YeahWrite Super Challenge #9

Welcome to the YeahWrite Super Challenge!

Welcome – or welcome back – to YeahWrite. Our 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 seven years, and we’ve never missed a week in all that time – 370 and counting, as I write this. 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 #9.

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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 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
July 13-15	Personal essay	Topic
July 27-29	Persuasive essay	Response to a topical question or assigned argument
August 10-12	Either genre	A word or phrase which must be used seamlessly in the essay

Winners of each round are announced the Wednesday before the next round begins, and the overall winners are announced Friday, August 24.

Fees and Registration - CLOSED

Earlybirds, the Entry Fee is US$30 on or before June 30, 2018, and US$35 from July 1, until 10pm on July 11. After filling out the registration form, you can send your payment via PayPal – please put the code YWSC9 in the “notes” box of PayPal so we know we’re not just getting free money out of thin air! 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 11 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 sent your payment on time and PayPal doesn’t process it until the next day, we’ll still consider you to have registered on time!

YeahWrite Tier 2 members get a $5 discount on Super Challenge registration! Use the code YWSC9M instead, so that we can confirm your membership and payment correctly.

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 news.

Prizes

Entries have been counted, we’ve swum through the pool of money like Scrooge McDuck, and we’re ready to announce what the winners will be taking home:

First Prize: $100
Second Prize: $75
Third Prize: $50

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. 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. Do not send your essay to any other email than superchallenge@yeahwrite.me – this may end up disclosing your identity to a judge and will result in disqualification.

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 that 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 receive their scores. You can also check out the results for the last challenge.

What if I have more questions?
For a more in-depth response to your most common “how do you run the Super Challenge and why is it that way” questions, check out the Super Challenge FAQ. Please send any other 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!

Writers, if you’re planning to post your work online after each round’s results are in 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.”)