for writers who blog and bloggers who write
Winter doldrums
I’m over it. The snow, the ice, the cold. I’ve hit my breaking point. That’s why Rowan was kicking things off last weekend – I was sulking.
To be fair, this weekend it’s supposed to be nice in New Jersey where I live. It’s going to reach the 60s on Sunday, which is very abnormal but which I will appreciate nonetheless. The grayness of winter crushes my spirit every year, and every year it seems to be worse. It affects my writing and just about everything else. I long for spring and for sunshine, the ability to leave my house and explore nature, to move my body and breathe fresh air. These things give me the energy I need to write.
How about you? How do the elements where you are help or hurt your writing practice? What’s the ideal writing weather? What keeps you sane? Your thoughts in coments.
Yeah write super challenge
The second round of super challenge #3 is currently underway! Good luck to all of our participants as they eagerly await the results. Did you miss out on registration? Sign up for our email blast so you don’t miss out on any announcements.
The basics
Yeah write gives you two competitive challenge grids — nonfiction and fiction|poetry — both of which are unmoderated. Everyone gets to the voting round on Thursday. (Remember, your post must be dated appropriately, not be offensive to our audience, and cannot be over word count.) Got a question? E-mail us, tweet us, ping us on Facebook, or visit our online community, the yeah write coffeehouse. You can learn more about yeah write in our FAQ. Please make sure you are familiar with our submission guidelines before you enter. We don’t have a lot of rules, but we do enforce them across the board. We’d hate to see anyone get disqualified by a technicality.
Bring us your personal essays and creative nonfiction!
The nonfiction challenge grid opens on Monday at midnight EST. This is the best place on the ‘net to showcase your best writing. Make us laugh, make us cry, make us think, and above all: make us care.
Nonfiction know-how: editing
This month’s nonfiction know-how is a little bit of a throwback. We’ve spent a lot of time lately talking about how to get writing that appeals to your audience onto the page; for Valentine’s Day we’re going to remind you how to show your writing a little additional love. Editing. It’s a task that makes the best of us cringe. We’ve talked about it before, and this month Cindy and Rowan are going to walk you through some specifics with the nonfiction posts and roundups. So what is editing, anyway, and how is it different from writing? Learn more from Rowan here.
Is fiction more your thing?
The fiction|poetry grid opens on Tuesday. Grab a mic and join our monthly poetry slam or check out our weekly prompt up!
Prompt up!
Prompt up is our optional weekly writing prompt for the fiction|poetry challenge! Here’s how it works: we announce a sentence prompt from last week’s winning nonfiction post. It’s your job to use that prompt in your story or poem in some way. Feel free to use it as your first sentence, move it somewhere else, change it, or float it down to other territories.
Lisa’s post, The Outside Trash, describes a difficult day. This week’s prompt up taken from her essay is: “For the next few hours I lie.”
February poetry slam: the memoriam stanza
Now that we spent the last month learning about couplets, let’s take February’s post to the next level. For this month’s poetry slam, we’ll be taking everything we learned about writing in tight spaces and applying it to the four-line memoriam stanza. Learn more from Rowan here.
Winners’ round-up
In case you missed them, you can find last week’s yeah write staff picks and crowd favorites all laid out for you on Friday’s winners’ post. Leave the winners some love in the comments. They will love you right back, we guarantee it.
Weekend writing showcase
The weekend’s not over: the yeah write weekend writing showcase is still open. Have something to add? Old posts and new are welcome. No moderation, no voting. It’s a laid-back relaxed kind of place. Just leave your commercial or sponsored posts at home. Drop by, share your work, and while you’re there, visit your fellow yeah writers.