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. You can also subscribe to the Squills Fan Club , or PM SquillsBot to receive a notification each time a new issue is published!

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

1. Clubie Cues
2. Adventures in Writing
3. Halloween
4. New Arrivals
5. The Weekly Round Up
6. Shameless Plugs
7. Subscribers

Clubie Clueswritten by Pretzelstick< PM: >

Heya all ye Squillsamigos, I’m here to present to you an update of three chosen clubs that I hand-picked to feature in this edition. I will provide links to useful resources on there, so if you are interested at all, you should definitely go and check them out.

The Writers Tournament is always welcoming new members that like to write short stories, based a on a prompt that the host has provided for that time period. It’s current 73 subscribers should know that @Aley wants to “revive” this club and make new tournaments and such. Just two days ago, she posed a question on the wall, which remains for open discussion:







There is currently an ongoing thread where you can vote for which story you like better. Voting is open to all members, and the RFT (Realistic Fantasy Tournament) is going ‘round 2 currently. If you are interested, please feel free to check out the forum post page

Pawprints still has a steady book log every month which encourages readers to do the thing that they love to do: read. There is signup thread for every month, and then a reading book log , which you can use (in addition to Goodreads) to note the books that you read. When you get a certain number of books, then you could receive a badge for your valiant efforts. Here is the most recent September 2015 stats and so congrats to @Meandbooks for being a PawPrints Star!

I’m lovin’ the graphics here so the book of the month for October is:



I would totally encourage everyone to check this book out and maybe read it for the Spirit of October with Pawprints. Also, if you are interested in signing up for November, then please feel free to do this when the thread is posted soon, (you can sign up until Nov.5) and I am sure that they club and it’s members would love to have you there!

The Last club is the Last Man Standing, (pun-intended) and I would like to congratulate all of the writer and fellow members that still remain in the boat with their novel. Extra congrats to @AstralHunter @AdrianMoon @Buggiedude2340 @EnderFlash @Falconer @Meandbooks @Pompadour @QueenOfHearts @ScarlettFire @Tortwag for making it through week 14. When this edition will be posted it will already be a wrap of Week 15 of the contest.

@OliveDreams gives the best lines awards every week, and I always love to read them, so I thought that I would share some of these with our readers.



















I thought that I would mention three in this article, but if you are interested than you can hop on over to the thread where this is posted each and every week.

And with that, it’s a wrap for this week Clubie Cues. I hope that you enjoyed reading over these(even if it was during Review Day), just like I did, and see you next week! Adios!

ADVENTURES IN WRITINGwritten by BlueAfrica < PM: >

It feels like I’ve been revising forever. You’re supposed to take breaks between drafts, of course, get some emotional distance before making changes so you can be objective about it (sort of) and look at your novel with fresh eyes. But the longest break I’ve had since finishing my first draft was last spring, when school kept me far too busy to work on revisions for a personal project.

Well, mostly too busy. There was the silence retreat I go on each year, where I managed to get more done in three days than I’d managed in the last two months. That’s half the problem: I took a break, but not entirely. Parts of The Book Man ended up with in-depth revisions, including partial scene rewrites and editing for flow; other parts got the bare minimum.

The other problem is, the longer I work on revisions, the more I realize there is to revise. Some issues are things I’ve known for a while are issues and am finally giving attention to. Plot holes great and small. Others are things that have bothered me forever, but it’s only recently that I’ve realized why that is.

Settings, for example. In England, I have a house made of books, a municipal park that is home to a quasi-magical circus that appears each night, and a public garden where statues come to life. In the fantastical world the main character ends up traveling to, I have…an ordinary bog, an ordinary forest, a cool palace in the mountains, and another ordinary forest.

Hmm.

Why is the Earth of this story more magical than the fantasy world? It was only upon rereading the Fairyland series (Cathrynne M. Valente) that I realized that was what had always plagued me about the bits set in the fantasy world. Not that I didn’t enjoy writing the bits in my fantasy world—there were some good things about them, sure—but Cathrynne M. Valente writes settings that I honestly know I don’t have the creativity to come up with. At least not the first time around. September, the main character of the series, runs across a beach covered in gold instead of sand, a bathhouse for washing your luck and courage and wishes, city made of sentient fabrics, and a village of baked goods in a province where it is always autumn. And that’s not even mentioning all the amazing creatures she runs into, like the fairy who follows the bicycle herds across the plains or the wyvern whose father was a library.

It wouldn’t matter that my fantastical settings couldn’t compare if the story took place entirely in a fantasy world, somewhere Tolkienesque. But considering that my MC starts off in England, which later turns out to be more magical than the world he travels too… Well, something had to be done about that.

Made-over settings came with some new characters, and then there was the matter of the statues. Dozens of statues come to life each night in the gardens, but at a certain point in the story, they disappear.

To be fair, that might have been fridge logic: the sort of thing readers wouldn’t notice while reading, but rather on their way to the fridge for a snack afterward. “Wait…” Still, I decided that was something that needed taking care of.

There was the fact that the love interest suddenly seemed dull because she had remained unchanged since the first draft, while all the other female characters got serious boosts.

Of course, there is such a thing as too much revision. I’m not talking about the point where you’ve revised so much you start getting revision jitters and feel that you’re making things worse instead of better. I’m far past that point, to a different point where I know what needs doing and I’m working on getting those things done. But as a group of people who tend to be our own worst critics (though certainly not always), it’s easy for us to fall into the trap of never-ending revision.

