Young Writers Society

Welcome to Squills, the official news bulletin of the Young Writers Society!

What will you find here? Tons of interesting news about YWS, including but not limited to: articles about writing, art, and the world of humanities; interviews with YWS members; shameless plugs; link round-ups; and opinionated columns.

And where will all of this come from? Take a look at our fantastic creative staff!






Of course, our content can’t come only from our staff. We also depend on you to help keep Squills successful. You’re all a part of a writing community, after all. If you’re interested in submitting to Squills, pop on over to the Reader’s Corner to find out how you can get involved by contributing an article or participating in other Squills activities. You can also subscribe to the Squills Fan Club , or PM SquillsBot to receive a notification each time a new issue is published!

Well, that’s all I have for now. So, what are you waiting for? Enjoy!

See an empty position you'd like to fill? Find position descriptions and instructions to apply here .

1. FEATURED MEMBER INTERVIEW: ETERNALRAIN
2. K-POP NEWS RAP MONSTER X WALE COLLABORATION
3. POETRY POPPER: JOHN MILTON
4. GREEN ROOM GALLERY
5. TWO CENTS: REVIEWING KINDLY
6. SOCIETY PAGES
7. SHAMELESS PLUGS
8. SUBSCRIBERS

FEATURED MEMBER INTERVIEW: ETERNALRAIN

written by Princess Ink < PM: >

This time’s Featured Member is @EternalRain. She reviews regularly, as she is a Knight of the Green Room, and is also a Squills Social Correspondent. She definitely deserves the honor of becoming FM! I got a chance to interview her about this:



EternalRain: Thank you! And yes, of course.



ER: Well, it feels honoring, really. It makes me happy to see my name on the front page every day and I actually smile whenever I think about it.



ER: I was shocked! I was actually in English class and was on the phone, bored, and wanted to check my YWS notifications really quickly. I saw my name on the front page and just kind of stared at my phone in astonishment.



ER: I spend a lot of time in the people tab, and currently am spending a lot more time reviewing. I would definitely say the people tab or the literary tab, though. I love reading about snippets of people’s lives but also reading the stories people create.



ER: Do what you love! It it’s storybooking, Squills writing, welcoming new members, reviewing, or just socializing with friends-just be yourself. I think reviewing really helps, though, in the featured member area, so if you’re really gunning for that, my biggest tip would be to review.



ER: Nominate? One person? Oh boy. I’m sure she’s been featured before but her constant activity is inspiring o-o. Not to mention her very helpful reviews. I would nominate @Mea.



ER: No problem, and you too!

So that’s it for the interview with EternalRain. It was fun asking her questions, and I hope you enjoy it. See you next time!

K-POP NEWS
RAP MONSTER x WALE COLLABORATION
written by marmalade < PM: >

Rumors have been spreading like wildfire about Rap Monster, BTS’s Leader, collaborating with the American rapper Wale since November 2016 when Wale tweeted Rap Monster after a fan tagged him in Rap Monster’s cover of one of his (Wale’s) songs.






Finally, a few days ago BigHit entertainment randomly dropped a music video of their collaboration, shocking fans. BigHit has a record of dropping songs without teasers, but they still manage to surprise fans every time a new unannounced song is released. The song is called “Change” and personally I think it’s lyrically beautiful. Check out these lyrics:

















At the moment, many ARMYs (BTS fans) are furious at a certain ARMY called “Venny” who was the fan who tweeted Wale about Rap Monster’s cover of his song.






Wale and Rap Monster both sent Venny a private “thank you” video message. Venny has taken to Twitter, patting herself on the back for assumingly putting together the collaboration. Majority of the anger is out of jealous but if you go far back on Venny’s Twitter you will see that she has a record of bullying other ARMYs, and saying racist and sexist comments.



What do you think of the collaboration? What do you think of Venny? Also check out the Kpop Club if you are interested in joining the YWS Kpop fan community.

POETRY POPPER: JOHN MILTON written by Aley < PM: >

Hello everyone and welcome to a Poetry Popper. This week we are going to go for a real classic because I would like to get this out of the way. Our Popper might be a bit of a mouthful this time, but hopefully you can bear with the language to enjoy his writing as much as so many of our ancestors do. Welcome John Milton!

