Young Writers Society

Hi everyone, I'm Erin. I'm 13 years old and I live in England.

I don't normally write that much, (it's not one of my strong points), but a month or two ago I joined a Young Writers group in my area which has inspired me.

I read a lot more than I write, and I tend to read a lot of trashy chick lit, but recently I've read some books nominated for the Carnegie medal which I wouldn't have thought I'd enjoy but I really did. Hopefully this is the beginning of a new reading era for me.

I'm looking forward to spending far too much time on this site to try and improve my writing.

See you around
Erin

Hiya and welcome!

YWS, it can be said, likes readers as well as writers. We have a 2:1 rule for reviews/posted work. So if you have three stories posted, you should have six reviews. A review is at least three lines long, and usually consists of what you liked or didn't like about the work.

It doesn't seem you'll have a problem with this, but there is a rule of no chat-speak. Stuff like PoV, MC and other term abbreviations are fine, just don't overdo it. ^_^

Please rate your works! Rated works, unless rated R, show up on the front page of YWS. You might get more comments that way. Rated R works contain the f-word and/or graphic scenes. In fact, if something contains the f-word, it must be rated R.

The rest of the rules can be found here.

Always nice to find a group like that, where you get a bunch of ideas for writing. Or inspiration to write more. ^_^ What sort of things did you write there?

I love your username. Very cute and original. Oddly, one of our moderators (dark green names) is named Kitty15. And she is from England also. Hmm

What books were those? If you want, you could talk about them in book reviews. It's a great place to talk about old favourites and pick up new gems!

If you have any questions or want to chat, click the PM me button at the bottom of this post. ^_^

~Rosey

Hi there, Erin! I'm Avery.

How come everyone on here is from England? Kitty, Dudette, Red_roses... I'm jealous.

Anyways, Rosey's already covered the rules, so I guess I'll cover Mentors.

Mentors are the people with the colourful names. Red names are Administrators, and they run the site. Moderators are dark green (like Rosey said), and they help keep Forums under control with their sidekicks, the light green Junior Mods. Purples are Instructors, and they are the ones who love to give reviews and help with writing. And lastly, there are Greeters, like me! We are the turquoise you see lurking around, waiting to greet new members like you.


PM me if you need anything!
- Avery

Just to correct Fragile there, coloured names are the YWS staff. If you want an actual mentor, go here. ^_^

Thanks for the tips. Don't worry about me using chat speak, I'm the sort of person who uses capital letters, apostrophes and the likes while I'm instant messaging.

The writing group is a really great thing to be involved in. Normally we do something different every week so we've done a bit of everything. A couple of times we've also had published authors come in and do presentations about their books and publishers and agents and all that kind of stuff.

I've been browsing the site and it looks like a fun place to be so I shall probably be getting even more behind with my many homework assignments. Oh well.

Thanks again
Erin

Hiya and welcome!! I have to say, I used to live in England, it was very beautiful there. Now I live in America. (Not nearly as pretty. ) It's nice to meet you. I'm Lucy, Luce, and I'll even let you off with Bridge, Briggs, or Bridget.

So, on YWS we have these awesome usergroups. Click on the Groups button and it will bring up this big forum with groups. We have anything from Matt's Happy Place, to the Twilight Disposal Squad. So feel free to pop in there sometime and find some groups to join! They are a great way to earn points.

Also, one more thing. You can start your very own blog if you want to. Just click on the Blogs button, and click your blog. The rest is simple.

So yeah, that's all I'm going to cover. I hope you have a great time on YWS and I hope you make tons of friends. If you have any questions, feel free to PM me. I'd love to help.

Lucy

Hey Erin, this is Vivi here. My experience was pretty similar to yours, reading trashy chick lit, then REAL books, then writer. But I've loved to write since pre-k years, I just didn't do much to improve it, until I came to this site. My writing has improved a lot, my writing from when I came here at first is, well, sucky, and now it's not as bad. That's a nice thought!

Hey! What are those books nominated for the Carnegie (is that right?) award that you like? Maybe I can add them to my extremely long list of books I'd like to read.

Here's something to add to the list of things you know about this awesome place called Young Writers Society.

At YWS we have something called the star system. It keeps track of all the reviews you've done here. You can see them right under your avatar << Here's the system:
5 Reviews = 1 Star

25 Reviews = 2 Stars

75 Reviews = 3 Stars

150 Reviews = 4 Stars

250 Reviews = 5 Stars

For Blue Stars:

350 Reviews = 1 Blue Star, 4 Yellow Stars

450 Reviews = 2 Blue Stars, 3 Yellow Stars

550 Reviews = 3 Blue Stars, 2 Yellow Stars

650 Reviews = 4 Blue Stars, 1 Yellow Star

750 Reviews = 5 Blue Stars

For Red Stars:

850 Reviews = 1 Red Star, 4 Blue Stars

950 Reviews = 2 Red Stars, 3 Blue Stars

1050 Reviews = 3 Red Stars, 2 Blue Stars

1150 Reviews = 4 Red Stars, 1 Blue Star

1250 Reviews = 5 Red Stars

That seems like a lot of reviews, huh? Don't worry, we're all a long way from 1250...

Feel free to PM me if there's any piece you'd like me to review, or anything else you need help with!

That seems like a lot of reviews, huh? Don't worry, we're all a long way from 1250...

Some of us, anyway. Others of us are just obsessed. XD

Anyway! It's really exciting having such a new person to the reading/writing world here, which is awesome. No offense, but there are a lot of people here that always loved reading, so to get someone who just recently discovered the joys of reading... that's pretty awesome.

Don't worry about reading trashy lit or whatever. XD That's perfectly fine! I remember talking to one of the members here (her name is Caligula's Launderette) and she was telling me how her college English class was totally slamming Twilight for various reasons. And then, after all that insulting of Twilight, each one of them admitted to reading the stories because they loved the adventures.

In fact! You may be interested in Kurt Vonnegut. He tends to have in his stories this guy named Kilgore Trout who is the trashiest stories ever (they're so bad that even the local adult shop is ashamed to having his offbeat sci fi novels) but they're brilliant and invariably the main character discovers Trout's stories, loves them, and tracks Trout down and makes him talk to all these professional writers about how to "really" write.

And of course I'm not a complete Vonnegut fan, lol.

Anyway, glad to see you around! If you need any help, feel free to bug me.

I'm feeling all happy and loved and welcomed.

The books I read were...
Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray
Black Rabbit Summer by Kevin Brooks
The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

I recently went down to London to see family, and I had taken Black Rabbit Summer with me. We did a lot of travelling on the tube, and I was reading it to pass the time. When we got off I didn't want to put it down so I was walking down busy London streets with this book in my face, bumping into everyone that came towards me.

...never heard of those books, but I'm an engineering student and apparently we don't read, lol. I'll take a look at them. If those books were so good that you almost got ran over by bus, it's probably really really good!