How good is good enough? How much should you change and how much should you let alone? Can you ever really get your novel perfect? Or your short story, or your poem, or your song lyrics? And of course, even if you finish it to your satisfaction now, in five or ten or fifteen years you might look at writings your younger self thought were great and go, “Wow. I really sucked.” After all, we all know stories of published authors who weren’t quite one hundred percent happy with the finished product: J.K. Rowling thinking she ought to have put Luna and Neville together like the last Harry Potter movie did (however much I disagree with that); J.R.R. Tolkien wishing The Hobbit was less of a children’s book and better matched The Lord of the Rings in tone and style (however much I disagree with that).

My dad said that the editor of his college newspaper, who had to have all articles turned in by noon Monday so they could be sent to the typesetter for printing, told him, “You article is good enough at 11:45 on Monday morning.” When you’re not working against a deadline, however, it’s harder to figure out. How do you decide you’re done?

Ask your readers specific questions. First and foremost, get your readers’ opinions. Don’t just ask them, “Did you like this part/this character/this setting?” Beta readers, especially your friends, are likely to think there’s nothing in particular wrong with a certain scene unless it was confusing. It’s better to ask specific questions about a scene, setting, or character and tell them about the alternatives you’re considering. Then they can give you not only feedback on the current version, but their initial reactions to your ideas for the future. Here are some questions to get you started.



Review your feedback. It’s always best to have hard copies of any feedback you’ve received, or at least copies you can go back and review at any point. Keep emails. Bookmark helpful reviews. If someone gives you feedback via chat, phone call, or face-to-face conversation, take notes so you can look back at it later rather than trying to remember what they said. You don’t have to make every change suggested, but look for patterns. Were there issues multiple readers mentioned? If you’ve fixed problems that were brought up by multiple people, you’ve probably taken care of the biggest or most pervasive issues.

Think about your goals. If you’re writing mostly for yourself, are content to work on the same story for years on end, and won’t be satisfied until things are absolutely perfect, then by all means keep revising for as long as makes you happy. If you’re writing mostly for an audience or with the intent to publish, you’ve got to call it quits eventually. It’s still up to you to decide when…but you need to set a deadline at some point!

HALLOWEEN!written by Elysium < PM: >

Hello everyone! Elysium your community reporter here, with an article about a holiday that's just around the corner. Halloween, of course.

Halloween is a time of fun, celebration, and also superstition. Halloween began as a Celtic Tradition where there was a a festival called Samhain. People would light embers to ward off ghosts. They would also take turnips, hollow the turnips out, and put the embers in the turnips. When Irish immigrants immigrated to the United States, the found the more plentiful pumpkin and used those instead.

Bobbing for apples also has history behind it. It roots to love and romance, in fact. Single young women and men played this game. Each apple was assigned to a person. If you would bob that apple, then you would marry that person.

And we can't forget about one of the most important Halloween traditions: trick-or-treating! It has been a very popular tradition between young children throughout the United States and other countries. In some Celtic celebrations of the Samhain, villagers would dress up in costumes from animal skins and furs to disguise themselves from
phantom visitors.

Halloween and trick-or-treating was popularized during the Great Depression. Young children would vandalize buildings in major metropolitan areas. Then, the trick-or-treating tradition started in the 1930s. Although, it was stopped because of the sugar rations from World War II.

The tradition resumed a bit later in the 1930s when the war was over. Trick-or-treating is still a big tradition today world wide.

To sum up this article, Halloween is a fun and exciting holiday that gets almost everyone excited. It's a time for dressing up, getting candy, and having fun! So get out there, put your mask on, and have fun!

That's all for this edition of Squills! And Happy Halloween from everyone at the Squills Staff!

NEW ARRIVALS
written by BlueAfrica < PM: >

THIS WEEK'S ROUNDUP – 10/25written by megsug < PM: >

Thanks for tuning in this week! Stay tuned for debates, philosophy, and pretty pictures.


Based on a difference in opinion of @Snoink and her husband on cursive writing, Snoink wants to know if others think that cursive should still be taught in schools. The main opinion seems to lean towards no. Arguments touch on how penmanship is becoming less important in an increasingly digital age and the slow speed. There are a few users who hold out for cursive, but @sinistercutlass has an opinion that’s neither for nor against based on this reasoning:







sinistercutlass thinks cursive should be taught early in education, but it shouldn’t be taught for very long. What do you think?


@mialynire revived a thread of @Renard’s that had been dead a few months. Renard was looking to remind themselves about why they wrote by hearing what other people said. From expressing emotions and thoughts to evading possible explosion, people have tons of reasons for writing. I relate with @Storygirl95’s reason though:







Why do you write?


@NightCrawler started sharing her artwork. Some of the pictures are cute and cartoony. Others are realistic portraits. All are awesome. This is my favorite:







Check out Nightwalker’s thread to check out some cool art.


@AdrianMoon wrote quite the article about how “Good for your age” isn’t a good compliment. They go into six points and then offers some reviewing suggestions to remediate the problem. A fairly eye-opening discussion occurred and is still occurring, including many young writers agreeing with Adrianmoon. Currently, the discussion has taken an interesting turn with @fortis’ question:







Most people so far don’t seem to think the two are the same, “This is really good for someone new to writing poems!” being much less offensive if a user has already identified themselves as a new poet. What do you think?

SHAMELESS PLUGS

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