This article reviews and responds to recent (re)turns to and reconceptualizations of contract grading in the teaching of writing. I reflect on my own experience using contract grading in a variety of pedagogical contexts, and how this experience complicates scholarship on contract grading (now rebranded as labor-based grading and engagement-based grading). I note the positive impact of contract grading on student (and faculty) mental health, contract grading's mixed results around questions of equity, and a problematic "more is better" framework in almost all contract grading protocols. Finally, I offer a few suggestions of how we might ameliorate some of the problems with contract grading while still retaining its important political and pedagogical goals.