Welcome, yeah write virgins!

One virgin hit the grid this week, wandering in from the speakeasy. A couple faces we haven’t seen in a while also joined the grid. We hope you enjoyed your stay and we’d love to see you again next week. Thanks for sharing your stories with us. Please share us with your friends.

No jury prize for yeah write #99

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 among many, instead of a few. 

Newest Sponsors!

Take a moment to visit the latest bunch of folks keeping the lights on at yeah write:

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• Gina of Does Anyone Care What I Write?
• Courtenay of IA Soup Mama
• Angela of Not Appropriate For All Audiences
• Marcy of  Too Timid Too Squeamish
• Shannon of Truthfully.ca
• Pam of Pondering Pam
• Christine of christineorgan.com
• Kianwi of Simply She Goes
• Dana of Whisks, and Words
• Kristin of Kristin Has Two Eyes
• Jamie of South Main Muse

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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:

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• 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

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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.

Challenge grid crowd favourite: acceptance gone wrong: retardation and its profound loneliness and isolation – Erica M.

Of course, Erica is the hostess encouraging each of you to bring your best stuff to every grid, so she can’t win her own challenge, but what better way to begin her birthday weekend than to get the popular vote this week? Her post reminds us that words matter, acknowledgement matters, belonging matters. Communication is key for any relationship to work and it has to come from a place of kindness and sincerity. Everyone has value.

The only time second comes first

So, the real winner this week is A Teachable Mom, with her post, Basketball, B Teams & FGOs*. Not only do we have a fun new acronym to throw around, we have a nice reminder that it’s okay to dare to be average. All-or-nothing thinking creates immobility and stunts growth. This line: Believing there is enough success for all of us is a lesson I long to embrace, summarizes the themes found in the two winning posts this week and makes them complement each other.

Congratulations, then, to Mary and the rest of the top row 5! Fancy badges await you in the sidebar to show off on your posts. Thanks very much to all of you who participated. Want some more?

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

Yeah write is also open on the weekends—no editors, no voting, no writer’s block. This weekend, in honour of our founding mother’s birthday, we’re giving away one copy of The Best American Essays 2012 to a random blogger on the grid. All you have to do for your chance to win is submit a post. Use this chance to show the yeah write community the other side  of your blog—your top 10 lists, your stream-of-consciousness posts, whatever. If you are stuck for ideas, Erica loves a hilarious anecdote more than anything. Laughter would be the best gift you could bring her.

Commercial or sponsored posts are still a no-no.

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.

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