Editor picks and invitational grid selected from a 44-entry challenge grid

The promise of the yeah write equivalent of a Price Is Right Showcase Showdown brought dozens of bloggers to the challenge grid this week—44 of you, to be precise. Writers we hadn’t seen for weeks returned, and three newbies navigated the Inlinkz collection process like pros. Thanks to everyone who wrote, read, commented, and voted.

Special recognition goes to our invitational grid picks, moved up by the yeah write editors to compete for this week’s jury prize:  Jennifer, MacKenzie, Linda R., Linda L., Joe, Karen, Rarasaur, and Christina. Congratulations! Pick up an editors’ pick badge in the sidebar to display on your blog.

Jury prize winner

“Six Degrees of Senator Al Franken” by Joe at Living in Kellie’s World

When a story feels effortless—when it reads like your clever friend is telling it to you over coffee—you can bet there is a lot more complexity in its crafting than meets the eye. That’s what elevates this week’s jury prize winner, Joe from Living in Kellie’s World, to the top of the heap. In “Six Degrees of Al Franken,” he relates a simple tale of finding a book and becoming curious about its origins into an amusing and engaging yarn.

At its base, the action here is simply that Joe found a book and wondered about it. But look closely at what he does: In the first three sentences, he frames a two-continent setting efficiently and with humor, imagining that as he ponders at his French host’s “Franken fetish,” she is simultaneously “critiquing the books in [his] library.” He then moves his action to an interior dialogue, as his curiosity gets the better of him and his imagination runs wild with possibilities for her Franken connection, all of them far-fetched. Joe then moves back into real-time as Kellie finds a photo with Franken in it, and he wonders why the Senator is “photobombing a picture of Annemiek’s extended family” or if he’s been photoshopped in, even though, as Joe notes, “Franken has the kind of face you photoshop out of a picture.” He ties it all up with a laugh at himself and an author’s note disclaimer.

While some of us who hail from the great state of Minnesota might quibble with his description of it as, ahem, “obscure,” we can’t argue with the quality of Joe’s post. It’s a perfect yeah write vignette.

Congratulations, Joe! Not only do you earn a jury prize winner’s badge from the sidebar, you’ll also receive just about every book in the known universe. Or at least these awesome reads:

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• yeah write guest editor Chad Simpson’s Tell Her I Said Hi
• Chad’s writing inspiration and recommendation Ron Carlson Tells a Story by Ron Carlson
• Chad’s writing inspiration and recommendation The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield
• yeah write editor Flood G’s recommendation Writing on Both Sides of the Brain: Breakthrough Techniques for People Who Write by Henriette Klauser

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Message Erica with your mailing address. Maybe Annemiek can sign for them, and they’ll await you when you get back from the City of Lights.

Crowd favorite

“kids want happy parents and who cares?” by Erica at free fringes

Erica M wins crowd favorite on a crowded grid for her piece “kids want happy parents and who cares?” You might know Erica from such things as BEING OUR FREAKING MANAGING EDITOR and otherwise awesome. The post is a rumination on yet another study guilting parents—this time for not modeling joy 24/7, thereby, apparently, scarring their children for life. As Erica argues, kids don’t need happy parents. They need to be safe, be warm, and be loved. Unicorns, backyard ponies, and unlimited candy optional.

Congratulations, Erica! Your crowd favorite badge awaits you in the sidebar. You may recognize it from, you know, making it yourself.

But Erica can’t win our crowd favorite prizes this week—she’s an editor and our fearless leader, and that would be sketchy. So the book bundle goes to second place on the grid—the anonymous author at From Novels to Board Books for her post “A Brief History of Books.” Reveal yourself to Erica by email and she’ll ship you out all of the books listed above (except Flood’s recommendation – that’s special for Joe).

More prizes!

We’re not done giving stuff away, oh no, not yet. Thanks to Arden of Musings of a Dancing Wino for sending out recruiting emails to help tip us over 40 posts on the grid! You’ve won the random drawing for a $25 gift card, selected from all the other kids on the challenge grid who invited their friends as well. Email Erica with your preferred retailer to snap up your prize!

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

I bet you have more posts you can share with your yeah write family, don’t you? Come to our weekend no-pressure party and link up to the moonshine grid, hosted by yeah writer Michelle Longo. You can share just about any post, unless it’s commercial or sponsored. Grab a badge in the sidebar and join us!

The moonshine grid opens at 6 p.m. eastern time each Friday and will close by 12:01 a.m. each Monday.

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.

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