Comfort food, anyone?
I have a friend who got married at the end of May. I’d promised to make her chuppah, out of cloth that her other friends had sent. Cue me cutting out 128 hexagons (and then there’s the partial hexes) and sewing for… well. A while. Fortunately, there’s audiobooks. Unfortunately, I start THINKING sometimes, and that drowns out the book. So I needed something that was a) familiar enough that if I missed a bit it would be ok; b) long enough to cover several weeks of sewing; c) interesting enough that I’d want to keep listening; and d) not the Lord of the Rings. Sorry, LOTR, I love you but you’re a text-only experience for me. So of course I queued up Stephen King’s Dark Tower series. The first two and a half books got me through this project (which tells you something about the project if you know the books, or vice versa) and now I’m committed to a reread, of course. I’m getting so much done around the house, y’all.
I’m also remembering which parts of these books are Y I K E S and very glad that I remembered at least *some* of them when we were discussing them on the Discord a while back (cheers to the folks who filled in the [redacted because yikes] scene that I had… somehow forgotten? In retrospect how?).
But a book doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be unimpeachable. It has to have enough good stuff to grab and hold you, and not so much bad stuff that you bounce off it. That said. Remember to flag the bad stuff when you suggest books, because your “ok I’m fine, whatever, let’s read fast” is someone else’s oh shit now I can’t sleep. For now, this is my imperfect, problematic fave. And the space under the couch is actually clean, so there’s that too.
~Rowan
PS if anyone tells you audiobooks don’t count, I’ll either hold your earrings or you can hold mine while the fight winds on to its inevitable conclusion.
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: The Gunslinger
We’re taking a cue from this year’s Scarlet Quill Society and getting some practice incorporating – or subverting – popular tropes. This week — and you had to know this was coming — we want you to include a gunslinger. Your challenge this week is to give us a story, poem, or essay in which a character embodies this trope whether with an actual gun or with a personality. The Mandalorian is a gunslinger. If you haven’t read Lone Wolf and Cub (or there’s a longform miniseries available on Max and probably other places), go do that because Ogami Ittō is a gunslinger. Furiosa. Andromache of Scythia (as written for The Old Guard). So many others. It’s one of my Kryptonite tropes (Superman is not a gunslinger; you could make a case for Batman). 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).
Spontaneous Writing Challenges
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.
