Hard to believe the Young Writers Society has been around for 14 years. I created it in November 2004 as a spiritual successor to The Young Writers Club, which was a similar website started in 1996. It was managed by David Davenport, a British Computer Science Professor at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, and he started it for his daughter, Derya. The month before, in October 2004, I had tried contacting David after a long absence from the site to see if there was anything I could help with. At that time, the site had entered a long slumber, and while portions of it were still somewhat active, it was definitely dying out.
Understandably, I didn't receive a response. David's daughter was only active on the site for a couple years, and I think it's amazing that he kept it running long past then. Especially considering the amount of work it took to run that site.
In its heyday, TYWC was a revolutionary site. Most people in the late 1990s were just beginning to get online, and most websites were passive experiences. You visited a site, read what someone had to say, and then moved on. TYWC, though, was different. You could create an account, post your work, review someone else's work, collaborate on storybooks, talk in a chat room, etc. Clever members even figured out ways to customize your profiles. Today, this is all probably the bare minimum for running a writing website. In 1996-2001, it was revolutionary.
However, as it was based on 1996 tech, a lot of stuff that is now handled automatically had to be done manually. Stories and poems went through a complicated submission process that delayed their posting by weeks (years by the end), and there was no pagination of comment threads. This meant that the chat wall, which was one giant discussion thread, could grow monstrously long before David had a chance to archive it and start a new one.
So, suffice to say that it took a lot of work to run the site. Nonetheless, in October 2004, I wanted to get it running again. TYWC had kindled a love of creative writing in me, and while that is not a hobby I pursued for more than a few years, it helped me tremendously with writing overall. There is a huge difference in the quality of my essays from my junior year of high-school to my senior year. I attribute that mostly to TYWC, and it saddened me that by 2004, there were no similar sites. The sites that did exist mostly catered to older writers, or were ephemeral entities that rose and vanished in months.
Thus by mid-November, I decided to try my hand at starting a new site for young writers. I did not know much about web development, but I did know some HTML, and I knew how to do things like buy a domain name and use FTP. I also knew phpBB was a popular forum program because it was used by my college.
I downloaded phpBB, and installed it on http://yws.nathancaldwell.net. The name, Young Writers Society, was a deliberate copy of The Young Writers Club, although I originally meant for it to be temporary. When setting up the forum, I had to choose a forum description. For this, I copied TYWC's slogan: "Promoting Creative Writing as a Favorite Pastime."
After setting up the site, I left some posts about it on various writing forums that I found. This is how @Meshugenah and @Crysi found the site, and I think maybe @niteowl as well. On writing.com, I left notes about YWS at the end of my reviews, which is how @Firestarter found the site. Surprisingly enough, it took a while for TYWCers to make their way here, but eventually members like @Snoink, @Griffinkeeper, and @Rydia did (emphasis on eventually in Rydia's case!).
Fortunately, the site grew very rapidly. By the end of 2004, YWS already had over 100 members and hundreds of reviews. Though there have been bumps along the way, the site has continued to prosper since then thanks to the countless contributions by thousands and thousands of individuals. Because of them, I have no doubt YWS will continue to be here as long as the world wide web remains a viable medium.
For me personally, I have many fond memories of the community, such as meeting Meshugenah, Firestarter, @Jiggity, @smaur, @Caligula's%20Launderette, and @Areida in New York City; meeting @Lava in Baltimore; hosting the radio shows; producing the literary journals; dealing with complaints about the weird guy, F.R.E.D. (a chat bot); and so much more. I also have many fond memories of times we've come together to deal with problems such as trolling from other sites or dealing with difficult issues as they illustrate the community spirit of the site.
Thank you all for making the Young Writers Society a true society of young writers. It might have been chosen as a temporary name, but I'm glad it become the permanent name. Happy Birthday YWS!
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