Background

John Milton is a forefather of a lot of famous thoughts. He was one of the people who helped found the ideas for the United States Constitution through inspiring the forefathers with Areopagitica, which was a pamphlet about why freedom of speech is important. As a poet, he was perusing the noble pursuit of understanding the bible as in his era, it was just beginning to get distributed in English for the first time ever. As a studied man, however, Milton was able to read in Latin, but he had other beliefs. He wanted everyone to read and write what they wanted, so he wrote in English for everyone to understand his pondering on missing parts of the biblical stories.

Poems By:

John Milton doesn't have a lot of famous works, but he has some of the most famous old epics. "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" are written by John Milton. Today we're going to be looking at a study of his called "On Time" meaning his thoughts on time.

On Time

Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping howrs,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummets pace;
And glut thy self with what thy woumb devours,
Which is no more then what is false and vain,
And merely dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is our gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb'd,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
with an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,
When every thing that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine
About the supreme Throne
of him t' whose happy-making sight alone,
When once our heav'nly-guided soul shall clime,
Then all this Earthly grossness quit,
Attir'd with Stars, we shall for ever sit,
__Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee O Time.

The Complete Poetry of John Milton; Edited with an Introduction, Notes, and Variants

Okay, so I should have warned you that it's early modern English, Shakespearean if you will, but this is easy to fix! I'll end this with a translation into our words if you're stuck. I picked this poem because I really wanted to give you just a taste of Milton. He is incredibly thoughtful so if you get into one of his longer poems, you're going to be so far twisted around by the end of it, you'll be facing forward again. This one is just barely starting to hint on that with an old classic argument against death, and for that, I really enjoyed it. Hopefully you do too!

If you're interested in more of his poems like this one, check out sonnets, and psalms, and hymns by Milton. Once you're familiar with the language and know you want to commit yourself to the long haul, then try Paradise Lost!

If you're having troubles with words, here's a translation line by line written as a paragraph to save space.

GREEN ROOM GALLERYwritten by Mea < PM: >

Hello, hello! This round of the Green Room Gallery is brought to you right after Review Day has drawn to a close, and so the Green Room is looking substantially more empty than yesterday. However, at the time of writing there are still 8 works with no reviews and 30 with just one languishing away in there. So here's a small selection, and if one of them catches your eye, be sure to head over and review it!

Death Mage Chapter Five by @LadyEvvy
This is the fifth chapter of a fantasy novel involving necromancy. In this chapter, two enemies must join together to "save the dead."
First chapter: Death Mage Chapter One

The Progeny: Chapter 45 by @MissGangamash
The chapter number may be daunting, but this is a fascinating story about vampires and a scientist who has found a cure for their vampirism and now wants to forcibly administer it. Check it out!
Rating 16+ for mature content

Conics Unfortunately: 3 by @Ventomology
This is a humorous science fiction novel with a really fun narrator. If you like A Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy, this might just be for you!
First chapter: Conics Unfortunately: 1

Frost Lark News 3/12/98 by @Sheyren
Another edition in the hilarious newspaper series, this one centers around numbers. Well, statistics. Statistics of questionable veracity. (Bonus: this one's short. And funny.)

My Friend, the Painting (Part 3) by @Dracula
This is part 3 of three in a sweet short story inspired by the way the paintings in Harry Potter move. Set in an original world, it centers around a girl who befriends one of the paintings and even winds up going inside their world.
Part One: My Friend, the Painting (Part 1)

Queen of the Lake- Chapter 1 - Still in editing- Please review, need to know what needs to be fixed by @steam1244
This is an actual chapter one! And it's also short. And it's cool because it's a mystery, and chapter one involves an angry boss sending the main character off to get pictures for the magazine.

The FTL Chronicles - Chapter 1 to 3 (REVISED) by @Sathalha
This is a fanfiction based on the game FTL - Faster Then Light. It follows a captain and his crew on their adventures around space.

Firebreed chapter 2-- Cassy the Killer Queen by @AwkwardMeerkat
This is chapter two of a novel about two girls named Amber and Ember, whose school life is awful thanks to another girl called Cassy. However, the two new kids may change things.
Chapter One: Firebreed chapter 1-- Red Stained Note

And that about wraps it up! If any of those awesome pieces sound interesting to you, be sure to check them out! I bet we can get the Green Room down even farther in the next week or two.

