Young Writers Society

Welcome to Squills, the official news bulletin of the Young Writers Society!

What will you find here? Tons of interesting news about YWS, including but not limited to: articles about writing, art, and the world of humanities; interviews with YWS members; shameless plugs; link round-ups; and opinionated columns.

And where will all of this come from? Take a look at our fantastic creative staff!





Of course, our content can’t come only from our staff. We also depend on you to help keep Squills successful. You’re all a part of a writing community, after all. If you’re interested in submitting to Squills, pop on over to the Reader’s Corner to find out how you can get involved by contributing an article or participating in other Squills activities.

Well, that’s all I have for now. So, what are you waiting for? Enjoy!

1. Featured Member: R4P17
2. Haunted House Short Story Contest
3. How To Win NaNoWriMo
4. SQUID INVASION!
5. Linguistic or Lazy?
6. Books for Bairns
7. New Arrivals
8. This Week's Roundup- 10/26
9. Subscribers

FEATURED MEMBER: R4P17written by BlueAfrica < PM: >

This week’s Featured Member is @r4p17, who has received this honor after a mere four months of membership. Wow! r4 was kind enough to talk to me this week and let me know what kind of crazy YWS activity he’s been up to that bestowed upon him the title of Featured Member.



r4p17: The first thing I felt was shock! I remember feeling really warm and overwhelmed with excitement. It was as if I could tell that I was really contributing something to YWS, which made me happy! But I think that shock was the number one emotion that I felt. You never really expect anything like that to come on you!



r4: I am not quite sure if there was one specific activity that got me featured so much as contributing in multiple ways. However, I can think of a few areas that were key: One, I review. While I don't do so quite as often as I would like, I still try to do about ten or fifteen reviews a month. I also try to make a point to get the maximum number of points on each review. Two, I like to welcome new members. This is more of a fun thing I like doing, and it kind of stemmed out of seeing ThereseCricket welcoming a lot of people to the site! She and I are always trying to compete with each other. Three, [Storybooks]. I do post pretty regularly there, though I am not sure if that is what got me featured. Regardless, it is still a fun thing to do!



r4: I think I was active pretty consistently. However, the nature of my activity changed somewhere in early September. I think before then I was consumed with reviewing. While that is a good thing in its own way, I wasn't really active in the forums or anything like that. I was in a couple SB's, but I am not sure if anybody really knew me all that well. After that I became a little more active.



r4: When it comes to literary works I tend to review novels. So if that is your kind of thing, I would have to say Across Worlds by @Noelle is the best book I have come across so far! As for the forums, @Aley's Journal Making Challenge is really cool. You should definitely check it out! Finally, SB's... I think the best one I have been in so far is High Fantasy by @TakeThatYouFiend. The only problem is that we are already on the fifth page! I can't think of any others off the top of my head.



r4: If you want to become a Featured Member, myy advice is to choose a few areas where you think you might be good on YWS and stick to them! If you try to do too much like I sometimes tend to, you won't be as successful. On the other hand if you just do one thing like welcoming new members, SBing, or reviewing, people won't really benefit very much from your activity.



Be sure to head over to r4p17’s wall and congratulate him
Read Across Worlds by Noelle
Try out Aley’s Journal Making Challenge
Join TakeThatYouFiend’s High Fantasy Storybook

HAUNTED HOUSE SHORT STORY CONTEST

written by JamesHunt < PM: >

The thirty-first of October is quickly approaching, and with it, Halloween. While many are preparing their scary costumes and updating their profiles, you may want to do something more (or you simply aren't the type who likes dressing up). What can you do?

Well, since you are on a website for young writers, why not try your hand at writing a horror? I have decided to host the "Haunted House Short Story Competition" in order to spread the holiday terror. Whether you are a newcomer to this most frightening of genres or an experienced harbinger of dread, you can participate and show the world exactly how chilling your writing can be.

