Young Writers Society

Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment, until it becomes a memory. ~ Dr. Seuss

You may post anything you like: shout-outs to specific people, stories or poems you really liked, what you read this year, pictures, favorite quote, etc. However, you may make only one post! Although you can edit that one post as much as you like.

Grab your spots, sit back, and enjoy the memories <3 What an amazing year, everyone! And to those who are new with us, join in! You will look back upon it next year and smile.

2016

first spot

So I keep forgetting to actually come back and fill out my post but I'm claiming a first page spot anyway so there.

You know I've been waiting for this thread to pop up.


*opens can of club soda*
*slices lime*
*prepares glass of ice*

Alright let's write this gosh darn thing.
I have maybe 6 or 7 people to tag this year.
You know why you're getting these darlings.

@Kays
Rock n roll and strawberry fields forever

@wolfical
One word: clue.

@Lauren2010
The beat goes on
The beat goes on
Gen lit keeps marking reviews
La Dee da dee da, la dee dee doo

@Snoink
#catholicmemes

@biscuitsleguin
*whispers the name James*

@stormcloud
Catholics show everyone up

@Lumi
*pokes*
cornbread

@alliyah
A member of poetry royalty.

@kyllorac
so sorry that I almost forgot you but I forgot what I wanted to say.


And now for the first 10 notes that came to my mind, of what happened this year.
1. I'm a mod.
2. Highschool continues to kill me.
3. My other grandfather and two of my great uncles died this year.
4. I'm still depressed btw.
5. I started loyally working on two novels of mine and I even figured out a way to make my original novel work.
6. Thank you to the people who have followed the few chapters of State to State.
@BlueAfrica
@BiscuitsLeGuin especially for listening to the rambling
7. The India and Europe trips set inf the future for 2018 and 2019
8. Rereading all of Harry Potter and laughing at how innocent they were in book 4.
9. Retiring for a few weeks in July to get my crap together. It's kinda together btw.
10. One of my dog's puppies got a new friend after her old dog companion died. His name is Toby. He's a black lab. He's precious.

This is my spot and I swear, I will finish writing it.

Okay so this year has been an interesting one but I've come back stronger after every blow that has been thrown at me. This has been another year in the books and I don't know what next year is going to hold, but hopefully, it's going to be great.

Now, to the people that made my year a bit better:

Storybook Crew [@TheSilverFox, @Elinor, @Omnom, @Rydia, @Lumi, @Sheytato, @saentiel, @soundofmind, @Wolfical, and @BrumalHunter]

You guys are like another family to me and I am very grateful to have each and every one of you in my life. I haven't interacted with some of you but I'm hoping we can change that next year.

@Persistence

Miss ya buddy.

To all that have reviewed my work, thank you for helping me improve my writing. To many more works and reviews!

And YWS. You guys are the most amazing and talented writers I've seen. And I love reading, seeing, and hearing your stories. Don't change.

I hope everyone has a great New Years!

I want to break the record on number of unedited spot claims c:

*claims a spot*
*probably going to forget all about it*
*claims it anyway*

~11 days later~

Hey, look, I remembered! How exciting.

First of all, I have to thank @saentiel, @DarkPandemonium, @Rydia, and @LadyLizz for reviewing so much of the Chosen Grandma story. You guys have given me some great feedback, some of which I know I'll use in my next draft and some of which I'm trying to keep in mind as I continue this one. Thanks also to @Sonder, my favorite sneaky reader, and I suspect @Querencia of being the same.

@marms, @Querencia, @fortis, @jamgalloway, @papillote, and @Ventomology, you guys all wrote stories that I've really enjoyed following! cough cough @fortis when are you going to keep writing yours You've given me a lot to read and review so thanks for helping me break into the top ten

@soundofmind, your artwork is awesome and I hope to commission you again in the future, if you have the time.

@BiscuitsLeGuin and @Mea, I had so much fun running NaNoWriMo events with you and hanging out with you at write-ins. I hope we can find time for more in the future.

@Sheytato and @TheSilverFox, you guys are awesome and one of you is particularly tuberous. Good luck figuring out which one.

@saentiel, this probably sounds lame but you're a joy to have on the site. You're so positive and full of enthusiasm and encouragement, and it always brightens my day to see your posts about how far you've come with revisions or a new novel you've excited about.

Ah yes, time to write my yearbook post(finally)!

2017 has been a year of a lot of firsts for me. It was the year I discovered my interest for writing and join this lovely site! I've written many more poems than I thought I ever would and considered actually writing a novel (working on writing that btw). Honestly, YWS has made my year so much better with all the lovely and friendly people! Even though I only joined in September, I really feel that my writing has improved dramatically. So basically, YWS and all the people on here are awesome!

