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. BIRTHDAY WISHES
2. LET THE NANOING BEGIN!
3. FEATURED MEMBER INTERVIEW WITH CHASER
4. NEW ARRIVALS
5. THIS WEEK’S ROUNDUP - 11/1
6. SHAMELESS PLUGS
7. SUBSCRIBERS

BIRTHDAY WISHESwritten by Pretzelstick< PM: >

Heya Squillsamigos, and welcome to this first November edition of Squills. I am here to talk to you about YWS Birthday Week which is coming up on Nov. 8-14. I hope that you’re excited as I am, so let’s sit down, buckle up, and enjoy the ride!

Nate has announced that there is be a talk radio show on the exact date that YWS was created, so be ready to mark your calendars to join us all! In his introductory statement he writes:






I have interviewed people over this past week about the upcoming big week and some of the things that will be going on as a result. I thought that our readers would appreciate getting a glimpse of the events that are awaiting our site. Well, let’s jump right into the interviews now, shall we?



Lumi: While each specific day has its own realm of excitement for the site (read: poets may like one day, artists another, novelists the next, and so on), the thing I'm most excited for is a project I've got our lovely (and probably snarky, let's be honest) admins on. There'll be some feels and definitely a lot of nostalgia.

Rydia: I'm going to be helping with one of two scavenger hunts this year and there are definitely going to be some repeat questions from previous years and probably the age old 'How many questions have we're-used' to justify it. I'd like the scavenger hunt to have 100 questions but I've got some vague plans for a bonus round for none mods only to help them catch up on points. I'm not sure if some other stuff it's reliant on will be done in time but fingers crossed!



L: While I always appreciate themed events, I think things like Birthday Week are best kept simple and tight--and so this year, we've zoned in on the number eleven, of course! Eleven years of greatest hits, eleven lines of poetry--you get the idea! Things are still developing and evolving and getting tighter, but I really hope YWS will enjoy each of our events equally.

R: Well this is the 11th birthday but we've gone off on a bit of a tangent so some people might not quite get the reference but it's all following something big that started at 11 too!



L:The story goes that it was a rainy Sunday afternoon, November 14th, 2004, when Nate actually launched the site. There's a lot of backstory and lore behind the decision to make it, but ultimately for us these days, it boils down to that one afternoon. All of our lives have been impacted because of a rainy Sunday in November.

I personally joined on March 27th, 2010. I was homebound from school for medical reasons, and had a lot of time I needed to spend not festering over Issues, so I went looking on Google for a writing outlet. And I did!

R: It was mid November 2004. I kind of want to say the 11th but I'm actually not certain. It's definitely somewhere on the site - maybe that's the first Scavenger Hunt challenge. Find out when it is! I joined YWS on the 15th May 2007 and made my first post 8 days later.



L: There certainly will! As well as the full week of individual events, there will be plenty of running events going on during both that week AND the entire month as a whole. But there's a definite focus on the individual events.

R:There will definitely be at least a new feature every day of the week and most days that includes something you can participate in as well! We've got contests, a storybook, the traditional Dragons vs Monkeys and break the chat events. We've also got something big returning for the first time in years! But you'll find out about that soon enough



L: Part of being a mod--a perk, really--is getting to propagate events and make something special for the community. Alongside that, we all knew it was coming, and an adage that is prevalent in staff is See a need, fill a need. So it goes.

R: I first became involved in November 2007 as I'd recently been made a mod and it sounded like a fun event. I participated in Trident's Dragons vs Monkeys quiz, helped Emerson out with the YWS most awards and ran some activities in the chat room and some kind of points contest which apparently went really well - I've no idea what that was. Then Trident was busy the next year so I stepped in to help with Dragons vs Monkeys because I'd had so much fun the year before and it just continues to be fun every year so I always want to help out again.



L: Not particularly! The hardest part is making sure there's something for each person to enjoy to their fullest. And I guess prizes--but we have good ideas for those.

R: It can be hard to find the time to write the questions for the scavenger hunts and there's so much cross checking with the previous years to make sure at least most of them are new!



L: Above all else, I want to foster the notion that we as members of our beautiful community have so much to be thankful for, whether we've been around for eleven years or eleven days. There'll be opportunities for this in both having fun, and reflecting on time. But also having fun.

R: I want them to have fun, that's meaningful right? It's also a great chance to learn something about the history of YWS though and to feel more involved in the community. Sometimes people say they feel like there are a lot of in jokes and this is a good time to find out about a few.



L: Well, the YWS I've known is in a scope of 5.5 years, and while I know a lot of high-impact members came through before then, I think the YWS you see today has strong elements cultivated by the ladies in Big Brother. The first three that come to mind would be @Rosendorn, who is the brainmother of The Green Room, @Rydia, who has spent years upon years tending and growing the RPG forums, and @PenguinAttack, who has become as synonymous with the poetry forums as one can be. So there are your three without mentioning The Godfather.

R: I have to shout out to @Trident who let me take over Dragons vs Monkeys and who explained the whole mascot wars to me. Also to @JabberHut who was always so on top of the Most Awards and the Best Awards. Lastly to @Lumi for helping us get organised this year!



L: The hope is to...pull something off that will make the oldies feel sixteen again. It's a thing we've known for a while we could pull off, and I think this November is the perfect opportunity.

R: Probably something pretty because Nate's always super awesome with changing the YWS themes!



L: I made a wall post about this a week or so ago, mostly joking, but part of it is based in truth: I actually do see YWS being the social network for writers. The philosophies and practices Nate has taught us over the past however-many years are so strongly rooted in mentoring and compassion that there is a magnetism in the community. It's something that isn't accomplished elsewhere--and one day, the right set of eyes are going to find us.