What are the prerequisites, you ask? Obviously, your work must contain elements of horror, and it must be a short story. I am not particularly fond of word limits, so I shall give you free reign concerning that - mostly. It cannot be too short, so the minimum number of words is 1000, but it cannot be neverending either, so I shall draw the line at 5000 words.




Submit your short stories to me via PM, with the subject "Haunted House Short Story Competition", and remember to include your short story's name. You have until the end of October, EST, to submit your short stories - any PMs received after that time will be disregarded, no exceptions, so be sure to send them to me in time. (You may only submit one short story.) The winners will be announced in the first week of November.

I look forward to reading your short stories, and may you have a horrifying Halloween!

HOW TO WIN NANOWRIMOwritten by BlueAfrica < PM: >

Well, folks, this is our last October issue of Squills. In little less than a week, I, like so many other writers around the globe, will dive into a novel, not to resurface for thirty days.

However, I have a secret, which is: I have done this before and won. Admittedly, this year I have a lot more going on than I ever have during NaNoWriMo before—but I can win, and so can you. How? By following these three simple rules.

Find support. Do you know why so many people who normally have trouble putting a pen to paper are able to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November? Because they know that thousands of other writers are doing the same. Not only that, but they actually have the opportunity to interact with these writers and urge each other toward the finish line.

We think of writing as a lonely activity, and, in some ways, it is. But it doesn’t have to be. End October by announcing your intentions on Facebook and YWS. That way, all your friends and relatives can hold you accountable, which is a huge step toward achieving your goal. If no one else knows about it, it’s easier to quit because you won’t feel silly if you do.

After announcing your intentions, go to the official NaNoWriMo website. Find writing buddies to encourage you and hold you further accountable, and then set your home region, say hi on your region’s forums, and find write-ins to attend.



Depending on where they’re held and who’s running them, write-ins can be a great place to pound out the word count. The Toledo area write-ins, held at a local Barnes & Noble, tend to be a social hour, a time for Toledo Wrimos to come together and chat about their progress or bemoan their struggles. The write-ins at my university a few streets away, while less populous are more productive, silent except for the clatter of fingers on keyboards. In a good hour, if I don’t stop to think of the perfect word or image, I can get 2000 words done. Surrounded by other writers, all deep in the midst of writing, you up your word count just by not wanting to be the only one not writing.

Plus, there’s usually free food.

If there are no write-ins in your area—or no NaNo group close enough for you to join one—try to start one up! Go to the “My Region” tab on your dashboard and choose “Come Write In” for information on how to host an official write-in. Otherwise, write-ins can be more informal—you and a group of your friends writing together in a nearby Starbucks as you drink bad coffee.

Write badly. This may be the most important piece of advice I have for you, because it’s what NaNoWriMo is all about.

What? you ask. Why, why would I want to do something that emphasizes bad writing?



You write all the time, but you never get anything done. Not because you don’t have ideas or follow-through, but because it’s important that your writing be good. To that end, you spend a lot of time staring at the blank page, not stuck on where to take your story next, but figuring out exactly what word would fit perfectly in the middle of this sentence. If you get past that only to get stuck on a plot point instead, you go back and revise what you’ve already written or jump to a different project. You’re still writing—constantly writing, in fact—but you have yet to finish a story, and readers on YWS keep bugging you for the next chapter of that novel you started posting months ago—a novel you can’t post more of yet, because the next chapter isn’t perfect, and you don’t want anyone to read it until it is.

Sound familiar? If so, it’s time to shut your Inner Editor in a closet with duct tape over his mouth.

I won’t lie. It’s difficult to resist editing if you’re used to doing it constantly. But don’t despair! I used to be exactly the same way, and now, thanks to that first NaNoWriMo, I have a complete draft of a novel posted to the website, a far cry from the two or three chapters I used to post before moving on to something else.

