the yeah write superchallenge

Are you looking for kind and honest feedback on your writing? Do you like writing prompts and cash prizes? Then check this out:

The yeah write super challenge is a six week, three-round competition that will help you stretch your muscles as a writer and storyteller. Each participant will walk away with detailed feedback on their entries, and the winners will walk away with sweet prizes. The more people who enter, the bigger the prizes – so invite your friends!

Great, you’re saying to yourself, but what’s yeah write? Well, yeah write is an online writing community that hosts several weekly writing challenges. I’ve been involved in the group for over 2 years now, both as a contributor and an editor. Submitting to the challenges has provided me with weekly writing inspiration, a solid deadline to meet, and a supportive group of writers who have never let me feel like I was sending my thoughts into the digital ether. Because of the support of this group, I have submitted my writing to contests, magazines, and web sites! And I very much credit yeah write for my successes, so I’m really excited to tell you about the latest way to get involved! 

For our first super challenge, we’re calling for nonfiction entries of up to 1,000 words (fictioneers, you’re up next!) written to our specific writing prompt. For those without a blog, don’t worry! Submissions will be accepted via email so no personal website is required. The process is simple: we give you a prompt, and you give us* your best short essay and mostly-true story. The early entry fee is $20 USD until 11:59 pm on June 30, 2016. That means you have one day to sign up for the cheaper rate! From July 1 to 11:59 pm on July 6, the entry fee will be $25 USD. Entry fees go to prizes for winners and maintenance of the yeah write blog site.

We’ve collected more details for you here. Check it out, read the official rules, and start warming up those typing fingers. The yeah write super challenge starts on July 8, and registration is open now!

Please feel free to spread the word if you think anyone you know would be interested in our very first super challenge. We are so excited to get this started! Less than two weeks to go!

 

*Full disclosure: I’m not a judge in this round. But I will be judging the fiction super challenge coming up in a few months.

Voyage

the heat from its candle inspires
the lantern to cast away from
my fingers, set sail in the briny
above, swim with whip-poor-wills
and wrens all the while its yellow
gaze never leaves the hope of
this world or my ever-reaching arms

 

 

(photo credit: Takeaway/wikimedia.org)

Stingers

My brother said my swollen head resembled a bowling ball; he threatened to stick his fingers in my sockets and carry me to an alley. Then the doctor grabbed tweezers and told me to hold still, which only made me howl louder.

 

(photo: gratisography.com)

The Future of Cheese As We Know It

Cheddar revved them like cocaine does us. After their spaceships disappeared, we wallowed in the absence of our friends, not knowing their holds glowed orange. Goudas and muensters spread wide in our grocery store dairy cases remind us daily of their betrayal.

Boomerang

We asked our sonorous ship to call out, to sing her silent aria so the notes would chase each other into the chasms of the lake, returning only when they’d found you hiding beneath three hundred sixty-five feet of shimmering viridian crepe.

High Rise

We stand a pool’s length apart. Bow ties bring bruschetta on dainty plates. Sixty-three rooms filled with happier couples are stacked under our feet and you’re only aware of the blonde that might touch your forearm. The wind swells, smells of ozone.

Damon

For months Damon has stalked the office hallways like a gray suited bomber, shooting down smiles with icy scowls. We, his coworkers, await the shelter lady’s inevitable visit when she’ll hand him a lop-eared puppy and he will melt to the floor.

 

(photo credit: gratisography.com)

172nd and Jesup

“Sir? You ok? Can you tell me what happened?”

The contour of her neck sliding past her uniform collar strikes me.

“Someone’s messed you up bad, but it’s alright; I’m here now. I’ll stay ’til the ambulance comes.”

That smile deserves diamonds.

(photo credit: unsplash.com/jeffrey swanson)

Red Marmalade

I craved something sweet, so I ambushed a village marooned in orchards. My pulpy prey stopped dead in his tracks to confront me but could only stammer before my fangs pierced rind. The tang of his blood hit me sweet as marmalade.

(photo credit: Sebastian Kostrubala/unsplash.com)

Sleep Cycles

I fell through a cloud last night,
piffed then sluiced
through cumulocirrus fields—
puffs of smoke
strung gray and then white again

I looked to the night beyond,
orb-eyed, past
the cuneiform I’d cut,
(whistling air)
saw Castor and Pollux guard

wet nebulas strewn like poor
Zeus’s babes
that wandered Olympus bare
Stars shift shape:
my Gemini folded back

to cloth, to my bedclothes’ jet
fabric sheen
Polaris, the cad, stretched out
(closet, clock)
and up to make walls, then spun

a vortex to fan me dry
Bed again—
tucked tight as a diving suit
(humming) and
I fell through a cloud last night