I'm writing this post now almost 10 years on the dot from the hour I created YWS way back on November 14, 2004 at 7:27 pm (New York time). I remember it being a Sunday, and I also remember that I should have been studying for a test the next day in my Diffy Q's (Differential Equations) class. I was a senior at Saint Mary's College of Maryland majoring in Economics with a minor in Math.
I'm not entirely sure what drove me that day to create YWS, but it was something I had been wanting to do for some time. Back in high-school, I did a lot of (mostly horrid) creative writing, but I had no one to share it with. I didn't trust my parents to give me constructive feedback, and I was far too reserved to share it with any of my friends except for the odd story or two.
This was also back in the late '90s when the web was still a relatively new thing. So there was nothing yet like Tumblr, Wattpad, or even LiveJournal where I could post my stories online to get feedback. But by chance or accident, I did finally stumble onto one site where I could share what I wrote with others who were about the same age as me: The Young Writers Club. It had the unusual domain name of (which I still remember to this day): http://cs.bilkent.edu.tr/david/~derya/ywc.html
For its time, TYWC was revolutionary. Created by an English professor who taught at Bilkent University in Turkey for his daughter, you could submit your stories and poems for feedback. You could also earn "megabytes" for every comment you left, participate in storybooks, chat on the chatwall, or converse in the chatroom.
I also started helping out in whichever way I could, first by creating TYWC Tips (link), and then by helping to post new works (every new work had to be manually added to TYWC, unlike YWS and almost all sites today where new works are automatically added).
But, I went on to college in 2001 and pretty much left the site after that. I also mostly stopped doing creative writing around the same time as well. Still, I checked in on the site every now and then as one checks in on their former interests. It was like returning to your old high-school in a way; it's interesting to see how things continue with you gone, and you being to feel increasingly disconnected from it.
Not all was well with TYWC though. Though revolutionary for the '90s, it was increasingly outdated for the '00s. It relied too much on the intervention of the person who created it, and as he naturally drifted away from it (his daughter -- the person he had created the site for -- had not been an active member since 1997), the site began to decay. It took several months for new stories and poems to be posted, although storybooks continued to do well (just ask Rydia and Snoink, who were also both members of TYWC).
To me, this was a sad state of affairs. I didn't do any creative writing anymore, but TYWC had helped me to become a better writer. It was also one of a kind back then -- there was simply no other site dedicated to young writers save for a few message boards started by other young writers (these tended to be fairly bad).
By October 2004, I had resolved to do something about it. I logged back into the administrative backend of TYWC for the first time in years to begin posting all the submitted works, but I couldn't do anything until the site's creator had filed the submitted works into the proper folder (it was a complicated system). So I sent him an email. And then another. And then another.
I never heard back from him, which is sad in a way but also completely understandable. He ran TYWC virtually by himself for years, and the architecture of the site was such that he had to do pretty much everything from approving new users to cleaning up the chatwall. And as I alluded to above, his daughter had only been a member of the site for one year. It's remarkable he kept the site going for as long as he did -- often without thanks. As his involvment wound down, many had blamed him (selfishly in my view) for not keeping the site going. Some got angry.
So after I had not heard back, I decided to start my own site for young writers, though I had no idea what I was doing. I had started a few clubs before in my life (both online and offline), but this was a different beast altogether. My extent of web knowledge at the time was limited to some HTML, which was enough fortunately.
After researching it some, I had decided that the best platform would be a forum using phpBB. I uploaded it to my website at http://yws.nathancaldwell.com (it was actually .net back then) and named it The Young Writers Society (as a homage to TYWC).
After creating the forum, I next started advertising it on other boards. Very little of this advertising amounted to much (mostly because the posts were usually swiftly deleted), except for one post I made on a forum called the Young Fantasy Writers. Many of YWS' first members came from there, including KayJuran (the first non-me person to join), Meshugenah, Crysi, ZZAP, and ElectricBlueMonkey).
The rest, as they say, is history. YWS grew very quickly in the beginning, which allowed the site to obtain a strong base. After just six weeks, we were already signing up several new members a day, and had over a 100 new posts a day.
