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. LAST MAN STANDING INTERVIEW
3. NEW GM: LUMI
4. NEW GM: ALEY
5. SOCIETY PAGES
6. TWO CENTS
7. THIS WEEK'S ROUND UP
8. SHAMELESS PLUGS
9. SUBSCRIBERS

GREEN ROOM GALLERYwritten by Mea < PM: >


Taking a look at our lovely Green Room, we find that it’s a little snug, with a total of 76 works inside, 30 poor souls with zero reviews and 46 with just one review. There are even a scattering still hanging in there since last year (which admittedly was less than a month ago but still). So if you’re bored one day, or have finished writing the most amazing story ever but just don’t have the points to post it, check a few of these pieces out and leave them a review!

Kambili-chapter one (edited version) by @Swavvy123
This is a coming-of-age story about a teenage girl named Kambili who lives in Nigeria, and begins at a party she’s not sure whether she wants to be at.
Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for mature themes and language.

Dulce et Decorum est by @znale1
This is a short story based around the eponymous poem by Wilfred Owen. It centers around a man who served in the military and is now suffering from PTSD.

Melt - 1.1 - Falling Girls by @ Lareine
The first part of an already engaging novel about a girl sent to live with the mother she’s never even seen a picture of. Right off the bat, the characters draw you in with their endearing personalities.
Warning: This work has been rated 18+ for language.

Ven by @Rurouni
A short first chapter based on the author’s characters from Flight Rising. The story begins with an argument between the elders of the clan.

Art Attempt from long ago by @SavoyTruffle
A rare piece of artwork posted as a literary work, this is a very cute drawing of the Beatles walking down a road, their fans having to be restrained from swarming them.

Monkey Boy’s Adventures in Space 2.3 by @BiscuitsLeGuin
A science-fiction story about a jungle force space team dealing with a climate control problem, it has some great worldbuilding and interesting alien species. Read the first chapter here!

tornadoes {and other things} **previously a smile like suicide** by @LadySpark
If novels and short stories aren’t really your thing, try a poem! This one is going into a collection of poetry and the author would love someone to tear it apart.

Away--Chapter 3 by @Lupa22
A novel about a girl who, after the divorce of her parents, goes with her mother to live with her grandmother. This chapter starts off with an uncomfortable dinner. Read the first chapter here!

Portrait of a Shawl by @fortis
This is another beautiful poem, one that deals with death and mourning and has some stunning imagery.

Dead End by @Aleta
And finally, we have one more poem, a lovely meander that explores time, how we use it, and, as the title suggests, dead ends.

If any of those sounded interesting to you, head on over and give them a review! Remember, you always get a 25 point bonus for reviewing a work in the Green Room. Review Day isn’t for a couple more weeks, but maybe we can give ourselves an easier job then by going out and reviewing now.

Last Man Standing Interview with Tortwagwritten by Nikayla < PM: >

Last Man Standing is an event that has had two rounds on YWS, and the second one recently ended. In the spirit of that, I've gotten an interview with the winner of the competition, who happens to be Tortwag! The two others who came in second and third place respectively were @Falconer and @Ventomology did wonderfully as well as anyone else who participated in the second round of LMS. We have hopes that the third round is coming soon, but LMS coming again at all is a wonderful feat from @Tenyo who has been around hosting this contest since the beginning. Moving forward from this, let's get into the interview!


Tortwag: Stated it before, it hasn't changed: GATHERING CREATIVE DATA SO THAT I MAY RULE THE WORLD WITH MY FUTURE BOOKS, BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Ah, and also because I wanted to confirm that if I were to lose a competition like that, it wouldn't be because I'd run out of ideas. I ended up winning, soooo, yay! Oh and uh, fun. I also joined LMS 'cause I thought it would be fun. And it was.


T: My characters. No hesitation. The entire main cast of 10 characters, though Kamikaz, Mettrick and Jolta were especially close to my heart. Planning for them all these weeks was so much fun!


T: Why yes - and I don't mean that in a, y'know, mean or pompous way. Sure, creative data was my main goal - and BOY DID I GET SOME OF THAT - but it was also my... compensation in case I lost. This was still a competition though, and if I think I actually stand a chance, I'll try my luck at winning. Which I managed to do this time around. ...Somehow.


T: Had no idea there was a first one until I joined the club to register on the second one, so no, I didn't.
*sigh*, I'd love to. I actually have a new story I know I'd be motivated enough to write for, and definitely for another 74 weeks if not more. But well... I got what I wanted here. I won, I got my data, I learned a lot. It's time for me to step aside and work on the actual book I plan to publish. Sorry, LMS! But I have to crawl back into my shell for next one.

