If they have pills for everything else, why don’t we have pills for procrastination? This is frustrating. I need to write, but won’t do it. It’s one of those things where you have to sit down and say, “I’m really, actually, truly going to write now.” Having Word open actually helps… I should do that.
I [...]
Of all the ways to research for a potential story, I think playing a computer game is quite possibly the strangest I have ever undertaken. But playing Medieval II Total War helps immerse me in the general feel of medieval times. It gives you the names, the titles, the military units, the states and rulers [...]
Just finished up with Squills, which looks pretty good. Decided to change the format this time around, and I’m not quite sure if I like it yet. It looks a little more professional, but I like the amateur look more. But, what really matters - the content - is awesome! The Squills staff did a [...]
My dad has an amazing humor, but now and then it really shines.
He told my brother that he couldn’t get his own cell phone until he memorized our phone numbers. So, my brother has been repeating our house number over and over and over again (I think I can still hear him from [...]
Careful, it looks as though Shelob is around and about in Texas…
Working tonight on getting Squills all together. Tomorrow I’ll send it to the copy editors, and then make it available for your amusement sometime on September 1st (my time, not your silly Pacific/Greenwich/Eastern Australia/etc. time!).
Baroness Ink Gets Inspiration From… Paolini?
Snoink Goes On A Critiquing Binge With Subsequent Ranting
gyrfalcon finishes the first draft
Razorblade_Saint Has Good Reason For Boasting
Pushca Loves Y’all
Writer Mama is having a contest with give aways every single day for the entire month of September. Although I suppose it’s more for moms and dads, of which we have very few at YWS, Writer Mama does say anybody can enter. So check it out!
From The Guardian (UK):
Hundreds of thousands of children are struggling to master the basics of reading, writing and maths as primary school standards continue to fall, figures showed.
For the second year in a row, the proportion of seven-year-olds making the grade in writing fell, leaving 107,000 children unable to produce adequate written English.
Of course, it’s [...]
They are what I call the un-sexy elements of writing: revising, editing, and proofreading. Everyone loves to write, but few have the fortitude to sit down and correct what they wrote. Plenty of stories on YWS bare the tale of the writer who was so lazy they couldn’t even run spell-check! For [...]
My younger brother and his wife came back today from the hospital with great news: It’s going to be a boy! I actually don’t think I mentioned it anywhere on YWS, but they found out about four months ago, and just today the doctors were able to tell the gender.
So come mid-January, I shall be [...]
I’m always trying to speed up the site, and I’ve already optimized all database queries, and got rid as much excess code as I can. The only thing left are images.
So YWS will become 100% image free in two days. It’ll make everything run so much faster, and I think people will really like it [...]
Last night, Hunter installed a program that will allow you to customize your links on YWS. Before going live with it, I wanted to do some tweaks to it. In the course of doing those tweaks, I completely deleted my account!
Fortunately, I had the foresight to see that as a possibility and backed everything up [...]
A friend of mine uses two screens on his computer, and it’s awesome! I would so love to have two screens. It would make a lot of what I do so much easier, and it’d just be cool besides. So I think I may go on the hunt for a second monitor. Might even have [...]
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and the lightening bug.”-Mark Twain
Many blogs do this, so lets give a try! It’s open thread time, so uh, discuss… whatever? Yeah.
“The Sun Never Shines” by Flogging Molly.
Your turn.
Sometimes it can be really hard to find free time, much less enough time to sit down and type out a story. You got school or a job, then you got homework, errands to do, places to go, people to see, and so on and so forth. Trying to fit in time for [...]
There are many reasons people write, but a recent news article adds one more to that list: writing to sustain your culture. The article is a short one, but it’s about an author who writes in Galician, which is a native language spoken by the people of Galicia, Spain. According to the article, the language [...]
From The Age (Australia):
Nix told the students, he had heard the voice again: “The ring must pass on!” So he offered [the ring] to the first person to put up a hand. About 500 hands shot up, and a lucky person at the front got his ring.
Actually, Nix then confessed, the story wasn’t quite true. [...]
From Reuters:
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - CBS thought it had a novel idea, one that would resonate with viewers of all ages.
“Kid Nation,” scheduled to premiere September 19, features 40 children ages 8-15 who try to form a community without adults in a deserted town in the New Mexico desert.
But soon after the reality show [...]
A couple days ago, I posted a news story about how there are more Britons who want to be authors than anything else, including sports players, musicians, and actors. I don’t know if that carries on to other countries, but I suspect the numbers of those who want to be authors are higher than one [...]
Apparently, I do. Came down with a cold during the course of class yesterday, then it really starting coming on last night. Today, I feel better, but I now have a fever that keeps on growing whereas I had no fever yesterday. Ah well.
Of course, one of my friends came down with strep throat a [...]
Last time, I showcased “Dulce et Decorum est” by Wilfred Owen. This time around, it’s “Casey At Bat” by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, which is another one of those poems I pull out whenever a young boy says poetry is for girls.
Read the whole poem after the jump.
The Young Writers Society has jumped by four spots to be the 13th result when you search for “young writers” on Google. My aim is to have it the number one result by the end of the year.
Just too bad that the 12th result is a site that hasn’t existed in at least three years…
From the YWS Knowledge Base (accessible via the resources link in the header of the main site):
Commas by Mythic Writing
How To Get Rid Of Talking Heads by Dreamer
How To Get The Best Out Of YWS by WhatSarahSaid
All excellent articles and worth the ten minutes it’ll take to read all three.
From the Rebel Yell at the University of Nevada:
Custom-writing.org is an academic writing service that provides custom papers for students. Usually, students submit notes, guidelines, or examples of their writing style, and a staff member from the website writes an entirely new paper using these resources.
Andrew Schwartz, a representative for the business, defends the [...]
So who got to see the Lunar Eclipse this morning? We got to see a bit of it here in Maryland, but the sun was coming up as the eclipse was happening. Kind of ruined it.
From The Age (Australia):
IN THE early years of the 16th century, Christopher Columbus used his ability to forecast a total [...]
SAT scores have dropped for the second year in a row. For the full story, check out U.S. News & World Report:
SAT scores nationwide declined for the second straight year, according to data released today by the College Board—the nonprofit organization that administers the exam. The class of 2007 notched a 1-point decline in critical [...]
