Right Here, Right Now
So I recently went to an amusement park with my kids. Now, I’m not a roller coaster person, but I love my kids and they have remarkable puppy dog eyes when they want me to do something, so roller coasters it was. As I sat there waiting for the first ride to start, clutching the restraints, white-knuckled, I thought, “It’s okay; it will be over so fast,” and I was right—each ride was no longer than three or four minutes. Gradually, though, I stopped thinking about how soon I could get to solid ground and I began to let myself experience the moment as it was happening. The result is that I found myself less terrified and more able to enjoy the ups and downs and even the loop-de-loops. (You’d never know it from the photos, though!).
The point is, for once I allowed myself to be fully *in the moment*. It’s a skill I’m trying to develop—when I read, when I participate in a conversation, when I write. It’s not so much shutting out the rest of the world as it is sinking into the experience I’m having right then, loop-de-loops and all. And that can lead to a fuller, richer life—and fuller, richer stories down the line.
~Christine
This Week’s Writing Prompt is:
This week, your job, should you choose to accept it, is to write a story, essay, or poem incorporating the following prompt:
Trope: Eureka Moment
We’re taking a cue from this year’s Scarlet Quill Society and getting some practice incorporating – or subverting – popular tropes. This week we’re looking for the Eureka Moment. Your challenge this week is to give us a story, poem, or essay in which a character experiences a sudden epiphany or flash of inspiration that helps solve a problem or move the story forward. When you’ve got your story down, come tell us about it! Share snippets of or links to your best story in Discord or on Facebook! Stuck? Check out last year’s — no, year before last! — series on responding to prompts!
Share your response in the Coffeehouse, located both on Facebook or Discord, by linking your blog post, Google Doc, or other file. Check out your fellow YeahWriters’ responses, and don’t forget to leave them some love in the comments!
Looking for our weekly grids? After nearly ten years, they’ve been retired. Read more about the latest changes to YeahWrite in the #500 Weekly Writing Challenge Kickoff Post.
The Schedule
We will release a new prompt on our blog every Friday at 12pm Eastern. Then it’s up to you! Write your response to the prompt on your own blog or website and share the link in the Coffeehouse, located both on Facebook or Discord. If you prefer to keep your work under wraps (and away from the eyes of potential publishers), you can still ask for beta readers in the Coffeehouse and share your work privately! Every Monday, we’ll check in to see how you’re doing and what your writing goals are for the week. Wednesdays are “Work-in-Progress Wednesdays.” Share a few sentences or even a paragraph or two in the Coffeehouse (no more than 250 words, please). Even if you’re not done writing, this could be the boost you need to stay motivated. Did you publish a book? Do you have a story in a magazine? The First Friday of every month is for self-promotion, where you can share commercial links to your work for purchase. (You can always share the news that you’ve been accepted for publication, though!) And of course, the entire community is here 24-7 to share your victories and setbacks, challenges and accomplishments. So come on in, pull up a chair, and say hello. We’re all writers here.
Upcoming and Ongoing
Sign up for our email blast so you don’t miss out on any upcoming classes, workshops, or competitions.
Scarlet Quill Society (Free Workshop w/ Optional Paid Benefits)
Welcome to the secret back room where the Scarlet Quill Society meets. In this year-long workshop, we’ll be focusing on tropes! Love ’em or hate ’em, you can’t avoid ’em. For the purpose of this year’s workshop, we’re defining a trope as a building block of storytelling. It’s a device or pattern of events that is used to solve plot or character problems or communicate meaning efficiently and effectively. Check out June’s post, in which we take a look at tropes every submissions editor hopes never to see again, and then hop over to our YouTube channel to see the recording of our conversation with submissions reader (and frequent Super Challenge judge!) Genevra Hsu. And in July, we’ll be focusing on worldbuilding: the tropes we do and don’t want to see. Check it out when our post goes live July 1, and then hang out with our panel of experts (spoilers, Genevra is coming back!) to talk about why Everything is Europe!
Scarlet Quill Society workshop posts are always free. In addition, we are offering a couple add-ons that we think you’ll find exciting and worth a few bucks a month: face-to-face (okay, virtual) monthly gatherings to delve into the topics and answer your questions, and an editorial backroom on Discord! And for a bonus, if you’re a paid SQS member and you can’t make it to a meeting, you can still send us questions beforehand and we’ll make sure to cover them.
Sign up for a membership today to join the Scarlet Quill Society and automatically receive the Zoom link and password for every meeting. One-off monthly meeting tickets can also be purchased on Kofi. At YeahWrite we believe information wants to be shared. If you can’t afford to join us for society meetings, we post the recording about a week later, and you’re welcome to leave the tip you can afford (even if that’s just a nice thank you comment). Check out our YouTube channel for more.
Super Challenge #28 (Fiction)
YeahWrite’s Super Challenge #28 (flash fiction) is officially over! Congratulations to our champion, MM Schreier, and to Alyssa Beatty and Jennifer Gunner for rounding out the top three! We cannot wait to showcase these three stories in our upcoming anthology ::flails::. But don’t worry, yeahwriters! If you didn’t make the top three in either of our 2023 super challenges, that doesn’t mean your chances are over to be published. We will be opening up for submissions! Stay tuned for more details (and be sure to sign up for our mailing list so you don’t miss out on any updates).
WIP Write-Ins, AKA Co-Working Hours
NOTE: NO WIP WRITE-IN ON MAY 17!
Spontaneous Writing Challenges
About the author:
Christine Hanolsy is a (primarily) science fiction and fantasy writer who simply cannot resist a love story. She joined the YeahWrite team in 2014 as the microstory editor and stepped into the role of Editor-In-Chief in 2020. Christine was a 2015 BlogHer Voices of the Year award recipient and Community Keynote speaker for her YeahWrite essay, “Rights and Privileges.” Her short fiction has been published in a number of anthologies and periodicals and her creative nonfiction at Dead Housekeeping and in the Timberline Review. Outside of YeahWrite, Christine’s past roles have included Russian language scholar, composer, interpreter, and general cat herder. Find her online at christinehanolsy.com.