You guys are amazingly encouraging and supportive. Sure, at first I felt as if the reviews were just mean and picking out every single tiny thing, but now I realize how helpful they are! I am so glad that I found this site; I don't think there is any other site just as welcoming and helpful for writers!

Now to tag people;
@Flumadiddle @WhosabellCanWrite @snowmonkey9 and @KaiRyu for being some lovely friends!

@DemonGoddess thanks for letting me share your souls man!

@saentiel for being a lovely welcoming person! Also, your storybooks are awesome!

@pizzaroll @RavenLord @dragonfphoenix thanks for making me laugh with your memes guys!

@MJTucker thanks for #yourdailyreminder, it has helped me more than you know <3

@neptune we need to talk more about space!! And other stuff too.

There's probably a ton of other people I should mention, but I can't think right now. xD

Hi YWS.
Hello friends.

YES I GOT FIRST PAGE.

Another year. Wow. This one has gone by faster than any of the others. It's been a very good year overall. Though busy and somewhat stressful, I feel I'm more able to balance everything.

My biggest success was, I think, growing as a person, coming to understand myself better and improve my relationships with my family and friends. I've stopped following politics the way I did, which left me with a lot more free time and a lot less anxiety. I completely changed my diet, and because of that lost enough weight that none of my jeans fit me anymore. Most importantly, I feel a lot more emotionally stable than I did last year. I feel like I've answered a lot of questions about myself and the world around me, and I'm ready for the future.

My relationship with my parents has improved a lot, something I'm grateful for every day, and I've gotten closer to my two best irl friends despite them now both being thousands of miles away from me. (@DragonWriter22 and @RippleGylf, <3 to you guys.)

I've changed and improved so much musically! I fell in love with music all over again. I still listen to 90% instrumental music but have branched out into everything from classical to dungeon synth. I'm really happy with my piano progress, and I'm enjoying playing in orchestra even though I don't feel I'm improving on the viola. I also started composing with GarageBand this year! It's such a steep learning curve, but it's so much fun.

I also discovered coding. Wow. That was really only in the last couple of months, but I haven't enjoyed a class like this in years and I'm already making projects on my own time. I'm such a beginner, but I can't wait to see where this takes me. Hopefully to a decent career while I try to get published.

I do have regrets. I haven't talked to so many of you wonderful people in ages, and I want to cling to our friendships, but timezones have always felt like such a barrier. I've definitely been less active on YWS than I wanted to be, and sometimes amid all the craziness I've forgotten to take a step back and remember what matters most on here - the friends I've made in this wonderful community.

I also haven't met as many of my writing goals as I hoped. I finished Mixing Magic Draft 2, which was huge for me, but The Ghost Bus was mostly a train wreck, and although I was hoping to have the first draft of my current sci-fi project done, in reality after NaNo I needed to make serious changes to the plot, and now I'm just hoping to start writing it by the end of this week.

Overall, a crazy year full of discovery and growth. Bring it on, 2018.

Shout-outs:

@Lightsong - we need to talk more, but you're still awesome and amazing and all the good words. You're so supportive and always ready with a kind word and that means a lot to me. Plus your stories are so interesting and I really enjoy them.

@Carlito - <3 It's been such an honor to follow your writing/publishing journey and read all your awesome novels. Without you I probably wouldn't have realized how much I enjoy critiquing. And thank you so much for all the reviews and support and encouragement! I feel like we're completely unlikely writing buddies because both of us mostly writes a genre the other never reads, but somehow it still works and I love it.

@Wolfical - Thank you so much for all the reviews on Mixing Magic! I feel like we don't see too much of each other between timezones and you being mostly in the SBs, but we should chat more.

@BlueAfrica - We're still friends despite having massively different political views and like seriously that makes me so happy because you're awesome in every way. Our NaNo jams were a blast and I can't wait to do more of them next year.

@Love - Timezones and lack of a chatbar have let to us not chatting in ages, and I really miss it. Now that I'm getting into coding, maybe we can be coding buddies or something. Even though I'm such a noob. xD

General shoutout to @rosette, @Snazzy, and other Christians of YWS, especially those over at God Has More Followers and Daily Devotions. You guys have all touched me and brightened my day many times this year by reminding my of God and my Savior.

Thank you, everyone, for a good year. Here's to 2018!

I love New Year's. It's a time to put things from your past year away in a box and remember the lessons, to check up on yourself and your goals and to set new ones. New Year's is probably one of my favorite times of year and it hasn't always been that way. My family has never celebrated New Year's. We never threw parties or attended parties or lit fireworks. My parents would always treat it like any other day of the year. But as I grew older I realized just how much I loved the idea of New Year's. The idea of the year changing, a fresh start, and a new sense of the world. I've created my own tradition of how I celebrate New Year's which is something I can do alone, it's goal setting. I know lots of people don't keep up with their resolutions but I like to think I did this year. So I'm going to take a moment to go over my goals for 2017 and see how I did.

