must contain unaltered: “I’d never seen anything like it before.” Note that this is dialogue. A character in your story must say or think it. This is not narration.

Poets: Use the line of dialogue (“I’d never seen anything like it before.“), write a poem focusing on one of the Seven Deadly Sins, or write a rime royal poem (or any combination of those three).

Fiction|poetry challenge grid:

Basic YeahWrite guidelines: 777 word limit; your entry can be dated no earlier than this past Sunday; fiction or poetry only.

Check the submission guidelines for our full set of rules. If you’re not sure how to link up, hop over to our quick tutorial for getting started at YeahWrite! Otherwise, click that blue button when the challenge is open, and good luck! Come back to vote starting Wednesday at 10pm, and check out our winners on Friday!

YeahWrite Super Challenge

Early registration for Super Challenge 8 (fiction) is closed, but there’s still time to register! Make sure you also sign up for our email blast so you don’t miss out on any announcements for the next Super Challenge.

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 last Friday’s winners’ post. Leave the winners some love in the comments. They will love you right back, we guarantee it.

Last call: This week’s Weekend Writing Showcase is still open for business until the challenge grids start at midnight! 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:

Michelle submitted her first entry to YeahWrite in March 2012 and they haven’t been able to get rid of her since. After nearly 20 years in the insurance/employee benefits industry, she decided to give it all up to pursue writing full time. Her work has been featured on The Huffington Post and xoJane, as well as several local sites near her northern NJ home. She blogs at Michelle Longo.