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. Green Room Gallery
2. Festooned: New Stars
3. Newflash
4. New Arrivals
5. The Weekly Roundup
6. Shameless Plugs
7. Subscribers

GREEN ROOM GALLERYwritten by BlueAfrica < PM: >

Despite our best efforts, the Green Room is still full after the January 2016 Review Day, and many works are novels with multiple chapters stuck in review limbo. Check out some of these novels so we can work on clearing them out!

Breaker of Chains - Chapter Seventeen by @ScarlettFire
Rated 16+ for language, violence, and mature content.

While reviewers managed to shift several chapters of ScarlettFire’s Last Man Standing project from the Green Room at the end of January, chapter seventeen is still stuck in review limbo. Once you’ve finished that one, go leave a review for chapter eighteen .

DUET: Chapter 8: by @SereneSimpliciT

Several chapters of this romantic sci-fi novel are also languishing in the Green Room. Chapters 8, 9, and 12 through 16 have one review each, while 10 and 11 have no reviews at all.

Thrallmagic: Chapter 16 by @QueenOfHearts

Another LMS project, Thrallmagic is a fantasy novel with 23 posted chapters. The last seven are currently in the Green Room.

Tryal’s Curse 9.0 by @Pompadour

“It takes a child to raze a village,” says the description. Intriguing! Give it a read and then work on reviewing the rest of the chapters still in the Green Room.

Agents of the Cardinal - 7 - Memories of a duel by @Ehtaniel
Rated 18+ for language, violence, and mature content.

This historical fiction takes place in France circa the time of Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers. So if you want to read about musketeers, duels, and female leads, take a look at Ehtaniel’s novel.

Every Christmas - Chapter 6 by @ThePhoenix

Christmas may be over, but this holiday-themed Doctor Who fanfic is still in the Green Room! Head over and give it some love.

Festooned: New Starswritten by Pretzelstick < PM: >
Hello all of our Squillsamigos! Today I come to you with an article, that features the newly gotten festooned fifth star that SnazzyPencil has aquired this January Review Day. It takes a lot of dedication to actually get five stars (if I may say so myself) so I decided, "why not celebrate the addition that Snazzy has received?" She was very sucessful in reaching that last yellow stars, so we are here to take a look at her profile:



Name: SnazzyPencil
Location: The Band Room
Recently acquired star: fifth yellow star
Snaz describes herself as an "overly-obsessive band geek" who is an avid player of the clarinet, a little bit of violin, and obviously piano, as you can see so yourself from her fast-paced avatar. Pencil adores Shel Silverstein's poem, gaining inspiration from them and posted the words with creative image on her wall her wall with the hastag #shelsilverstein #poemoftheday. If you search that, you are bound to come up with results. Also from Dec.30 to Jan.16 Snazzy has been the FM!
Here is a link to her WIP.
Blotted Out:Prologue
Now, enough of me yappin about, here is the short interview that I conducted with Snaz herself!


SnazzyPencil:When we had a thing called "free-write-Fridays" in my 6th grade ELA class, I just couldn't stand to listen to some of the stories without saying something about them... I didn't want to be mean - I just wanted to let them know what I thought about it, and what was wrong with it. But, of course, we were limited to just reading them aloud. I guess that's where my "reviewing nature" comes from.
I really didn't start getting serious about writing till about 7th grade. I participated in a competition very similar to the Writer Tournaments, you basically go out for the day with your team, and write. There's 3 different rounds, and you get 40-45 minutes or so to write a story/poem according to the prompt given. There's District Competition, Regionals, and then a final State Competition. My 7th grade year, I won 1st in Districts, and in my 8th grade year, I won 5th place in Regionals. (I made it to state both my 7th and 8th grade year.) But after my 7th grade year, I decided I wanted to get help with my writing from people who were as serious with writing as I was. That, is when I found YWS. I've enjoyed it for a little over a year now, and it really is a beautiful place.
Anyway, I'm really in love with music. Whenever I'm not writing or reading, I'm playing or listening to music. I kind of find it hard to write about music though. I think I've only ever written about two poems on music, total. I guess my two passions combined are just so strong, it's hard to put them together without the universe exploding or something.

Head on over to Snazzy's wall to congratulate her(if you already haven't) on her newest addition! And that's all we've got folks for this installment of Festooning Stars. See you next week!

NEWSFLASH
written by Lavvie < PM: >

February has already been a busy month. Let’s see what the world got up to this week.




Employees of La Jolla restaurant were surprised when they found a sickly California sea lion lounging in a booth Saturday morning. The eight month old pup was seated near window overlooking the ocean when SeaWorld was called at approximately 8 am. SeaWorld officials reported that the animal was suffering severe malnourishment and dehydration. In fact, they described her as a micro-pup, meaning that she is half the weight she should be for her age. It was also found that her left eye was swollen shut. Specialists state that this year’s warm El Nino waters and high tides are contributing to a huge decrease in the sea lion food supply. La Jolla manager, Matt Caponi, thinks the pup came in through a back door that had been left open earlier that morning. “Maybe she thought we were open for high-tide breakfast, but we weren’t,” he said.



Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old Italian PhD student at Cambridge, had been missing since January 25th when his body was found in a Cairo ditch on Wednesday. His body maintained signs of bruises, severe cuts, and cigarette burns. Regeni, who was on exchange at the American University of Cairo, was doing research on trade unions and labour unions within Egypt, despite the fact that the topic has been highly sensitive over the past few years. Amy Austin Holmes, the Sociology Department Head at AUC, said, “It has become increasingly difficult and dangerous to conduct research,” and noted that it was not uncommon for researchers to be denied entry into the country. Regeni’s death leave many in deep mourning, as he was a bright scholar and trusted friend.



Twitter has recently announced that they plan to introduce algorithmic timelines, as opposed to displaying tweets chronologically. This system is much more in line with the timelines Facebook has, which allows users to switch between Top Stories and Most Recent posts. However, the latest Twitter report fails to mention whether its users would be able to flip to tweets appearing chronologically. Considering that Twitter is relied on for fast live updates during major events, the proposed usage of an algorithm is big news and could definitely change the way the website functions as social media. CEO Jack Dorsey has proposed the change in an attempt to grow the monthly active user base. He has also hinted at other potential changes like removing the 140 character limit for tweets. The general public is largely unhappy with the upcoming changes and are voicing their opinion on the matter using the hashtag #RIPTwitter.



On Saturday morning, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4 hit Taiwan, killing at least 14 people and injuring 484. Officials reported that at least 200 people have been rescued with many being from a sixteen-story apartment building that collapsed. Still, by Saturday night, over 150 people were unaccounted for, including dozens of Taiwanese children. Weather stations are calling for an intense cold front which has increased the sense of urgency to find the missing people. At least 60 people are still hospitalized in a variety of conditions and severities. The earthquake was not only felt in the country’s capital of Taipei, but was strong enough to effect even some southern Chinese provinces. Elise Hu, an NPR correspondent, commented that “Taiwan is very used to earthquakes and tremors, but this is far more significant than the island has seen in quite awhile.” Seven buildings have been damaged and 1500 emergency personnel have responded to the incident so far.



Following the rapid spread of the potentially fatal Zika virus which causes microcephaly in infants, among other symptoms, and is sexually transmitted, many of the Latin American that are affected have called for women to refrain from pregnancy for at least eight months. This has incited UN officials to urge these countries to permit access to different types of birth control and uphold the female right to abortion. Abortion and birth control is criminalized in many Latin American countries. “Laws and policies that restrict her access to [such] services must be urgently reviewed in line with human rights obligations... to ensure the right to health for all in practice,” said Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Countries in South America are generally Catholic and abortion and contraception is a taboo topic. Until 2012, Brazil only permitted women to terminate pregnancies if they had been raped or their health was highly at risk.

NEW ARRIVALS
written by BlueAfrica < PM: >



@Kaila has earned their first review star. Head over to their wall to congratulate them !

@OrielDoe has posted a thread in the Welcome Mat. Click here to say hi !

@TopHatsUniversal has posted a short horror story called “Secrets.” Click here to read it and leave a review !

THIS WEEK'S ROUNDUP – 2/7written by megsug < PM: >

Battle your perfectionist, decide whether posting is worth it or not, travel, and find a new book to read. All this in the Round Up.


@comerie has an interesting problem:







What she means is how she gets stuck one on scene in a project and then demoralized. @Rosendorn suggests that it may be a sign that comerie’s story has wandered from the intended point and she should go back however far she has to go back to fix it.

@Lightsong suggest planning scenes out before writing them or developing more patience and accepting that a first draft isn’t going to be everything you want it to be.

This is a problem many writers run into. Share your advice!


@Sureal asked a strange question. It’s only strange because it can be found in the Serious Discussion and Debate forum . Sureal wants to know if it’s worth trying to debate with people online. The answer from even those who often frequent the SD&D forum is no.

@Rubric has some good commentary:







What do you think? Is it worth debating people online? Is it worth debating? Is it worth posting in this topic?


@Lavvie is sharing pictures she’s taken all around the world. She says she’s not a photographer, but her beautiful pictures say otherwise. I think my favorite was taken in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.



Check out more pictures in Turkey, France, Ireland, Canada, Slovakia, Spain, The Netherlands, and Italy. It’s a glimpse inside the country.


@WritingWolf has created a club that’s mimicking Blind Date book displays some people may have seen at a library. Basically, anyone participating “submits a book” by:







Then you choose a book when WritingWolf posts their descriptions, tag words, and age range. It’s your responsibility to get the book, and you have no obligation to actually read the book. It’s just a fun way to choose what to read. Sign up for February ends Wednesday.

SHAMELESS PLUGS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

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SUBSCRIBERS

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