Also sorry in advance if this is depressing this has been so far the worst year of my life. It's been really awful. Like I want to stick my head in a blend just so I can forget this year. I was laughing bitterly when reading my 2017 post because I thought 2016 was bad but booooyyyyy was I naive. This year was *insert swear words I can't use because moderators forbid it*.

My Goals Were To:


Now My Goals for 2018


I thought this year was just a pointless mess until I wrote this. I now realize just how much I learned and how much wiser I have become in 2017. I'm definitely not the wisest, I'm only sixteen, but I've definitely grown up a lot. So here's to a good 2018. Who knows what it's going to be like. I'm not getting my hopes up after this year. Maybe people are right when they say that good things come after bad things, or however that saying goes. Who knows.

Here are my shoutouts:

I believe this is the third time I've written something for the Yearbook. As per the tradition, I'm writing on the final day of the year, so I have the most ability to contemplate the rest of 2017.

...I'm not sure what to say? I certainly haven't been as active as last year. School is finally pinning me down, so my presence on-site has diminished. My omnipresence on the People tab was the first thing to go, and now it's fairly reasonable to assume that quite a few less YWSers know me now than would've had I stayed there. My activity everywhere else has also slowly plummeted. Now I show up less often in SBs (and rarely ever in DTs), post less poetry, and get involved in less site events.

At the same time, it's not like I've stopped writing. On the contrary, really. I participated in NaPo for the first time, completed NaRevMo (50 reviews in 30 days, achieving both team goals) for the second year in a row, and finished NaNo for the...fifth or sixth year? Thanks to LMS, I've started to write for my novel on a weekly basis, and it's swelled to over 100,000 words. I won a state contest in writing (breaking my record of reaching 2nd place the previous year), had some success in poetry and essay contests, and wrote my way to a successful college application. I've got scholarships and a final tedious semester of school to go, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. With enough effort, I think I can get my chemistry degree and afford it. And that's weird to say, because I wasn't even entirely sure what subject I'd follow the previous year.

So yeah, in spite of plenty of depression and anxiety (the usual), the year's been pretty good to me. I've made some lovely friends, wrote a million things, started to learn how to drive (I'm doing well! Not crashing into a tree like last year, haha), and grew up a bit. My writing's the best it's ever been, and I have this site to thank for that. I've still got a long ways to go before I can call myself a good writer, and there is still that fear that college might stamp out my writing spirit in its miasma of work, but I'm making progress. That always feels good.

Time for the tagging, I suppose? As always, I'd like to thank the crew of PMD (@Robusto, @BrumalHunter, @Tortwag, @Ventomology, @Charizard821, @StupidSoup, and @Poopsie) for another exceptional year. I haven't written for the SB in over a year, mind you, but I've grown closer to you all as a whole (especially Hunter, Tort, and Buggie), and I'm happy to have some amazing best friends. You're all talented and competent, whether you know it or not. It's been an honor working with you, having fun conversations, building layers of sarcasm, flipping tables, reading each other's stories (Hunter, read Conics), and plotting. I'm hopeful that we can get PMD started back up again, and I'm looking forward to another fantastic year with you guys.

And, of course, I'd like to thank my Crew (@Rydia, @Lumi, @Elinor, @Omnom, @Steggy, @Sheytato, @saentiel, @soundofmind, and @BrumalHunter, among others) for keeping our SBs going. You've all been too kind and cooperative over the year as we take over the site no matter what obstacles we've come across (which, fortunately, have been few). I'm not a particularly good EIC, but I'm happy to see that you're taking the time to throw in votes, write, give advice, and generally be shoulders to lean on. My goal is to stay as a moderator for at least another year (and hopefully longer, if I can best college), and I know that I would never want to leave this team.

Before I descend into my overwhelming tag storm, I'd especially like to thank one person. He's a stellar poet; brilliant in coming up with ideas; a speedy, high-quality writer; nice on most all occasions; adopts a lot of responsibility and succeeds in it; and has been a soothing voice while I hurtle through my awkward teenager years. I don't know where I'd be without him, but it certainly wouldn't be a better place if he wasn't around to say the right things when I'm beating myself up (which is pretty often). @Lumi, you deserved the promotion to GM so much, and I'm only surprised that you didn't get it sooner. Take care of yourself. <3