R: I see YWS as mostly the same as it currently is but bigger! We'll have more people, be a little bit more global and hopefully we'll have a few published authors so we might have a little bit more of a footprint in the physical world - some meet-ups, book signings. YWS birthday events people can attend in person! Those kind of super awesome cool things.

To wrap up, I am sure that there will be something to do for everyone on the YWS Birthday Week, so let’s all start looking forward to celebrating! Adios everyone and there will be another article on this topic with more information next week!

LET THE NANOING BEGIN!written by BlueAfrica < PM: >

Well, kids, it’s November, and you know what that means…

BlueAfrica pesters everyone to try NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month has begun!

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), as seasoned veterans know, is an annual event that challenges writers and would-be writers to pound out 50,000 words in only thirty days. I say “would-be writers” because November is the perfect time to finally write that novel you’ve always said you wanted to write someday! Writing a novel--or 50,000 words of anything--is a daunting task. But because NaNoWriMo focuses on quantity, not quality, it’s a great time to cast aside all fear of failure and just write.

Critics of the event complain that NaNoWriMo never turns out publishable drafts, but that’s the point: for this month, you’re allowed to write crap. Frankly, learning that it’s okay to write crap is the greatest gift NaNo can give you. In my experience, if you’re not free to write crap, you’re not free to finish a first draft.

Because here’s the thing: first drafts are cruddy. That’s why we have revision! If you can’t finish your first draft because you keep going back over what you’ve already written to make it better (as I used to do constantly), you’ll never even get to revision. And even though you’ve kept going back to make the previous parts of the story better, the first draft--if you ever finish it--is still going to need revision on some level.

So you’ve essentially wasted a bunch of energy revising an unfinished draft that would still need revision if you finished it, which you haven’t because you’ve spent so much time revising the bits you’ve already written.

Of course, people sometimes do crazy things to pad their word count, especially if they get stuck. If you’re NaNoing for the heck of it, you might enjoy this sort of thing. Follow @NaNoWordSprints on Twitter for prompts like these.



I’ve never been one for including random objects, words, powers, or people in my scenes (mostly because I’m always NaNoing with something I’d like to have a workable draft of come December), so I’m more likely to end up with nonsense like this when I suddenly realize my characters are doing something for no good reason.






Oops.

(This was the same novel where I realized the female character who ended up pregnant probably should’ve been post-menopausal, based on her age. OOPS.)

Naturally, nanoisms like this highlight problems with your first draft that will need to be revised away after completing the challenge. But thanks to NaNo--the deadline, clearly-defined goal, and support it offers to a usually solitary pursuit--at least you’ll have a draft to fix!

Join the challenge officially at nanowrimo.org .

FEATURED MEMBER INTERVIEW WITH CHASERwritten by Elysium < PM: >

Hello everyone! Elysium your community reporter here with our Featured Member, Chaser! Let's start!



Chaser: Well, I did expect to get it eventually, but I certainly wasn't expecting this recognition anytime soon. I knew a good deal of people who would have made just as worthy an FM, but I guess I've just been the most active as of late. As for my reaction, I gave myself a pat on the back, then went to bed, because I stay on this website way too late for school nights.



C: Funny story, actually: I did over half of the reviews on Review Day. I don't recommend that to anyone, since I fell asleep in class the following Monday. The other reviews I just did in my free time. It's a genuine pleasure to see quality writing and help it improve. Besides, competition is fun.
As for NaNoWriMo, I'll at least give it a try. I have a hard time planning plots, so something like this wouldn't really be my strong suit. But it's a good experience for a writer to have, so I'll attempt it (and probably fail).




C: At first, it was all about novel chapters. I still review them from time to time, but I've hit a roadblock in a few of my own projects. So lately, I've taken to storybooking to practice my skills. It's a lot of fun to work with other people to create something none of you could accomplish on your own.
(I also love rhyming poetry, so I do a lot of that.)



C: Don't let that be your only goal. The title of Featured Member, by itself, is just that. A title. YWS is a great place for writers to improve, and that's why the awards have meaning. So do your best to contribute to the society, and you'll be FM before you know it.

Great advice and thoughts on your last question. Thank you Chaser for taking our time and answering. That's all for this edition of Squills! Thanks for reading!

NEW ARRIVALS
written by BlueAfrica < PM: >

THIS WEEK'S ROUNDUP – 11/1written by megsug < PM: >

Catching you up on all of the Knowledge Base action!


@Kyllorac has let the community know on behalf of the Resources team that the automated approval system used by the crew to approve articles for the Knowledge Base isn’t working. If you would like to add a resource to the Knowledge Base, PM an active Resources JM. A list of such users can be found here . Kyll would also like us to the Resources Crew also:







Keep your eyes peeled for gems within the forum or, even better, write a helpful gem yourself!


@Lightsong wrote an article on how syllable manipulation can affect the style of a poem. He covered two different syllable structures, one being the same amount of syllables for each line, and the other a decreasing amount of syllables throughout the poem. He goes on to explain how either style effects the poem. He says the point of the decreasing syllable style is:







Check out the article to find out more about poetry and syllable manipulation!


Brilliance struck @Stranger in the shower. He wants to know what song would be playing during the final scene of your novel if it was a movie. @Disk Elemental replied:







There are some really awesome songs in this thread. Go check them out and add the final song of your novel.


A few months ago Kyllorac compiled some basic information about queer identities. It should be noted that the three articles are meant to be a starting point for more research rather than an extensive resource. There’s tons of awesome information throughout the articles on gender, identities, multiple terms, and orientations. One little tidbit that I think I’m going to look into a little more is:







This set of articles is definitely worth the read if you’re curious about the queer identities or if you have a queer character.

SHAMELESS PLUGS

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