Welcome, yeah write virgins!

There were three yeah write virgins on our grid this week, one of whom wandered over from the speakeasy. We hope you enjoyed your stay and we’d love to see you again next week. Thanks for sharing your stories with us.

No jury prize awarded for yeah write #98

If you’ve ever wondered what’s your incentive to recruit more writers to our humble little spot, this should be the primary one: the more entries there are, the harder the challenge becomes, the more effort is put into crafting ourselves into better writers. So with this week being a low-entry week—fewer than 30 stories—the yeah write editors have set aside the jury prize, keeping it as a distinction to recognize the storytelling achievement of one writer out of many instead of a few. 

Another recruitment incentive

As we’re trying to fill the challenge grid with its maximum of 50 bloggers, the offer still remains: the week we hit 50, if you’ve recruited a yeah write virgin to the challenge grid, you’ll be eligible to receive the 12-month, $10 a month supporting subscription donated by one of our yeah write editors. The $120-level donation contains, each item upon your request:

[unordered_list style=”arrow”]

• a wet and sloppy kiss on the mouth from your yeah write editor of choice
• a text link in selected weekly sponsor highlight posts
• a custom editorial on one selected yeah write challenge grid entry (worth $40 USD)
• a quick and dirty evaluation of 12 planned submissions to the challenge grid, an average of one planned submission each month, before the weekly challenge grids open
• an evaluation of your blog itself on content and design with clear direction on what’s working and what can be improved

[/unordered_list]

If, after the votes are complete and validated, you’ve been landing on the grid at a much lower position than makes you happy, how can you not bring us at least one virgin as we try to fill the grid to maximum capacity? Up to 12 times, you can email us your planned submission, and we’ll send it back with suggested edits, improving your chances for happiness. On one of your submissions, you can send it to us and we’ll walk you through what may have been the key missing elements. And, come on, an entire evaluation of your blog layout from people you trust? Start spreading the good news of yeah write today. Once we hit 50 on the grid, you never know what good things may happen.

Winner of random “we love you guys” drawing

Even though we did not award our top writing recognition this week, we do acknowledge the hard work that goes into each entry and we didn’t want to poo-poo the efforts of those who stuck with us this week writing and reading and voting and sharing. Combining the challenge grid and the speakeasy for the very first dual drawing, we chose Mind Of Shoo, a speakeasy regular and recruiter of speakeasy virgins.

We gave Mind of Shoo several options as his prize, hoping to get inside his head if he revealed his music tastes by requesting a certain album or reading preferences if he asked us for a particular book. He’s a wily one, and refused to let us in as he asked merely for an Amazon gift card so he could continue living his life without us being all up in it. We respected that, and emailed Mind of Shoo his prize of a $15 Amazon gift card with a brief thank you for being so faithful to our process. Congratulations, Shoo!

Crowd favorite—challenge grid

“Between Light and Darkness, Sacred and Profane” by Samantha Brinn Merel at This Heart of Mine

Sam wins this week with a tale of a homecoming, of sorts. She’d been grappling with moving from the one place she belonged to a new neighborhood and a new commute. On Purim, in her new synagogue, Sam finally felt at peace about being uprooted and shares that with us, capturing the yeah write #98 popular vote.

Congrats, Sam, on the win and the peace of mind. Please grab your winner’s badge from the sidebar.

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

Tell your friends! Yeah write is also 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.

[hr]