Young Writers Society

You can call me Maneda
I'm 22, female, and seeking inspiration. Just spent four years in college for a degree in graphic design of all things, and while I don't regret it, it did help me realize that writing is certainly my most... natural talent. Art and design are awesome but they really don't come as naturally to me. So I figure I'll try to hold down a breadwinning job with my booklearned design skills and in the meantime just write for pleasure and with the hope that someday it'll get me somewhere.

My writing has been profitable to me once, and only once-- that was a short fiction contest that I won a few months ago. Other than that I just write random, sometimes rather confusing things for the purpose of my own expression. Mostly short fiction, though I do have this huge fantasy world I've been building in my head for years that I would like to eventually write a novel (or eight) about. I also find a strange joy in writing tutorials for any number of things. Once in a while I'll spit a poem out of nowhere. I read a lot of fantasy so as a result most of my fiction writing has some otherworldly twist to it. I do enjoy critiquing quite a bit too-- though I'll admit I occasionally get carried away.

I'm actually really in a writing slump lately; personal circumstances have really left me depressed with no inspiration, so when I came across this site via stumbleupon I thought, "hey, maybe I can find some support here." So, here I am.

Hopefully I'll actually stick with it and not forget about this forum in two days. Ideally, I would like my writing to get me somewhere within the next three years, before I get "too old" for this community. That's a reasonable goal, I think?

(What does happen if you go over age 25? Surely you aren't just booted out?)

Anyway, looking forward to meeting you all and reading awesome stuff

Hai there

I'm Kamas and here to greet you to this marvelous site of YWS

I'll cover the basic rules for you let the others get into detail

1. 2:1 ratio, 2 reviews for 1 post
2. No chatspeak or CAPS (like that)
3. No swearing. If you do use it keep in the literature and nnowhere else

Otherwise Its a pretty easy going site.
I hope to see you around

PM with any questions or if you just wanna talk.

Kamas~~

Hey Maneda, welcome to YWS!

Haha...I found this site on stumbleupon too! Yey stumbleupon!

Since Kamas already covered the main rules, (I'd read the full ones if you haven't already), I'm just going to give you some advice. It's pretty simple, just explore. There is a lot here so just look around and try to discover all of the deep, dark secrets of YWS. (I don't really think there are very many but whatever ). If you haven't already, I would check out the Groups. There are about a million so there are bound to be some that you like and want to join, which you can do no problem.

I think Big Brother, or maybe Firestarter or Mesh, I forget who, is like 28. It doesn't really matter that much. You're not going to get a PM or something saying 'I'm sorry you are 26. Leave. . Just as long as your not like a 40 year old creeper or something

So...Now for some really hard questions. Are you ready?
Who's your favorite author? What kind of music do you listen to? What's your favorite kind of cookie? What's your snack food of choice. If you were a shoe, what kind of shoe would you be and why? If you were a marine biologist, what animal would you study and why?

I hope you have a great time here and if you have any questions or need anything, feel free to PM me!

-Carly

Hi Maneda! I'm Chloe, but you can call me Chlo, Clo, Clomoe, Closter, Vivacious, Vivi, Viv, Viva, Vivz, or any other nickname you can think of

I doubt you get booted out at age 26 As Carly said, one of our admins is 28. I think there's something called The Writers Society, for the older members here, made by one of the mods or admins here. I don't know much about it, though. 'Cause I'm one of the youngest members here

So, you might have seen some people with colored user-names...
The Blue Greeters: We hang out around here, introducing ourselves to new members and helping them through the wonderful first couple of days in YWS. We love to help, so if you need any help, ask us!

The Purple Instructors: These people are the big reviewing people. They spend a lot of time reviewing and their reviews are long and very helpful. They are very nice, so if you need a question, ask them.

The Light Green and Green Mods: They watch over the forums and make sure that all is well. The junior mods look over only a couple of forums, and the Mods look over a bunch.

The Red Admins: These people are insane. They are the heads of YWS, we wouldn’t be the same great website without them. Yay Admins!

Orange: The distinguished or retired mods. They are pretty active and love to help.

So, feel free to PM me if you need any help, or would like me to critique something you've written!

Hey!!! Welcome to YWS!!!!

Everyone's really nice here, and will be happy to review your work! I used to have the same problem with inspiration, but if you try to write a bit each day, it will become easier for you to just.... well, write!

Um, so, I don't think you get kicked out at age 26, but I just joined a week ago, so I'm probably not the best person to ask.

