YeahWrite Super Challenge #5 - Nonfiction
Welcome to the YeahWrite Super Challenge!
Welcome – or welcome back – to YeahWrite’s Super Challenge. The Super Challenge brings together the best parts of our community: writing, reading, feedback and, well, winning!
If you’re already familiar with our weekly challenge grids, you know they’re a great way to learn, grow and connect with our community of writers, but the Super Challenge is where it all comes together, where your hard work and practice pays off – literally pays off, I mean, with prizes! If you’re finding YeahWrite for the first time, welcome aboard. We hope you’re along for the ride. Check out our Facebook group, the Coffeehouse, for more ways to connect with our community of readers and writers!
YeahWrite has been a vibrant community of writers for over six years, and we’ve never missed a week on our free challenge grids in all that time. Now we’re adding the next level of writing competition and we hope you’re as excited to find it as we are to add you to our community! So with no further ado, let’s dive into Super Challenge #5.
We'll announce the winners of Super Challenge #5 in:
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About
The competition is run in three rounds. Approximately half the writers will move to the second round of competition, and approximately ten writers will advance to the final round of competition. All competing writers will receive feedback on their work at the end of each round from the judges. The final ten writers will compete for cash prizes for first, second, and third place.
Schedule
Here’s how it works: 12-24 hours before the start of each round, writers will receive their group assignments. We’ll post the group prompts here and in a blog post at 10pm Eastern Time on Friday. Writers are responsible for emailing their work to superchallenge@yeahwrite.me before 10pm on Sunday. We’ll send feedback and announce who is moving on about a week and a half later. Then the whole thing starts over again! The overall winners will be announced on the Friday two weeks after the last round closes.
The rounds are scheduled as follows:
| Dates | Genre | Prompt Style |
| July 14-16 | Personal essay | Topic |
| July 28-30 | Persuasive essay | Response to a topical question or assigned argument |
| August 11-13 | Either genre | A word or phrase which must be used seamlessly in the essay |
Fees and Registration
After filling out the registration form, you can send your payment via PayPal. If you do not have a PayPal account, an invoice will be sent to you within 24 hours. The entry fee must be received in full by YeahWrite on or before July 12, 2017, to participate. Once the registration is completed online and your payment is processed, we’ll send a confirmation e-mail to the email you give us on your registration form. Be patient – sometimes it takes PayPal a minute to process your payment and we can’t send your confirmation until we have that.
If you haven’t signed up for YeahWrite’s mailer yet, this would be a great time. We’ll keep you informed of events around the site as well as important super challenge news.
Prizes
Winner: $100
Second Place: $60
Third Place: $35
FAQ and Rules
Who can enter?
Anyone 18 or older can enter the competition, as long as it’s not void where you live. YeahWrite editors are, naturally, not eligible. If we had actual employees they wouldn’t be eligible either, and it goes without saying that our competition judges are not eligible.
How many writers can work on an essay?
An essay is considered the work of the registered writer. We won’t split up the prizes. That said, you can show your work to others during the course of each round, receive feedback, and make revisions.
When will I get my assignment and when is it due?
Assignments will be posted at 10pm Eastern US Time on the opening Friday of each challenge, and it is due by 10pm on the Sunday immediately following. That means you have exactly 48 hours to write your essay!
How do I submit my essay?
Email your essay in .doc, .rtf, or .docx format to superchallenge@yeahwrite.me before 10pm on the closing day of each round. Use the subject line “YeahWrite Super Challenge Round [x] Group [y] submission.” Make sure the filename is as specified in the official rules.
How do I format my essay?
Your essay must be in 12 point font – either Arial or Times New Roman. The first page should be blank except for the Title Page information described in the rules. The title page does not count toward your maximum word count of 1,000 words. Make sure your name does not appear anywhere in your essay or on the file. The name of the file must be as follows: [group number]-[title]. For example, if you are in Group 2 and the title of your essay is “Daisy Petals” then the filename will be 2-Daisy Petals.doc (or .rtf or .txt, as applicable).
What if I need to make changes to an essay I’ve submitted?
Sorry. We don’t accept revisions or changes to your work. Once you hit send that’s it, game over. The only exception will be if you forgot to attach your essay to your original submission email – you can still re-send the email with your attachment as long as you send it before the round closes at 10pm. We’ll send you a confirmation email when we get your essay. Submitting two essays can be grounds for disqualification.