Remind your Inner Editor that you can’t effectively edit until you have something down on paper. Save editing for December, after drafting, rather than doing it as you go. That’s why the writing process is called just that, a process; it’s not called “the writing we’re doing all at once.” If you can’t find that perfect word, don’t worry; use the first word that comes to mind and highlight it in red so you remember that you want to change it later—or leave it alone and see if you like it more come December. If you can’t think of a good character name for a character, substitute “MC,” “Uncle X,” “Love Interest,” or something similar until your mind suggests a real name. Of course, you can scroll through baby names sites or the Adoption Society, but you might waste hours of valuable writing time when a substitution works just as well for the time being.

Similarly, if a bigger issue trips you up—a plot point or line of dialogue—write something silly as a placeholder until your moment of epiphany. Example from my second NaNoWriMo: two young characters moved to Africa after their parents died, and it was only as another character asked why they were going that I realized I didn’t know. Why were they moving to Africa?

Rather than staring at my computer screen, hoping the answer would jump out and grab me, I had the older character shake his fist at the sky and say, “Because this stupid writer says so, that’s why,” and moved on with the story. Alternate ideas for combatting mid-month writers block include cutting off a too-long conversation with “everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked” and going from there, adding a unlikable character to the scene for added conflict, or stranding your MC on a desert island with only a pineapple and a length of yarn to see how he escapes. Admittedly, the draft you have at the end of November will be a mess of crazy plot twists and nonsensical dialogue, but the important thing is that it will be down on the page, waiting for your Inner Editor to escape his closet and fix it.

Make time. I know I said that last point was the most important advice I had for you, but I lied. This is the most important advice I have, the reason being that I’ve had many friends make only a feeble attempt at NaNoWriMo. They write two or three hundred words, decide they don’t have time for writing, and quit by the end of Week 1.

I get that. I do. People are busy. School has to come first, of course, as does any job, internship, or chore.

(Unless, of course, you’re a twenty-something who can decide you don’t care if your apartment is an utter mess for thirty days.)

But! A point of note. I have a full college schedule, each class with weekly homework and larger projects piled on top of it. I have to get 120 hours in an elementary school classroom by the end of the semester—pile on more projects relating to that, thank you very much—I work thirty hours a week (after quitting my second job), and I have a husband and two cats who might like a moment of attention this November. I have friends with spouses and multiple children and full-time jobs who have not only won NaNoWriMo but routinely double their word count goals.

(Can you imagine caring for three kids, cooking dinner, cleaning, working, and writing a 100k novel all in thirty days? Bow down and worship, friends.)

My point is not “look how amazing my friends and I are,” but rather “we can do it, and so can you.” Do you think we have blocks of time set aside for writing? Of course not! The secret is that we write in every spare moment. Fifteen minute break at work? Write. Five minutes between classes? Write. Write during breakfast and lunch, write in the car or bus or subway on the way to school (provided you’re not the one driving), write when you finish a test early and the moment you get your homework done for the day. And for heaven’s sakes, if you do find yourself with several hours of free time, don’t turn on the TV and then turn around and say you don’t have time for NaNoWriMo—write!

The real secret to winning NaNoWriMo is that you have to really want to win, so badly that you’re willing to temporarily abandon all the other activities you enjoy. Do you know what I do in December? Shut off my computer and read book after book after book as if I was in the desert and my bookcase the only oasis.

So that’s it, kids. That’s all it takes to win. Find people to egg you on and hold you accountable, refuse to edit no matter how desperately your Inner Editor pleads with you, and write in every spare moment you find. Push on no matter how bad the writing is or how much you feel like you suck. Want it more than you want an Xbox One for Christmas. Want it, push yourself, and win.

It might seem daunting, but you can do this. And when you do, you will feel amazing in ways you never have before. Who’s with me?

Get things started at the official NaNoWriMo website.

Come back in December for an after-NaNo article. See you then!

SQUID INVASION!

written by JamesHunt < PM: >

If you have been active on YWS for the past month or so, you will have noticed that a certain green squid has captured the hearts (and by the looks of it, brains, as well) of many users, regardless of their gender, occupation, or rank. Many now sport a squid on the heads of their avatars, and even if their avatar does not contain a head, the squid features anyway.

