Back in the Saddle
I’m still not quite sure what happened, but a few years ago, I finished the draft of my novel — a novel I’d worked on for 6+ years — and I just… quit. Perhaps I was simply tired, perhaps it was imposter syndrome, but no matter how proud I was of the book, I just couldn’t keep going. I stopped writing for a long while, missing my creative pursuits, but unable to claw my way back to them. Then out of the blue, a few weeks ago, I picked up my iPad, opened Scrivener, and dove back in. The love was back. Don’t ask me why. I couldn’t even try to explain. Now, I’m onward to outline book two to see if I still have this trilogy bottled up inside me. Only time will tell.
The love we have for writing is a fickle one. She’ll come to us at a moment’s notice, nurture our hands while they pour forth our words onto the page, and then leave us as quick as she arrived, confused and empty. All this to say, if you find yourself where I’ve been the past couple of years, yearning to come back to this art we adore but unsure how to get there, try not to fret. I believe she’ll come back to you soon enough.
Need some encouragement? Come hang with us on Discord.
~Arden Ruth
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: Will They or Won’t They?
We’re taking a cue from this year’s Scarlet Quill Society and getting some practice incorporating – or subverting – popular tropes. Since I just finished the viral BookTok phenom, Fourth Wing, I’m going to stick with romance tropes this week. In particular, Will They or Won’t They? In this trope, you’ll find two characters who are often at each other’s throats throughout the story but you can’t miss the unresolved sexual tension emitting from their every pore. So what’s the answer to Will They or Won’t They? It should always be the same: They will.
What will your take be on this trope? Play with the prompt, and 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 August’s post, in which we talk about the tropes you don’t know you’re adding to your stories, and how they affect your world and characters. Join us this Sunday at 2pm EDT for a chat with our panel of experts, or if you’re not a member or can’t afford the ticket this month, hop over to our YouTube channel later to check it out on a pay-what-you-can basis! If you have a good time, leave a tip and we’ll love you forever.
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.
2023 Anthology? WATCH THIS SPACE!
At YeahWrite, like it says on the box, we believe that your words – and your voice – matter. That has always been the core of our mission: to help authors develop and share their individual voices, whether they write romance, fantasy, mysteries, literary fiction, creative nonfiction, or anything else. It’s all storytelling, and we want your stories to shine.
That’s why we’re excited to help them shine in print for the first time! Our 2023 anthology, opening soon for submissions, will include 20 flash stories (fiction and creative nonfiction) that have a clear authorial voice and an innovative structure: braided stories, epistolaries, stories told as logbooks or news articles – these are just examples of the sorts of stories we are excited to publish. Can’t figure out your genre? Not a problem, we’re not genre-limiting this one! So dig back into your archive for that special story to dust off and tune up, or get ready to put pen to paper for that new idea that will help you procrastinate on the other writing you should be doing.
Because we love our newsletter subscribers, we’ll give them an early heads up with all the submissions guidelines. We’ll also send you details on the Kickstarter we’re planning that should help make our anthology even better!
Spontaneous Writing Challenges
About the author:
Behind the scenes, Arden is currently working on the first novel of her Fated Paths trilogy. She also published a number of short stories and a fantasy anthology which can all be purchased on Amazon. Arden lives in Seattle, Washington with her husband and two rescue pups. To read more of her stories, visit her website.