TWO CENTS: REVIEWING KINDLY written by Aley < PM: >

As we have just gotten through yet another Review Day, I thought it might be a good idea to take a second and look at styles for reviews. There are many of them. No, seriously, there are a lot of styles.

Some people like to put a header, a footer, sections, points, and allocate stars, other people write a few paragraphs about what they just read. All of them have a couple things in common. Usually they say what they liked, didn't like, and why they didn't like it. The problem with that is when it comes to either a piece that you just loved everything, or a piece that you liked most of it, but you have a lot to say about the one thing you think they need improving on.

Well, there's another option for how to review things, and that's what I wanted to go over today. This style isn't for everyone, but I think it could help give you an alternate method to review and remind us that we're all human. We all have skin, and that skin bleeds. Sometimes it feels like reviews are testing to see if that's still the case, but I assure you, it is.

Recently I've tried to morph how I review things slightly so that I'm not studying what I'm reading for what I hate, but rather reading and reviewing why I like the things I do. This isn't always easy, given that I'm a critical person, but if I remind myself that I'm trying to keep the writer doing something I enjoy, I tend to hit on the right train of thought.

That being said, I start out a review with overlaying what I like, just like normal. I talk about all of the aspects I liked, and then I do something tricky. I pick out things I liked about things I'm going to suggest change.

I'm not saying "Oh, I really think your spelling is good" and then turning around and correcting all the words they spelled wrong. I'm saying I'll pick something like voice, in a poem that has a weak voice and say "I like that your character's voice is unique" and then the fun begins. To actually get a review, you only have to offer ways to improve. You don't have to say whether something is good or bad, just how to improve. I take this to heart.

Going from a point of positive feedback, I try to suggest ways to heighten the thing I like. For instance, if someone really had a good poem with rhymes, but there's one rhyme that really bugged me, I might say "You rhyme really well" and then give two or three examples of rhymes I liked, and why I liked those rhymes in particular. Afterwards, I will introduce the rhyme that I didn't like, and why stood out.

This gives the reader the positive feedback they might need to keep writing, but it also shows them places in things they're good at, where they could be better.

I do not condone people lying in reviews about what they liked or didn't like. I don't do it, I don't want you to. What I do want people to do is stretch their acceptance, and open their focus to include different stylistic choices, and choose a level of critique that is fitting for the level of skill.

If you're reviewing someone who is just starting out in whatever they wrote, don't review them like they've been doing it for as long as an expert. Instead, review them to encourage them. Review why you liked things, suggest how you might like things more, and explain why your suggestions may or may not work.

After all, we're all learning, and I think the best reviews are those which both allow the writer to say 'I disagree' and 'I can see where you're coming from' at the same time.

While everyone needs someone to point out when they're horrible at something, or what to avoid, sometimes we can get in the habit of hard lining things to do, and things not to do, which makes it difficult to accept something done outside of our style. Changing gears every once in a while can create a cathartic neutrality just for a little bit between the need to produce quality reviews, and our need to be human for the sake of the person receiving the review.

Society Pageswritten by EternalRain < PM: >

@featherstone9086 came back on YWS after several hours of hanging out with a friend and had 185 notifications! That must be a hassle to go through.

@ChieRynn’s grandmother used to call a random number with her friends. They would have a conversation like so,






NaPo is coming up! @Remembrance is so ready! Make sure to post any updates on NaPo with the #NaPo or #NaPoWriMo hashtags to keep everyone updated!

Sometimes @Autumns wishes they have a pet duck. But then the feeling passes.

@Holysocks got a haircut… and is just glad hair has the amazing ability to grow back.

@outvaders wants to know what the deal is with YWS members and strikethrough. It’s a mystery.

On Saturday, @BlueSunset is going to see the new movie that was released recently - Beauty and the Beast. Many other YWSers have seen it as well.

What else is going on this week? Many YWSers, including @Lareine, have continued to use the hashtag #teasertuesday to show an excerpt of their works. @Sheyren wonders why the English language capitalizes “I”, @scribbleinks has drawn some art for one of their stories, and @Mage has realized her English classes never read books with happy endings.

NaPo is coming up! Be sure to share complaints, excitements, or short poems with a hashtag!

SHAMELESS PLUGS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

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SUBSCRIBERS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

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