There goes the sun
And I don’t miss it one bit. As a person with the spring SADs, this is my joyful season. Everywhere around me is greening up for Second Spring because I live in a flippin desert now I guess, I’m bringing in the last of the harvest from my garden and prepping for winter, and we had First Snow on the mountain this week, which I promptly ran off to see, dog in the car and hot cocoa in my belly. I love the contrasts of this season: the bright colors popping against the grey days, the warm mugs in cold hands, the pools of light in open doors welcoming people in from the dark. In fact, Asha and I have an ongoing joke that we need to share her house and mine so that she can always be in spring and summer, and I can have perpetual fall and winter (#TeamWhiteWitch). In a year where every interaction seems increasingly fraught and embroiled, where schools are in lockdown and towns are evacuated for fire or bombings, where on a personal level this dog isn’t likely to greet another winter with me… it was good to take a step back and breathe. Not to avoid but to regroup. We’ve all been trying to pour from an empty cup for too long. How are you filling your writing cup right now? Come tell us; joy shared is redoubled, but sorrow shared is halved.
~Rowan
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: Witty Banter – with a twist
We’re taking a cue from this year’s Scarlet Quill Society and getting some practice incorporating – or subverting – popular tropes. Now, you can’t get to this month’s SQS theme – monsterfucking – without monsterflirting first! And what better way to flirt than during combat? Brush up on your banter, because this week’s trope is combat banter. It is, as always, your choice whether to make the combat sexy. It is not, tragically, your choice whether your reader will immediately write sexy combat fanfic with your characters. But hey, that’s how Christine and Rowan became co-authors of actual published stories, so that could work out for you too. If you need more information on the prompt, click the link and check out the description!
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! Bonus points if you do it on WIP Wednesday! 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 October’s post, containing not just our new trope but a serious lesson in how many ways Rowan can say “monsterfucker” without actually saying “monsterfucker.” From the works of Chuck Tingle to the many faces of Ganondorf, get ready for our hottest monster lineup ever. We’ve got a killer panel of horror writers lined up for you, coming atcha this month for the low low price of $5 (or free with your YW membership). This month’s live discussion took place on October 16; you can watch the recording for free (but we sure do appreciate tips).
Did you miss September’s post? This one was about why the physical and mental injuries you’re putting in your stories might not be doing what you think they’re doing, and how to work with them more realistically. And you can always hop on over to YouTube watch the recording and check out what our expert had to say 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!
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:
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.
