My First-ever Yeah Write Top Row 3 for the Post:
The Real Reason you should Write
My First ever Editor’s Pick for my Fiction piece at Yeah Write:
And here are the Editor’s comments:
This post also got the bonus of being the 2nd Highest in the number of votes đ
Another Yeah Write Top Row badge! Here’s the post that did it:
If God Exists and other dilemmas
So happy to share that this post garnered an Editorâs Pick : Out of Reach!Â
Muffled and Muted bagged second place in the votes
on the Yeah Write #217 grid.Â
Made it to the Top 3 in the votes for Thicker than Blood: Microfiction.
So chuffed that Seething: A microstory  won top honours at Yeah write!
Top Row again: two microstories that resonated with many:-
Second place in the votes
My Non Fiction post Why I Stand with Ahmed garnered an Editor’s Pick again! Woo hoo!
Got the Editorâs Pick (thank you, Christine!) and second place in the crowd vote for the micro story ‘Sanctuary‘
Third place in the votes for my microstory: Seduction!Â
Top row for this piece on getting my passport photo taken
Top 3 for my poem on the Orlando shooting in June 2016
Desolation won honours in Yeah Write #282!
Here’s the beautiful note that
went with the Editor’s Pick for this piece!
Shailaja was almost more a photojournalist than a writer in her microstory this week. From the title â Desolation â on we are prepared for stark graphic images, and like the title those images can have more than one meaning. She follows through in the story, using paragraph breaks like page turns to separate her images. First we have a snapshot of broken buildings, bullet-pocked concrete. But thatâs not all thatâs encapsulated in this paragraph: sounds start to filter in. Next she builds on those sounds, presents us with an image of women picking over looted corpses. Does it happen in the same space as the buildings? It might. It might not; the ambiguity lends a timelessness to the image. The final two paragraphs really highlight this sense of senselessness and almost catapult us back to the beginning: we donât know what war is over. We donât know who won or lost â and maybe neither does anyone else.
An Editor’s pick AND second in the crowd votes for ‘A Recipe for Olan’.
Here’s the beautiful editor’s note that touched me so deeply.
Nothing makes me sound older than saying âhey, remember whenâ but hey, remember when Shailaja was brand-new to our grids? One of the benefits of being here is the constant feedback on whatâs working and what isnât, not just whether someone liked or disliked your work. Shailaja has always excelled at hearing and understanding community critique, and itâs resulted in pieces like this one, so clearly itâs worth it.
Oh, right, I was talking about the essay. When writing about family, weâre often at extremes: over-emotional or over-processed. This ârecipeâ strikes a balance between the two, more sweet than cloying and more communicative than didactic. Having the framework of a shared activity to come back to allows the narrator to bring the reader with her on trips into memory or analysis and still remain firmly anchored in the âpresentâ of the story. Words and phrases that the author knows arenât familiar to some readers are clarified with in-story context rather than cumbersome explanations or a glossary. Finally, Shailaja made a careful and considered decision to leave the mystery ingredient a mystery, protecting some of her family secrets while revealing others in a precise balance of what the reader needs to know versus what should remain in the inner circle.
Thank you, Sid đ
Oh my! Lovely đ