What does this mysterious cephalopod represent? Is it just a friendly marine creature which has risen from the depths of the ocean to come live amongst we landlubbers, or does it herald the dawn of a new age - an age where humans are the slaves of the menacing green squid and doomed to a tormented existence! I decided to interview @fortis in order to learn whether this omnipresent sucker is friend, or foe.



fortis: Sure.



f: Well, as you may know, I change my avatar pretty frequently, while still using the same base image. This time I decided to photoshop something that exists in real life onto the phage, unlike the other times I've done this, where I've drawn on the changes.



f: The squid is actually a hat that I own. I got it from six flags. I thought it would look funny on my phage So no special meaning.



f: My aim wasn't to start a trend, it was just for kicks and giggles. I was sitting in chat and I was feeling bored. In comes @Lava who's avvie I had just been admiring, so I decide to play around with it. Thus, I stuck a squid hat onto her avvie. Then I did that to everyone else in chat because it was fun, and everyone who came into chat.

It's a little surreal, seeing my hat everywhere on YWS. A little creepy too.



f: Nah. So long as I have my photoshop file all loaded up, I can modify it in about a minute, depending on the complexity of the avvie. Gifs, obviously, are much, much, longer to make.



f: I dunno. It looks so innocent all on its own, but when it's eating the heads of avvies... well there's something vaguely threatening about it that strikes me personally as hilarious. I don't know about other people though.



f: Until people get sick of it? I don't know. XD



f: Yeah, I like to change my avvie every couple months or so. I'll change it when I feel like switching it around which could be next week or next month or next year.



f: I cannot answer for the squid, but I assume because it's a hat it does not have the lung capacity to do such a thing. I'm sure I can make noise on a clarinet, but does that really count as playing it?



f: I'm not too fond of seafood. I like fishsticks and tuna though.



f: Uhhh... You're all beautiful people. Live your dreams! etc. Etc. Don't eat undercooked seafood.

And there we have an explanation straight from the horse... eh, squid-wearing bacteriophage's mouth; however, we do not always perceive things the way they really are - I, for example, am still wary of an invasion, and I am sure others feel the same. But what do the supporters of this viridian denizen of the deep think?



@ArcticMonkey: Hello!

@BiscuitsBatchAvoy: Hi!

@RavenMoonStone: Hello, James!



AM: Because, I thinks Squids uber kewl.

BBA: I have absolutely no idea. I'm just so impressed [fortis] managed to get it onto a gif.

RMS: Not really. Fortis was going around Squidifying everyone in the chatroom. I wanted to have a squid too! Squids are cute, kittens are cute, and kittens yawning are cute... so I decided to have the cutest avatar ever.



AM: Hopefully, a long time!

BBA: Hmm... How long did the panda revolution last? Probably as long as that.

RMS: I'm hoping it'll last forever. However, it might die out in a few months. Because some people might want to change their avatars, or get tired of the squid.



AM: Keep being awesome with your funky editing skills!

BBA: Thank you and well done!

RMS: Thank you for starting such a wonderful trend!



AM: Thanks for the questions

BBA: Haha, thank you.

RMS Long live the squid!

It seems the supporters simply adore that "cute" and "innocent" little, green squid. Are they being mind-controleld into submission, or is fortis simply employing some excellent squidaganda? Her squid hat has even made an impression on this month's review day - the green team seems to have voted for "The Wicked Squids" to be their team name. Do they know something we do not...?

LINGUISTIC, OR LAZY?

written by JamesHunt < PM: >

For those of you sometimes organise things haphazardly, know that you are not alone. I originally started this column with the intent of writing articles on random or requested subjects, all concerning language, of course, but I have recently devised a better structure. Hence forth, the first edition of "Linguistic, or Lazy?" can be considered a teaser article - something to show the readers what they can expect from the column. The second edition was then the actual "first" edition, so this will be the second, and so on. I shall be referring to the articles as I have explained. (The very first article I shall call "the teaser article".) Now, for the actual article.

