YeahWrite Super Challenge #7 - 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’ve added our Super Challenge – the next level of writing competition for folks who want to not only see how they stack up but improve their craft along the way – 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 #7.
About
The YeahWrite Super Challenge is a prompted challenge, where writers compete to complete the best work of short creative nonfiction in a single weekend. Prompts are released on Friday, and the completed work must be turned in by Sunday night.
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
Each round of the Super Challenge starts at 10pm Eastern US Time on a Friday and closes at 10pm Eastern US Time on the Sunday immediately following, giving you 48 hours to complete your entry. (If a Super Challenge weekend ever crosses Daylight Saving Time in the US, we promise to give you at least the full 48 hours.) Each round will have a different genre and prompt style. Writers will be separated into groups and each group will receive a prompt. All groups will respond to that prompt in the genre assigned for each round. The rounds are scheduled as follows:
| Dates | Genre | Prompt Style |
| January 26-28 | Personal essay | Topic |
| February 9-11 | Persuasive essay | Response to a topical question or assigned argument |
| February 23-25 | Either genre | A word or phrase which must be used seamlessly in the essay |
Winners will be announced on March 9, 2018.
Fees and Registration
Earlybirds, the Entry Fee is US$25 on or before January 10, 2018, and US$30 from January 11, 2018, until January 24, 2018. After filling out the registration form, you can send your payment via PayPal. Please put “YeahWrite Super Challenge” in the notes box on 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 January 24, 2018, 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
With all the entries in and tallied, we have the amounts of our prizes! (all amounts are US dollars)
First Place: $135
Second Place: $90
Third Place: $50
Just like your sibling, we split the money with you. That’s right: this adds up to half of the entry fees. So if you’re about to email us and ask how many people entered? You may now treat this as a story problem. Don’t forget to factor in early entry discounts!
FAQ and Rules
For full text of the rules of the competition, go here. By entering the competition you agree to abide and be bound by these rules, so go actually read them. Besides, they contain really useful information about how to submit your work and in what format, in case you get tired of reading this FAQ.
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?
On the Friday that each round opens, you’ll receive an email with your group assignment. At 10pm Eastern US Time we’ll post the prompt assignments via a YeahWrite blog post linked in the email and on this page under the appropriate round number below. Find your group’s prompt, write your essay, and email it to us by 10pm on the Sunday immediately following. That means you have exactly 48 hours to write!
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. And it doesn’t need to be fancy – don’t waste your time on borders or font size. 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. If the file you’ve sent us won’t open, we may email you to ask for another copy.
When do I get my results?
You’ll receive feedback from our judges early on the Wednesday before the next round opens – about a week and a half after you turn your work in. We’ll post who is moving on to the next round on that Wednesday as well, at noon US Eastern time. The only exception is the final round – you’ll receive your feedback on time but we’ll post the final round winners on Friday at 3pm Eastern time.
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 our last nonfiction Super Challenge right here. Scroll down 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 challenge.
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 January 26th to 10 pm January 28th.
Writers, are you ready? You’ll receive an email the morning (our morning, anyway) of the 26th with your group assignment as well as some tips and tricks. If you haven’t received that email by 12pm US Eastern time, email us at superchallenge@yeahwrite.me ONLY, and the Super Challenge admin crew will get that email to you! As veterans of a few writing competitions ourselves, we strongly recommend that you spend a moment Friday afternoon setting up a blank document with a form title page, the right font, and all that good stuff, to save you a few minutes of panic at the end. Don’t just skim the FAQ – read the rules.
Forgot the prompt? THIS LINK RIGHT HERE will take you there. But if you’re here to check out the winners, click on THIS LINK any time after noon Eastern on February 7!
We’d love to see your work! We’ve even added a fancy badge that you can add to it, just like our regular weekly challenges! Check that out down in the Announcements section.
If you’re not planning to submit your essay for publication, please feel free to post on your blog or website and link that URL right here by clicking the blue button. Adding the badge code will also link your work back to the main Super Challenge page, so that your readers can see what it was all about.
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Round Two
The second round of the Super Challenge ran from 10pm February 9th to 10 pm February 11th.
Want a look at the prompt? THIS LINK RIGHT HERE will take you there. But if you’re here to check out the winners, click on THIS LINK any time after noon Eastern on February 21!
We’d love to see your work! We’ve even added a fancy badge that you can add to it, just like our regular weekly challenges! Check that out down in the Announcements section.
If you’re not planning to submit your essay for publication, please feel free to post on your blog or website and link that URL right here by clicking the blue button. Adding the badge code will also link your work back to the main Super Challenge page, so that your readers can see what it was all about.
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Announcements
Round One is done!
Writers, if you’re planning to post your work online and you want to show off just a little more, consider sticking this badge on it. All you have to do is grab the little piece of code there – yeah, right there, under the picture – and paste it into the plaintext/html view of your editing window. (If you need a little more help than that, we’ve got a walkthrough on this page, under “add your writing to the grid.”)