Who owns the copyright to my work?
You do. For a more complete explanation of what rights you are granting to YeahWrite by entering your work in the Super Challenge, see the official rules.
So can I post my work on my blog?
Not until after you receive feedback from the judges, please. Don’t make your work available in a forum where the judges might run across it until the judging is done. After each round of the challenge is over, we’ll also create a special grid to link up your work, since it’s not eligible for our regular challenge grids.
What feedback will I get on my work?
In every round you participate in, you’ll get an email telling you what the judges liked about your work, and what you need to work on. We’ll make sure to get you this feedback before the next round, so that it’s useful to you as you move through the competition!
Who are the judges?
A staff of professional writers, educators, and editors. We’ll have a couple celebrity guest judges for each competition, usually in the final round, so stay tuned and keep checking our Announcements section on this page!
Can I see some examples of essays that have been written for this competition in the past?
Sure! Check out the archive of our nonfiction Super Challenges right here. Scroll down each Super Challenge page for the special Super Challenge grids. Our writers have the option to link their essays to these grids after they received their scores. You can also check out the results for the last challege.
What if I have more questions?
Please send questions about the Super Challenge to superchallenge@yeahwrite.me only, and not to our Facebook, Twitter, or other e-mail addresses. We will not be reviewing other e-mail addresses or social media for Super Challenge related questions, and we want to make sure you hear back from us!
Super Challenge Round Updates
Are you ready for this? So are we. We’ll post the prompts, winners, and a special linkup for each round here as the competition goes on! Good luck, writers!
Round One
The first round of the Super Challenge runs from 10pm July 14th to 10pm July 16th. Writers, you’ll receive an email with your group assignments 12-24 hours before the round starts. Click THIS LINK RIGHT HERE at 10pm Friday (we know, it doesn’t work yet, quit refreshing. Yes you. I see you.) for your prompts.
Congratulations to our advancing writers! Read more here, or just look for your name:
Jennifer Chase
Joshua Flores
Sarah Grey
Laura Lucas
Laura Neill
Jennifer Palmer
Eleni Sakka
Margaret Shafer
Trish Tuthill
Karen Vernon
Paige Vest
Leah Vidal
Gail Webber
Krystina Whitten
Writers, you’re now free to post, submit, publish, etc. your Round One work anywhere you like. We’ve made a linkup right here if you want to add your (self-hosted, so put your essay on your blog or website and then add the link) work to our archive. If you’ve gone back through our Super Challenge archives looking for examples, consider paying the favor forward!
Loading InLinkz ...Round Two
The final round of the Super Challenge runs from 10pm August 11th to 10pm August 13th. Writers, you’ll receive an email with your group assignments 12-24 hours before the round starts. Click THIS LINK RIGHT HERE at 10pm Friday (we know, it doesn’t work yet, quit refreshing. Yes you. I see you.) for your prompts.
Congratulations to our advancing writers! Read more here, or just look for your name:
Jennifer Chase
Sarah Grey
Laura Lucas
Laura Neill
Eleni Sakka
Margaret Shafer
Trish Tuthill
Paige Vest
Gail Webber
Krystina Whitten
Writers, you’re now free to post, submit, publish, etc. your Round Two work anywhere you like. We’ve made a linkup right here if you want to add your (self-hosted, so put your essay on your blog or website and then add the link) work to our archive. If you’ve gone back through our Super Challenge archives looking for examples, consider paying the favor forward!
Loading InLinkz ...Final Round
Click this link to check out the Final Round prompt!
Congratulations to our winners!
Winners, you’ll also get an email confirming your details so that we can send your prizes to you. Everyone, congratulations on making it to the final round! It was a fantastic competition with tight scoring, and we hope you’ll share your essays with the world, because any one of them could easily appear in an anthology somewhere.
First Place
$100
Laura Neill
I Never Chose Geoffrey Mullet
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Second Place
$60
Trish Tuthill
The Abyss
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Third Place
$35
Sarah Grey
Between the Lines
Now that this round of the competition is over, you’re free to post your work anywhere on the Internet you like, or take our judges’ suggestions and rework your submission to send on to other venues. We’ve also made this special grid for you to link your work to if you like:
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