Sweet sixteen…
Thank you to everyone who linked up, commented, and voted this week—16 bloggers joined our moderated challenge grid to compete for crowd favorite. Thanks also to those who submitted a piece that didn’t make it past moderation. Your extra hard work will pay off by improving the quality of the competition as we all grow and learn from the process.
Welcome, yeah write virgins! All of us were first timers here at one point, and we know that it’s not an easy thing to put one’s work out there. We’re glad you came.
Crowd favorite
“The Night I Didn’t Get Shot (prank edition)” by Kristin Wald at This Weblog is Unique
Yeah write contributing editor Kristin W takes crowd favorite this week for her piece “The Night I Didn’t Get Shot (prank edition).” In her personalizing of the political, Kristin achieves a persuasiveness that escapes the typical pundits whose shouts so often conflate into a wordless din. Where op-eds fail, the power of story soars. Story, more compelling than any listing of statistics, invites emotional participation in a way that can change minds. Kristin’s post brings the headlines to our desktops, where we say: “This could happen to me. And this shouldn’t happen to anyone.” It’s a piece about gun control, yes, but more than that, it’s a piece about our shared humanity. Congratulations, Kristin! Go grab your crowd favorite badge in the sidebar.
Remember our new voting scale? Two votes means two top spots and 16 huge thumbnails to get the columns to cooperate. Congrats to yeah write editor Erica for grabbing second place.
It’s a yeah write road trip to Tipsy Lit!
We had several yeah write editors and writers commit to some short fiction over at Tipsy Lit this week. The prompt was published on Monday, and everyone spent the week writing for the challenge. Today is the day they will link to their story in comments of this post. Please stop by to visit your yeah write friends and family. Read their entries and get ready to vote on Saturday. The winner’s short story will be published in its entirety on Sunday. We need some sort of yeah write battle cry. Leave your suggestion in comments of this post.
Weekend moonshine grid opens today at 6 p.m. eastern time
It’s the weekend, and Natalie D is setting up her moonshine grid and bathtub gin just for you. The moonshine grid is the flip side of our weekly challenges: a no-stress link-up where we accept anything except commercial or sponsored posts. You can catch up with Natalie starting at 6 p.m. eastern time today. Closing time is midnight on Monday.
The offer from last week is still open: if you received a love note from Obed our submissions editor, and you incorporate his suggestions for making your submitted essay a better piece, you’ll be entered into a drawing for a coffee mug featuring friend of yeah write ML Philpott’s random penguins. We really want to encourage you to draft and rewrite and accept meaningful criticism on the way to becoming a better writer.
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.
Do not be discouraged if your blog has landed near the bottom of the grid; especially if it was a tight race. The fun lies in getting better exposure for your blog and, in the spirit of competition, an incentive to improve your writing and blogging skills. It’s a win-win for everybody involved.
Thanks again, everybody, for submitting, for reading, and 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.
Take a moment…
Before you go? Congratulate this week’s winners in the comments, and let your favorites know their work meant something to you.
Yeah write #150 opens Tuesday.
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Congrats, Kristin and Erica! Both well-deserved. 🙂
Congrats Kristin! I loved your piece, and look forward to your gun control blog posts. You always say the things that I wish I had thought to say, but can’t always find the words.
Congrats to Kristin and Erica! I loved both pieces. Thanks for sharing with us and being great examples of how to do this writing thing.
Grats to Kristin and Erica!
Good luck to everyone linking up with Tipsy Lit.
Thanks for the kind words, Cindy. Those who have followed my blog know that I’ve been trying to rein in my gun violence prevention posts for fear of frightening people away. And thanks to Michelle Longo who responded with some version of Hells No! when asked, “Is this too political to link up with yeah write?”
The posts were fantastic, so I’m very grateful for those who spent on of their two votes on me. I think this might be my first time as crowd favorite, too!