Maybe it’s the weekend. Maybe not.
I got a surprise weekend in the middle of my week when a client blew a deadline by two days. The corollary is that I now no longer get a weekend on the weekend itself, but it was glorious to have those midweek days to write and edit my own work, and see how it did in the popular vote. (Spoilers: not so great. I should probably have focused on polishing and strengthening one piece instead of trying to do three.)
If you’re like me, you’ve been cramming writing into the rest of your life lately, and that doesn’t leave a lot of time for editing and proofing. I think one of the hardest things for me as an editor is to watch folks with busy lives have to turn in first-draft work week after week, knowing that they’re one round of proofreading away from an editorial staff pick. That’s not actually rhetorical – there are weeks where the editors have cursed bitterly because we wanted to pick a piece so badly but we just couldn’t in good conscience give that pick to a work where there was an entire half-sentence missing, or where there were numerous typos or capitalization errors. We love and appreciate good writing, but the rules for that staff pick are that the writing has to meet high standards on both a substantive and technical level.
If you’re feeling a little called out right now… I’d say that’s not my intent, but it kind of is? Hi. You. Yes, you. We think your writing is fantastic and we want to put a badge on it. Please, please, let us put a badge on it! We’re not even talking about pieces that are consistently making it to the top of the popular vote – there is some really good and underappreciated writing that slips through the cracks, especially on big grids like this week’s fiction|poetry grid, and we’d love to reward it. That might be writing that takes chances or builds worlds, it might be the simplest story told in the most personal way, but y’all, some of you are innovative fantastic writers right now and the rest of you will be, as soon as you trust yourself, trust your reader, and, well, don’t trust spellcheck but at least use it.
See, while there’s a popular vote winner every week, we don’t always give out a staff pick. But when we do, we can give out as many as we want. We’d love to have a week where we gave a pick to every piece on the grid! That’s honestly our ultimate goal.
Our editors comb the grids to find, not just the best writing on our grid this week, but what we think is pretty darn great writing anywhere, anytime. 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!
The other benefit of the editors’ pick, of course, is that unlike the popular vote we’ll tell you why we liked that post. So don’t just skip reading the blurb if it’s not about your post; you’ll pick up some handy pointers about what makes good writing great that you can apply to your own work. For more of that critical feedback, keep an eye on our Roundup for a quick rundown of trends we see each week. We try to highlight the good stuff and point out problems that more than one writer is struggling with. There’s probably a handy tip in there for you right now, so check it out!
Once you’re done reading through the Editorial Staff Picks and Roundup (and congratulating the winners in the comments), keep scrolling down to check out who won the popular vote on both 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? Both grids have the same Winner, Editorial Staff Pick, and Top Three badges. It doesn’t clutter up our sidebar, and they’ll still look pretty on yours!
YeahWrite #360 Weekly Writing Challenge Staff Picks:
Microprose
One way to make a micro complete without having to spend a lot of words on worldbuilding is to use allusions to another story the reader is familiar with. Michael did that masterfully this week with a gentle build to the big reveal that the entire story – told in casual, effective dialogue – took place just after A Christmas Story. Jacob could be anyone, but Jacob Marley could only be Scrooge’s ghostly visitor. Michael didn’t need to rattle chains or chill the room: he’d already told us that we were listening to ghosts.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s really obvious when a writer has cut words to fit into the microprose word count. Sentences are choppy or disordered, pronouns are misplaced, or ideas that you need to understand the story are missing entirely. On the other hand, sometimes we get stories like Sanch’s. Her story is exactly as long as it needs to be; it flows from beginning to end. It is so well-balanced, in fact, that I honestly forgot I was reading a micro story. It felt that complete. The dialogue isn’t stilted, there are just enough adjectives to give accurate visuals, and the final details are appropriately set off with font and style so that she didn’t have to waste words explaining that the name was on a tombstone.
Rowan’s Roundup: YeahWrite Weekly Writing Challenge #360
Not gonna lie, folks. It’s nice to have the Super Challenge over. I’m SUPER excited to announce the winners at 3pm today, but I’m almost as excited to know that everyone will have the energy and enthusiasm to make the nonfic grid. After all, that’s our favorite spot to workshop ideas, techniques and concepts. Are you interested in additional challenges for the nonfiction grid? Let us know in the Coffeehouse or by email. We’d be happy to toss out Super Challenge style prompts, questions, and sentences for you to play with!
Wow. So many acrostics! Y’all love trying new things as much as I do. With that in mind, I feel like I should clarify a thing about the acrostic, because it’s harder than it looks and I may not have explained it as well in the slam description as another editor said it last night when we were discussing the grids and trying to make our staff picks.
The title should be relevant. Don’t just co-opt a prompt or pick a random word; you might as well be using your name. Take a word or phrase that’s meaningful to you in isolation and build a poem out of it. Pay attention to your line breaks and word choice (the only thing I feel like I did right in mine was isolating “entire”).
An alternate way to try for an acrostic is to start with the poem and build back to the title. Write a poem in 10 or so lines. Then give it a title. Then go back in and edit the poem until the title and the poem itself fit together seamlessly.
You can also take an image – a photograph or memory – and try to describe it in one to four words. That’s your title. Then spend the rest of the poem redescribing the image, focusing on the feelings the image gives you rather than the visuals. That’s another way to weave images and emotions together into poetry.
What do this week’s staff picks have in common?
In case you hadn’t noticed, microprose is YeahWrite’s hardest challenge. Sure, it *sounds* easy – it’s only 49 words, right? But what we’ve found over the years is that many times plot, characterization, and especially voice get cut in the editing process (not to mention what sometimes happens to articles), and the results are often choppy or stilted half-stories that really needed another dozen or three words to flesh them out. Other times, it feels like there are too many words. Adjectives are tacked on to stretch count, sentences don’t go anywhere or add to the reader’s understanding, and dialogue is wordy and vague.
As you read back through the grid (you are reading back through the grid, right?) look for passages that seem to fit their wordcounts, and for words that meander or are missing.
That’s it for this week! Remember, we don’t always give out a pick on both grids; if we were impressed by several posts on one grid we’ll give them all picks, and if nothing really stood out for us we’ll hold off. If you didn’t get a pick this week, read back through the Roundup to see if you can use some of this week’s tips and tricks.
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, and don’t forget, the Weekend Writing Showcase opens tonight at 6pm Eastern US Time!
Congratulations to the Crowd Favorites at YeahWrite #360
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.
Nonfiction Challenge
Loading InLinkz ...Fiction|Poetry Challenge
Loading InLinkz ... Loading InLinkz ...About the author:
Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.