So yeah, on to the tag storms! I know waaaaaay too many people over the years to tag all at once; for anyone I missed, know that I think you're all pretty cool, and you've helped make my time on the site wonderful. And so - @Kays (enjoy your retirement! you're awesome!), @Willard (always good to see you, and your poetry is always A+), @LadySpark, @Arcticus, @Audy, @Aley, @passenger (haven't seen you in a while, how've you been?), @Wolfical, @Lefty (how can you manage to write so many long and good posts? I hope your mom gets better!), @Sacredlege, @LadyLizzLovelace (the memes are glorious), @Eternity, @Gringoamericano, @RavenLord, @cleverclogs, @Vasticity, @Prokaryote, @CowLogic, @Snoink, @Kyllorac, @Carlito (so many novels. o-o), @Zolen, @ShakespeareWallah, @Meshugenah, @BlueAfrica (those writing jam sessions in NaNo were great!), @Lael (your RP posts are wonderful!), @FalconerGal9086, @Rosendorn, @Querencia, @dragonfphoenix, @Sachiiko (pssht creepy moon), @Mea, @Persistence, @Sonder (your art is <3), @chibibo, @Dreamy, and many more!

And, of course, I would be remiss not to tag @Nate or @Big Brother. You guys can never have too many compliments, thanks to all the work you've done in creating and maintaining this wonderful site. It's been such a pivotal part of my life for so long now, and I couldn't think of where I'd be without you guys steering the ship. I wouldn't have so much of my experience or the friends that help me become a better-than-average writer and give me the calm environment I need in these trying times. YWS is officially a teenager now, and it's still going strong - well done on that! I hope we can see it become a full-fledged adult soon enough!

In all, have a Happy New Years', everyone! Thanks for making this such a memorable year!

heyo

I came into this year a different person than I am now. That isn't really surprising. My life has always consisted of gradual change, though some has been more beneficial than others. Even just looking back at wall posts from a few months ago reveals a different side of me. I think that's what I want to focus on in the future. Each little baby step leads to a new me, and that's a beautiful thing. I learn from my mistakes and keep going. But, sometimes, it's okay to keep things the same. Some things don't need to be changed because they're currently the best they can be. If there's anything I've learned in the past year, it's those two lessons.

In my yearbook page last year, I included a list of accomplishments or just things that happened to me during 2016. I want to do the same with this year's page. So here's a list of all the little - or large - milestones I've reached.

• I finished the first draft of my novel and started the second. If all goes as planned, I'll have it finished by the end of January. I never thought I would see the day where I was making progress on one of my novels.
• I became a storybook moderator, and it's been one of the best things that's happened to me. I love being able to help out others while supporting one of my favorite sections of the site.
• I made new friends, both online and offline. Friendship has never been an easy thing for me, so this feels especially important.
• I received my fifth gold review star.
• I was in one of the few completed storybooks on this site, run by my awesome brother @Sheytato.
• I've consistently reviewed three novels.
• And I've fallen in love with this site even more than I already had.

Thanks for a wonderful year, YWS. I'm glad that I'm a part of this amazing site, and I can't wait to see what the future holds for all of us.

Once upon a time, before all time, matter, and space existed, a demon goddess was born. She was born with God, Zeus, Odin, every single deity you can name (that came first, at least). Even though she was lower to Satan power-wise, she eventually used the tools at hand to rise up to become heck's greatest ruler and Satan's puppet master, orchestrating every chaotic and terrible event that went on in human (or non-human) history.

However, this goddess was lonely. She had no friends, being a demon goddess. Therefore, she turned to writing. She bought a Mac -- or borrowed it from Virus -- and began to spin a web of a story of love, betrayal, horror, demons, adventure, and everything in between.

Then, in the cold days of March, she browsed the internet and found Young Writer's Society -- a place for people like her, young writers. She created a profile under her human alias name, Kara Stevens, and decided to post her writing there.

Many months later, she has now revealed her true persona as a demon goddess and is stealing souls left and right. She has made many a friend on here and hopes to continue to be a member in the future.

--

I would like to shoutout to many people:

@alliyah and @saentiel for welcoming me onto the site.

@Flumadiddle, @Saruka, @UndertaleGirl0324 for coming onto the site and supporting me

@Flumadiddle again for Grim.

@MissGangamash for producing us with your lovely story.

@Danni88, @KaiRyu, and @saentiel with your continuing support and positivity.

@Ferruccio1234567 for showing me to not be so naïve on the internet.

@Sheytato and @pizzaroll for providing me with ways to laugh

@Nate for providing this wonderful website

@Feltrix and @Rydia. Together we will RULE THE WORLD!

@FalconerGal9086, @RavenLord, @AlexOfLight, etc. for introducing me to the wonderful world of roleplaying

Oh, and @MJTucker for Joallison and Crysalex.

And so much more that I can't name off the top of my head.

--

thank you so much guys for the souls!