The final rule is to rate your work (ex: R is for pieces that have swearing, etc.) Oh, and be sure to follow the rules or the mods will eat you! Just kidding. Most of the mods are really nice.

Um, I guess I'll mention rankings.

Ranks depend on how many posts you make:
New Member: 0-4 posts
Novice: 5-14 posts
Junior Writer: 15 - 49 posts
Writer: 50 - 99 posts
Senior Writer: 100 - 249 posts
Novelist: 250 - 499 posts
Speaker of the Forum: 500+ posts

I think Master of the Forum is 1000+ posts, but I'm not sure.

So, tell us about yourself. Favorite authors? Favorite ice cream flavor? Hobbies besides writing?

Feel free to PM me if you need anything or need a critique on something! (or if you get lost. It's easy enough!)

See you around!

zOe

Aww the welcoming team here is quite effective at making one feel good Thanks guys.

Nice to know I'm in no danger of being booted quickly. I know I've still got a few years but those just seem to fly so fast these days, heh.

It's really hard for me to define my favorite author, though I have a lot of favorite books (I'm the same way about music really-- I have a lot of favorite songs but not favorite bands/singers). It's just very rare that I really enjoy everything a particular person writes.

I actually need to go back and reread a lot of books that I loved in high school to see how my tastes have changed, because when I went to college I nearly completely fell out of the loop as far as reading goes in favor of focusing on my studies, and now that I'm coming back I've myself a bit pickier about how a book is actually written, as opposed to when I was younger and adored any book that featured a dragon, whether or not the story had a halfway decent plot.

(Wow, I need to work on this habit of writing really, really long sentences.)

Anyway I suppose I'm rambling now. Point is I can't define a favorite author, but I can list some favorite books.
My all-time favorite book (or at least the one I go back and re-read the most often) is Sparrow's Flight by Richard Posner. It's just special to me, and I seem to get more out of it each time I reread it. Oddly, it's actually not in the fantasy genre like most other books I adore-- rather, it's about a bunch of characters that love fantasy books.

I have quite a few "obligatory" fantasy series I enjoy like The Lord of the Rings books, the Harry Potter series, His Dark Materials (Golden Compass etc.). I also really loved the Pit Dragon series by Jane Yolen and I have a special attachment to "children's" fantasies that feature animls, like Guardians of Ga'Hoole (Kathryn Lasky) and Warriors (Erin Hunter). And perhaps I lied about having not having a favorite author-- I don't think I've read anything by Tamora Pierce that I haven't loved, but then I haven't read many of those books since I was quite young.

I do like a lot of non-fantasy literature too... just none of it comes to mind at the moment.

Now for the other questions that don't involve an entire essay to answer:

Favorite music? Pretty much anything besides rap or country, but it's really broad and random otherwise. I actually think my love for a certain song is directly related to how much it inspires me to write something, so it depends more on the lyrics and the emotions the music invokes rather than any particular genre.

Favorite cookie? Mmm... either oatmeal or chocolate-peanut butter, depending on what I'm in the mood for. Both are fabulous.

My favorite snack food.. ooh.. probably honey mustard pringles.

If I was a shoe, I would not exist. I actually don't like shoes-- I would rather run barefoot and wiggle my toes. But if I HAD to be a shoe I would probably be some sort of sandal,

I actually considered going into marine biology at some point in my life (granted, I considered going into pretty much everything at some point in my life). I would probably want to study dolphins, just because they're so intelligent, and I may learn something practical about human nature from them

My favorite icecream flavor is most certainly Moose Tracks. Chocolate moose tracks is even better.

I have so many hobbies besides writing... art and graphic design, obviously... I also really like organizing/managing communities and community events, though it's been a long time since I've had a chance to do anything of that sort. I play a lot of online games of the MMO sort (usually places for me to organize people/events, haah), and I take an interest in artificial life/intelligence. I also adore cooking... sometimes by a recipe, sometimes by throwing a bunch of stuff in a bowl/pan and see what comes of it.

I think that covers everything I was asked? You guys are awesome; I'll be sure to return with any questions I need to get around to some reading and reviewing when these storms let up and my power stops threatening to go out.

I love the Harry Potter series, and am currently reading Lord of The Rings, The Hobbit, and The Golden Compass for the first time. So far they're pretty good *winks* And, I also am listening to an audio tape of the first 'Percy Jackson and The Olympians' book.

I have around a hundred and thirty books on my reading list(made by me.)

I once considered becoming a marine biologist. I wanted to study either manatees or dolphins, they each were my favorite animal at one point in life.