Now, back then, YWS was just a simple phpBB forum. I had installed some very simple plugins like birthdays, age, and gender, but aside from that, there really wasn't much else. What really made the site prosper was not any fancy feature or compelling product, but rather the membership.
I think it's somewhat telling that many of YWS' earliest members are actually still around. Crysi, Meshugenah, and niteowl are names you almost certainly you will recognize and were among the first 100 members to join. Also among the first members were Ego, Firestarter, ElectricBlueMonkey, ZZAP, Incandescence, Zion, Matt Bellamy, bubblewrapped, and Sam. This was a remarkable group of people who held a genuine desire to promote creative writing as a favorite pastime. It's through them that YWS became the site you see today.
Of course, there have been bumps along the way. The worst of these was in summer 2006 where YWS went completely offline for two months as I simply could not afford the hosting costs at the time (just out of college, first apartment, and the beginning of the repayment of my student loans -- I couldn't even afford lunch back then!). But the site came bouncing back, which is actually kind of astonishing. When a website goes offline and then tries to come back, it usually doesn't do well. But YWS' membership was passionate, and one YWSer (Duskglimmer) had set up a refugee site called The Society Revisited (link) during the downtime. That kept the community alive even as the site died, so when the site returned, the community was still there.
Since then, there have been other bumps as well, but the community has always found ways to prosper. Over the years, a staff has also been developed to help keep things running smoothly, and this staff has really come into its own over the past few years. And again, this is a truly remarkable thing. What other website of YWS' size can claim to be 100% community driven?
Over the years, the faces of the active membership have changed a lot. Firestarter (one of YWS' first junior admins) and Bobo (the creator of the logo) have come and gone. So too have Ego, Incan, Zion, Elelel, iced.cappucino, norris redford, marching_gurl, and a thousand others.
So too has the face of the site. YWS has gone through a lot of redesigns over the years and dithered in plenty of failed experiments as well. Who here remembers that points were originally meant for dynamic avatars that you could buy clothing items for? Or that YWS had an arcade room were points could be used to play flash games?
How about Sanctum, the text based rpg? Or the Kingdom of Evandor, one of the first user groups that was devoted to roleplaying? How about the Thousand Monkeys Project were we tried to write a collective novel, or the YWS Literary Journal (made it through three editions!)?
Even today, this spirit of throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks (a method I'm a big fan of for a number of reasons -- mostly because you can spend years arguing about what will work and won't work unless you actually just go and do it) remains. Every month, YWS runs events and activities. Some of these do well. Some don't. Some do well for a little while but then begin to falter (and vice versa).
That's something I love about YWS and the community here. Everyone is always up for trying something new, and if it doesn't work, then we'll just try something else.
YWS persists today because the community is persistedly upbeat, which is an increasingly rare characteristic these days. On some sites, the community has become downright toxic. Others seem intent on making you feel as bad about yourself as possible. There are many people out there these days who insist on dwelling upon the negatives, who view the future with cynicism (often mistaken for wisdom).
YWS' community is friendly, helpful, and loyal to one another. We are not here to drag each other down, but rather to pull each other up. Even the worst poem has potential within it.
When you get a chance, thank the staff for that. Thank each other for that. Thank the people who have come before you for starting it, and those who will come after you for continuing it. Kindness and charity to all are rare traits that we are blessed to find in such great abundance on YWS.
So as I begin to wrap up, you may be wondering the same as me: will YWS continue on for another 10 years? And if so, what will the site be like come November 14, 2024?
Predicting the future is almost always a fool's errand. Even the near future of just a decade from now contains far too many uncertainties. Back in 2004, I could not have begun to dream that YWS would turn into the site it is today.
Yet, I am certain that the site will continue on for at least another 10 years, barring some unforeseen technology that makes the web irrelevant (YWS on Oculus Rift perhaps?). And though I do not know what YWS will look like in 2024, I do know that it will still be fundamentally the same site: dedicated to promoting creative writing as a pastime and driven by a community that is friendly, helpful, optimistic, and loyal to one another.
Gender:
Points: 11417
Reviews: 425