I am sure many of you have been disappointed in the past by computer spellcheckers. Sure, they are useful most of the times, but do not rely solely on these visionless inventions. Every writer should, at the very least, have a basic knowledge of spelling and spelling rules, so before I elaborate on these spelling rules, I shall provide you with a few examples of why this is necessary.

Technology has lots of jargon, but the problem with some jargon is that it doesn't register on the spellchecker's vocabulary system. Some spellcheckers automatically change words which they consider to be misspelled to the word with the closest spelling they can find. A technical journalist encountered this potentially problematic aspect first-hand while he was writing an article. Examples from this article include this:

He wrote, "How to deal with a battery-driven Philips super heterodyne", and the spellchecker corrected, "How to deal with a battery-driven Pahllus superheater...". I have no idea what the first quote meant, but I can only assume the correction was far from what was meant.

Not all of these corrections need to be confusing to be wrong though, for later on, the journalist wrote, "...how pelased older collectors are to get an Ericsson..." and the spellchecker corrected, "...how pleased older collectors are to get an erection...". Who can read that and not find it amusing?

Even further in the article, the journalist wrote something about a review for a technology book. He wrote, "...a good review of the book 'Syntony and Spark', a real encouragement to Hugh Aitken..." and the spellchecker corrected, "...a good review of the book 'Synonmy and Spark', a real encouragement to hug airmen...". With an "imagination" like that, the spellchecker could become an author!

As the above example showed, names and surnames aren't spared, even when they are as normal as Hugh and Hilary, though most are being incorporated into a spellchecker's vocabulary. Unfortunately, not all spellcheckers are as up to date; a letter addressed to a Ms Hilary Abbot Wimbush arrived at the correct destination, but addressed to a Ms Hairy Abbot Wombat.

Finally, to top it all off, an anonymous author had written a poem which perfectly illustrates why a spellchecker should never be given the final say.






What a beautiful poem, and not a single spelling error at all! However, the Grammar Nazi's among us would immediately agree that this poem is crawling with more malapropisms than you would find maggots on a carcass. So, unless you want your work to be reminiscent of rotting flesh, I suggest you be linguistic, not lazy...

Books For Bairnswritten by BiscuitsBatchAvoy < PM: >

Tales For Teens #1 - Introduction

"It's just a bit too teen fiction," Miss Little explained. There was more than a hint of nerves in her voice as she told my friend why she was going to have to change her text for her dissertation. She - my friend - had been planning on studying George Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four, with Veronica Roth's Divergent.

My friend's expression was one of despair. That may seem a little dramatic, but she's a self-proclaimed Drama Queen. Still, there is something personal about an insult to your favourite Young Adult Midnight Read. I could understand my teacher's hesitance, however. A book designed to be read by the average teenager cannot possibly contain enough content to spawn a four thousand word dissertation. But why did it hurt so much?

There seem to be two characters of Young Adult novels. In general, there is the ideal world, the Utopia, and the nightmare world, the Dystopia. In the Utopia, you have David Levithan (Boy Meets Boy, Every Day etc), Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl, Eleanor and Park) and John Green (love him or hate him, do I really need to list?) - and of course many others. On the Dystopia side, you have The Hunger Games, Gone, Uglies series' etc and, of course, Divergent.

I'll start with the Dystopian. Most of these stories take place in societies that have been betrayed by their governments. It as at this point that I must sing a Twin Atlantic song.

What are you trying to prove?
Crushing the dreams of the millennium’s youth.
A generation with nothing to say.
I'm not surprised with the fear you've made.

Millennials are the group of young adults in their early twenties to late thirties who have come of age to get a job, house, mortgage etc in the bast ten years or so. Some of those reading this may fall into this category. If so, I apologise for my sweeping generalisations. They are a generation that grew up watching the success of past generations on television, in film, in books. They learnt that if they stuck in at school and stayed clear of drugs, they would earn the right to a good life. For many, these words have not as of yet come true.

This is where it gets a bit British for a moment.

