Welcome, oh ye virgins

There were four virgins on the challenge grid this week. Thank you for working your way around the grid and jumping in with both feet. Please join us again next week. We’ve made it easier for you to share our community with our how yeah write works page. Lean on it to explain to your friends how we do.

We hit the magic number!

Reaching the minimum of 40 entries on the challenge grid means we unlocked Jacqueline Bryant Campbell’s generous gift. Thanks to everyone who encouraged friends to enter yeah write #105.

Random.org chose the grid number of a participant who was on both the speakeasy and challenge grids this week. Congratulations to Danielle of The Life and Times of a Mom.

Danielle, email us to receive your $60 gift certificate to Jacq’s Playhouse. Use it toward any doll or custom design in her studio. You can even send Jacq a favorite t-shirt or fabric and she’ll work her magic and dress your new treasure with it. Thanks, Jacq, for a delightful prize that we are proud to give away.

Speaking of magic numbers, hitting 30 on the challenge grid opened the last of our dollar-per-entry gift card prizes. The invitational grid jury prize winner and challnge grid crowd favorite have each earned a $41 gift card to their preferred online shop in the U.S. or Canada. Let’s learn who won.

Jury prize winner—invitational grid

The Brother in the Middle. #Imsorry, by Alisa of Ice Scream Mama

This post is a stark look at the aftermath of divorce and remarriage, when children – struggling to right themselves from the wreck of their upended lives with previously married parents – are expected to blend seamlessly into a new family, easily creating fresh sibling bonds. Instead, left to fend for themselves, the wolf pack of step-relations forms itself into a hierarchy of alphas and omegas.

In this poignant and painful love letter, the author’s brother – the former “wild boy” whose freckles “danced happily across his face” – abruptly became the one lost in middle. Suddenly, the “two step-brothers who sandwiched him on both ends . . . tossed him out, instead of taking him in.” But the author refuses to assign blame. “They were so young. We all were.”

As her brother loses his spark, Alisa moves from lyrical narrative paragraphs to simple single sentences that plainly display the truth of his situation. He loses his smile, unsafe in a house that isn’t a home, in a neighborhood that never became a community. Our wild boy is no longer carefree, and the author’s regret is palpable.

Alisa, email us for your $41 dollar gift card to the online shop of your choice and don’t forget to dress up your post with your winner’s badge, found in the sidebar.

Editor’s Picks

Seven entries made it to the invitational grid as editors’ favourites. Congratulations! Please grab your editor’s pick badge from the sidebar and add it to your writer’s showcase. Thanks for bringing us the best of the grid this week. 

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Crowd favourite

Michelle Longo of The Journey takes Crowd Favorite this week on a nearly full grid of 41 quality entries. Her post “I Will Carry You” is a single scene that captures the conflicting feelings of a teenage Michelle helping her suddenly incapacitated mother navigate a beloved flea market. Michelle’s authenticity in her teen voice is spot-on, as is the range of emotions she displays – irritation at her mother for making her walk difficult, embarrassment at her public predicament, and an underlying fear for her mother’s well-being. The epilogue brings us full circle, as we suddenly realize we’ve been looking at the first day of a debilitating illness that would define both of their lives. 

Michelle, you also win a gift card and fancy badge. Email us for your loot.

BlogHer Reminder

We’ve set up a special promotional grid for our yeah write subscribers who would like a little extra promo for their VOTY posts. Add the direct link from your BlogHer entry to the special grid and we’ll help you get a few votes. Our way of supporting the community that supports yeah write.

Weekend moonshine grid opens today at 6 p.m. eastern time!

Yeah write is now open on the weekends—no editors, no voting, no writer’s block—just hanging out in the clearing among the trees and discarded moonshine jugs. Use this chance to show the yeah write community the other side  of your blog—your top 10 lists, your stream-of-consciousness posts, that hilarious text message exchange with your brother. No commercial or sponsored posts allowed, but this will be a good space for letting us all know when you have a cool blog event coming up.

The moonshine grid opens at 6 p.m. eastern time each Friday and will close by 12:01 a.m. each Monday. Grab the badge from the sidebar and go find the perfect post to share!

Win-win

The thumbnails are now sorted in the grid from most votes to the least. In the case of a tie, the thumbnails are additionally sorted by page views. Part of the top row five? Please grab a winners’ badge from the sidebar and display it proudly on your own blog. Congrats!

Do not be discouraged if your blog has landed near the bottom of the grid; it is always a tight race. The fun lies in getting better exposure for your blog and in the spirit of competition as incentive to improve your writing and blogging skills. It’s a win-win for everybody involved.

Thanks again, everybody, for linking up, for reading, for accepting the weekly writing challenge. And for making yeah write the most welcoming spot on the Interwebs for writers who blog and bloggers who write.