Firefox is better for writers. Period. End of sentence. If the choice you have is between Internet Explorer and Firefox, always opt for the latter. Unfortunately, I can’t say if the same holds true with Safari, which I have never used, or with Opera, which I briefly flirted with a while [...]

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I think this is really a big thing for (especially) young writer’s.  Most parents don’t let their children use swear words at all, so when they finally are able to (in private, with friends, after turning 18…that kind of thing) there often becomes a struggle between a want to use them and a need not [...]

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 I have quite a few divorced socks.
 Three weeks ago, while folding laundry, you noticed a sock was missing. Last week, another sock disappeared. Where are they going? You’ve hidden a micro camera inside a sock to find out. Describe what is happening to your socks.

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Ever read Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes?  If you haven’t, you really should.  It’s a fantastic book about a severely mentally handicapped person who becomes super-intelligent thanks to medicine, then chronicles his mental decline back to an IQ of 60.
In the book, the protagonist (Charlie Gordon) keeps a journal of his mental rise then [...]

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Recently, the Young Writers Society increased from a Page Rank of 4 to 5, which is nice but not extraordinary.  However, other portions of the site did very well, with both the YWS Blog and the 101 Tips for Writers moving from 0 to 4.  There’s actually a large number of pages now on YWS [...]

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National Novel Writing Month is coming up in just a couple days, but do you have a plot line yet?  If you don’t, no need to worry.  After all, no one is expecting you to send in your finished novel as a homework assignment on December 1.
But what if you are in that fix, and [...]

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Till I Hear It From You by The Gin Blossoms

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Ever wish that you could shout and ask a question in the same sentence without having to use two different punctuation marks at the end of the sentence? Well, fear not! Because you actually can.
In 1964 a creative American named Martin Specktor decided that it would help advertising if you could show a [...]

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This has to be the most bizarre thing I have ever seen….And yet, it is incredebly hilarious.
“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” is a grammatically correct sentence used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated constructs.
What!? At first, this made absolutely no sense…But you can read [...]

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Since the invention of the internet, snail mail hasn’t been that important for anything besides bills, and college advertisements. If you want to talk to your friend in Europe, you email him. If you want to tell your Grandmother you’re going to be in town, but you can’t call her because X,Y, Z, you email [...]

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YWS has been around for three years now, and so there are a lot of members who love the community, but feel too old for the site. So to fix that, I spent a grand total of 30 minutes putting together a Web site for members of YWS who are no longer young writers.The [...]

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Woot! The Young Writers Society now has a Google Page Rank of 5. What does that mean exactly? It’s kind of a lot to explain, so if you’re interested, check out the wikipedia article on it. Essentially, it’s a measure of the importance of your web site on a scale of [...]

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I think I would easily cash out $7,500 for one of these…if I had the money. What do you think? Is this your reading dream, or a claustrophobic nightmare?

I really do want one. But what if you put in too many books; could it possibly collapse on you? #_#

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Another cool thing I found while searching the internet:

 ”This unique patented book holder fits on the thumb like a ring and spreads the pages of the book open. Perfect for reading while holding the book in one hand! The “Small” size is just right for young students, and for many adults as well.”
I want one [...]

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Writer’s block seems to attack everyone and one point in time in their writing life, whether they call it writer’s block, or not. (I don’t ^_~) We already have random writing block posts, but I’d say those are prompts more than anything. But they’re still good ones! I found a list of twenty to break [...]

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It’s finally raining in Washington, DC!  We haven’t had anything but short, sporadic rainfall for two months now, so it’s nice to get a good soaking finally.  Of course, other areas of the country (Atlanta) still need a ton of rain, and Southern California needs temperatures to fall & the winds to die down.  Of [...]

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Ever wonder how writing came to be?  Well…
There’s actually some debate to which civilization can properly claim writing developed there first.  Each of the world’s four major civilizations have a claim; that is, the Europeans, the Chinese, the Mesopotamians, and the Indus River Valley.

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Uh…

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I’ve always used Google, but I’m starting to like Ask more. Hmm…

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See the thread on the main site here.
To everyone living in Southern California, we’re praying for you and that everything is going to be alright. I can’t believe over 1,000,000 people have had to evacuate, and I hope every one of the YWS’ers from SoCal are doing alright.
I have family in San Diego, [...]

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Recently, the Alabama Board of Education “became the first state in the union to approve a textbook for a course about the Bible in its public schools.”  See the Time article here.
I came across the story initially while reading The Huffington Post.  The textbook in question is entitled “The Bible and Its Influence,” and is [...]

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There’s a thread going on right now on the main site that I won’t mention, but numerous times people who are 19, 20 years old have called people who are 11, 12 years old as immature.  Well duh, but does it bare saying, much less even getting upset about an “immature” 11 year old?
I suppose [...]

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For those who don’t know, Poetry.com is the scammiest MacScam on Scam street. It is true they do offer and award prizes, which is why the authorities have still been unable to shut the notorious site down, but what they’ll do is say they’ll publish your poem if only you pay X amount of [...]

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October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month.  So, I’m making you aware!
In 2007 alone, there are expected to be 178,480 new cases of invasive breast cancer diagnosed.  Of these, 40,460 women will die.  Although these facts are to women only, don’t think you men aren’t at risk too.  Also in 2007, 2,030 men will be [...]

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This weekend I watched a two-part film called “Tsunami: The Aftermath” on HBO.  The tsunami they were showcasing as the December 26th, 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean.  This tsunami killed over 277,000 people across 73 countries, including over 50,000 who were never found but are presumed dead.  The countries hit the hardest were Indonesia, [...]

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Aw, love..
Write a love letter to someone you care about (doesn’t have to be romantic). If you prefer, you can write it from the point of view of one of your characters.

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Found this beauty today. It’s a generator where you can type in one of your favorite books or authors and it gives you a list of books you would like.
“Enter a book you like and the site will analyse our database of real readers’
favourite books (over 32,000 and growing) to suggest what you could read [...]

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This has to be the best list I’ve ever read! It’s real helpful, here are the first five:

Do absolutely nothing until you can see the whites of your deadline’s eyes.
If you’ve got cowriters, try to disagree as much as possible. If you’re of the same opinion regarding a section of text, bicker about dinner choices.
Criticize [...]

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