In the UK, the average wage hasn't risen above inflation for any significant period of time since 2008., House prices rose by two-hundred and fifty per cent in London from 1997-2007, making it almost impossible to grasp the first rung of the housing ladder. Is it really any wonder that twenty-four-year-olds can sympathise more with Katniss Everdeen than with Hamlet? Or understand Harry Potter's world better than their own?

There's also the Utopian. Let's take Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell as an example. The love interest, Levi, is an openly acknowledged manic-pixie-dream-boy. He is energetic and lively and understands the MC despite being totally different from her. The MC is a shy girl who likes to write fan-fiction of credibly high quality. She shares about five or so qualities with most of the teenage girls who will be reading this book and her intricate knowledge of fandoms creates a snug feeling for the reader to curl up in. They are reading about one of their own.

This, I believe, is less complex than our reasons for sympathising with dystopia. Many fangirls – and boys – live vicariously through fanfiction because it is the only way they know how to write. Most of us have been writing, if not from a very young age, then at least for years. On sites like Wattpad, people write to have adventures. They don't write character arcs, or use setting to contextualise a narrative. They write because television and film like Back to the Future or Glee have told them that their lives should be automatically exciting and dramatic. If the most dramatic thing in your life is the rising prices in school lunches, wouldn't you want to read about a shy girl going to college and meeting amazing people?

It would seem that Dystopias are fast becoming the more popular of the two. The abundance of dark colours on front covers should testify to that.



So, when my teacher dismissed Divergent on the grounds that it was too 'teen fiction', she was also dismissing all teenage angst. All of it. With depression marching unwaveringly through groups of teenagers everywhere, and the government – mine at least – doing nothing to help, plus the internet multiplying it all by other people's problems, plus stress of increasingly high entry requirements for universities, plus continued social pressure, teenagers and young adults don't stand a chance without vampire romance to fall back on.

NEW ARRIVALS
written by BlueAfrica < PM: >

Take a moment to welcome this week’s newest members to the site!

In just three days—that’s right, three days—@BookWolf has already completed 22 reviews and earned their first two review stars. Wow! Head over to their wall and say congrats .

@RagingLive has earned her first review star and posted two literary works. Check out her story The Twelve O’ Clock Tale or her poem The Letter .

@thegreyreality has decided she would rather swim in a tank full of crabs than a tank full of stingrays! (Would you?) She follows it up with an interesting would-you-rather of her own: would you rather be eternally comfortable in a miserable place or be eternally discomfited in in the most comfortable place in the world?

THIS WEEK'S ROUNDUP – 10/26 written by megsug < PM: >

What do haikus, essay questions, books, and rabbits have in common? Well… Not much! But they’re all mentioned on this week’s roundup!


I’ve gone forum spelunking again and unearthed a gem created by @Lumi three years ago. The poet’s equivalent to a wrestling match, the haiku battle is a thing on YWS. If you’re not familiar with this extreme writing activity, all you have to do is write a haiku. The one thing that makes this special is that the first line of your haiku must be connected to the haiku above yours. @defiantAuthoress wrote a pretty one a few months ago:







@fortis was the last to write a poem. Can you connect your haiku to quarries and mining?


Earlier this year @BlueAfrica put together a helpful how-to for how to answer essay questions on tests. She has a list of tips that are really helpful for anyone who struggles with essay questions:







She even provides a few tips for persuasive writing too! @ssurkho gives their two cents as well. A good resources for those students out there.


@Rosey%20Unicorn has asked an interesting question based off of this article . She wants to know if you guys think there is such a thing as “bad books” for children. Basically, some people think that books that give instant gratification will lead kids to want nothing more than that while others think that children’s love for those books will spread to other books that may be more meaningful though harder to get through. @CowLogic has an intriguing take?







What do you think? Is there a place for “trite literature”?


@Iggy has created a simple game. All you have to do is create a question like @TriSARAHtop ’s:






Then, Iggy replied rabbits (because they’re cuter, duh) and creates another question. It’s simple, so it’ll probably be pretty fast moving. Check the thread out, make a decision, and create your question today!

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