[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Phew! NoMo’ers, your work is done. It is, like, totally December, y’all. How magic is that?
Not gonna lie, I can tell by how empty the grids were this week that you’re all exhausted. I would be too.
So now you’ve written about a billion words and you don’t know if any of them are any good, right? Step away. Trust me on this one. Give your writing a week or two to marinate before you come back and look at it and decide if it’s something you want to keep forever and have tattooed on your body. You’re too close to it right now to decide.
A quick note: I know it’s tempting to use a tool to decide for you if your writing is good. Avoid that temptation. There’s really no substitute for a qualified human looking at your work. Even word-counting tools can go awry, as one poster found out this week. If you’re using a program to count words (which we encourage you not to do for microstories cause, you guys, 42 words. Just count em. On the other hand, I’m not hand-counting 750 or 1,000 words either.) use a second program to doublecheck it. If you’re writing in WordPress, paste your post into Word or something- WordPress only checks every few minutes, and even then sometimes only after you save or publish. Don’t get me started on online grammar tools. Either they’re worse than useless (ahem, like Hemingway; it gives very high readability marks to lorem ipsum) or they’ll stifle your voice (voice is the way in which each writer deliberately* breaks grammatical rules to express their personality) or they just don’t catch things.
But enough about writing and editing. You wrote this week, or you didn’t, and you voted, and now you want to know the results, right? Me too. So, just like every Friday, I’m going to give you the results on all three of our grids – nonfiction, fiction|poetry, and microfiction – right here!
But it’s not all about the popular vote, folks. We also have our editorial staff picks to hand out. Every week our editors comb through your submissions looking for their favorites. Picks are based on writing quality, how successful the author is in conveying information, and just plain style. If you got a staff pick this week, grab your badge from the sidebar and wear it with pride!
Once you’re done reading through the staff picks (and congratulating the winners in the comments), keep scrolling down to check out who won the popular vote on all three grids. If you earned the highest number of votes in any challenge, you are this week’s crowd favorite! If you came in first, second or third, you get “top three” honors. Grab your badge from our sidebar!
Looking for your badge? The fiction|poetry, nonfiction and microstories challenges all have the same winner, staff pick, and top three badges. It doesn’t clutter up our sidebar, and they’ll still look pretty on yours!
*deliberately means deliberately. It doesn’t mean not knowing any better. It means understanding a tool and rejecting it on purpose in favor of doing something different because you need to do that different thing to make a point. Picasso may be famous for cubism, but he started out painting photorealistic art before rejecting realism in favor of doing something else. (fun fact: there are REALLY cool videos available of Picasso painting. He swears a lot. In my brain, he was always “art history” and I had no idea you could actually watch him paint until I saw one of these vids.)[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Yeah write #242 weekly writing challenge staff picks: fiction|poetry
[/vc_column_text][vc_separator][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”3/4″][vc_column_text]
boss bitch guide to warfare by shannon
[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Half battle cry, half story, half advice and half poetry. Like my description, this post is more than the sum of its parts. It’s still set in the world Shannon has been building (little touches like Innocents and Beholders and The World give it away) but could as easily be a war cry for our own. Turn your music up and read it again. No, LOUDER.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text][/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”22651″ alignment=”center” style=”vc_box_circle” title=”natalie”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator][vc_column_text]
That’s it for our staff picks this week! Remember, we don’t always give out a pick on every grid; if we were impressed by several posts on one grid, we’ll give them all picks, and if nothing really stood out for us on another grid, we’ll hold off.
If you’re lost in the middle of the grid and wondering how you can get a little more feedback on your posts, check out our membership perks!
Everybody: before you go, please take some time to leave your favorites a little love in the comments.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
Weekend moonshine grid opens today at 6 p.m. eastern time
Hey you. Yeah, you. I know it’s been a rough week- I missed the grid deadline and I know at least one or two other folks did. Why don’t we grab those late posts and all head down to the moonshine grid together when it opens tonight? We can meet for happy hour, discuss our posts, leave comments, and have snacks. We just can’t try to sell each other stuff. And honestly, the bar’s not a good place for that anyway: too loud. See you on the moonshine grid![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Congratulations to the crowd favorites at yeah write #242
The thumbnails are now sorted in order of most votes to fewest. Ties in the overall number of votes are broken by number of editor votes.
Congratulations if you’re at or near the top! Writing well is hard work, and we’re honored you’ve chosen us this week to showcase your entry.
If you’re at or near the bottom, don’t be discouraged. You’re in the right community for learning and growing as a writer, and we are always available with resources for those who ask nicely.
To our readers and voters: thank you! See you next week.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
Loading InLinkz ... Loading InLinkz ...
Loading InLinkz ...
