Why Yeah Write is the best community on the internet.

My first Yeah Write challenge was Challenge #55. I've been hooked ever since.

It was a different blog, and I was a baby blogger. Not a blogger who blogs about babies, but a newbie.

Completely green to the blogging world. 

I had absolutely no concept of how to write a post that people wanted to read. Even less idea of how to craft a post that made people want to come back and read what I had to say the next day. My kids were mostly grown. My life consisted of the regular every day ho hum that every mom lives. Work, supper, house work and just life. No special skills, no fashion sense and no time for crafts.

What the hell am I going to blog about? What is my shtick?

Well guess what? Erica, the curator of Yeah Write is a huge fan of the short story. One of the things that participating in the Yeah Write link up will teach you is how to tell a compelling story.

That's what bloggers do - we take a single minute from our day or event from our past, and tell the story. We give it a beginning, a middle and an end. We flesh out the details, while eliminating the noise in the background. Yeah Write teaches you how to hone that post down and cut the clutter.

You don't need the back story to tell the main story. If you do it right, the main story will stand alone. 

Telling the story is only part of the blogging experience, once we've told it then we pray someone will read it and comment on it.

That is another thing that participating in Yeah Write will give you. It's not a willy nilly link-up. Participants are capped at 50. Period. In order to participate - you must be willing to read the posts your fellow challenge members have linked.

Every single one of them.

Up to 50 of them, and let me tell you when I first started linking up with Yeah Write the grid was half full by the time you woke up the next morning. Bloggers stayed awake until 12:01, just to claim their spot on the grid.

To bring you the most page views possible another rule of Yeah Write is your post must be dated the Sunday prior to the grid opening. Does that seem too picky to you?

Consider this - I publish a post and my people (I love being able to say that) read it. Two weeks later I link it up on a blog hop. My people have already read it, they aren't going to read it again to see I linked up to Yeah Write or any other blog hop. But if I publish a post written specifically for Yeah Write with that Yeah Write badge already on it - my people might be intrigued. Maybe they'll have a little extra time come Tuesday morning and click that badge to see what it's all about.

Only there you are also with your thumbnail on the grid, and since there's still a little coffee left in their cup they click your link. Maybe it's someone who's never seen your blog before or maybe they saw a post once and didn't feel it that time. Only now, you've got your very best of the week linked up to Yeah Write and they're all "Wow! How come I'm not already following this blogger?"

That's one part of the Yeah Write spirit.

The other part? We vote, but Yeah Write is not a popularity contest. Sure nobody can 100% control the internet, but Erica has come up with some pretty clever ways to make sure that the winners are truly the ones with the most skill.

For starters - each person gets to vote for five bloggers. So maybe you vote for a blogger that you read regularly, but you've still got four votes left. Should you choose to use them, you're going to vote for the posts that somehow hit with you. Some weeks, you wish you had more votes.

Most weeks as I read my way through the grid the five that should be top (in my opinion) jump out at me. Always, at least 3 of my 5 votes are in the top five. They might not even be bloggers that I would normally read - but they brought their A game and that's what counts on the Yeah Write grid.

They're the ones who write a post that grabs me from the first sentence. They're the ones who tell a story I can follow to the end - no matter what the subject is or whether the tone matches my typical style. If you are a reader, you recognize good writing when you see it. You will see a lot of it at Yeah Write.

Come join in the spirit of Yeah Write - it's their 100th challenge grid and for the month of March they're celebrating turning two. Hang out, browse a bit - I promise you'll meet at least one blogger worth following.

If your very best this week is 500 words or less and tells a compelling story, consider linking up.

If you want proof that participating in Yeah Write will help you grow as a writer, consider this - my first Yeah Write challenge post. I'm amazed they let me join the fun.