That's all we had from Tortwag this week! It was a great time interviewing them, because they lasted in this thing for 74 weeks. That's a year and a half writing 800 words minimum per week. That's dedication right there. We hope that Tortwag as well as everyone involved with LMS continues to do what they're doing!

NEW GM: LUMIwritten by Aley < PM: >

Here on YWS we have a cake of mods. Recently two Junior Moderators have become Global Moderators, and in honor of that achievement, I collected @Lumi and interviewed him.

Lumi has been a moderator January 21st 2011 in the Poetry crew, but changed over to a Storybook crewmember later where they remained until being promoted to a GM on the 11th for excellent handling of everything moderator.

All this week people have been shouting out their congratulations after Nate made the announcement . If you have yet to make your feelings known, feel free to continue dropping notes!

Without further ado, here is my interview with Lumi.


Lumi: Of course I do, fellow promotee! Ask some questions! Drill into the truth!


L: Lumi's eyes glaze over and his face turns a pallid shade of grey as he flatly says: "Big Brother is one. Big Brother is all."


L: That IS easy! Global Moderators keep the site tidy from nasty stuff like spam and ensure everyone's secure and cozy. Beyond that, the role you play as staff remains the same insofar as coordinating events with JMs and keeping the site active with reviews and forum posts!


L: A Junior Moderator is a staff member that simply has moderating powers restricted to a specific realm of the site. For example, @ AstralHunter is a Storybook moderator, so his tools are effective mostly in the Storybook sections. Beyond that, though, team members are team members, and in discussions and event planning, all voices are valued greatly.


L: Talking about joining staff in general, that was back in January of 2011. I'd been on the site for almost a year at that point and I'd fallen in love with it - particularly the storybooks section (though I chose poetry crew at first.) I joined because I wanted to help my friends, who were also green at the time, make it a better place. And now, six years later, I get a chance to continue that work that means so much to me.


L: Well...what happens is--hold on, I've got a call on another line. Hello, Mr. President.


L: The dream? I think you will agree with me on this one since we were JMs together--I'd like to bring a skosh more openness between the things staff discusses and the community, and even bridge the two if the matter is right. I'd love to get member input on event planning and get the community excited instead of springing surprise after surprise on them as we have in the past. What do you think?


L: Good LORD, Squills! There are SO MANY PLANS. We hope 2017 will be a huge year for us, and on paper we intend to make it so. I hope Squills will help! For example, @ Audy recently launched the first of many Group Reviews on a piece by Strange. It was a tremendous success! I still want to join the discussion myself. We have upcoming workshops and contests - and I know @ Nikayla has something up her sleeve. Hehe.


L: Absolutely. CONGRATS, ALEY! You look dashing in that shade of green!



With over 580 reviews, and participating in eight storybooks, Lumi is well deserving of his new title, and well equipped for what that title will have him handle. As a moderator of YWS, Lumi is the perfect person to ask questions to, submit complaints, or just go to if you want to complain about something.

All moderators on YWS are here to help you shine, and this is one more who can help you from simple things like name changes, to complex things, like wanting to cheer up.

Want to PM Lumi about something now? Click here < PM >

New GM: Aleywritten by Nikayla < PM: >

As the lovely @Aley has interviewed the wondrous @Lumi as he has recently become a Global Moderator, moving up from a Junior Moderator, I thought it would be appropriate to interview her as well as she was promoted to the role of GM with Lumi! Here's the interview that I got with her about it.



Aley: Sure thing!


A: It was a shock, but I had been hearing that people kept thinking I was a GM already, so I didn't need a defibrillator.


A: I've never had a hickey so I can't say it's comparable for me. However, my parents were very happy for me about my promotion!


A:At first I was overwhelmed, but after a day or so, I got used to it and it feels good. I'm really happy to have the ability to make you Kaos again.


A: I didn't escape the hierarchy, but I've definitely advanced in it to the point where I don't have to worry about it as much as I used to. For me, this algae is definitely more of an evergreen quality though. I know some of my fellow moldies keep going deciduous but I'm not like that. I don't like being orange!


A: Yeah, but evergreens live for hundreds, if not thousands, of years! I might be old, but I'm a young evergreen.


A: Aye aye Mon Capitan!



That's all I had from Aley today. While she turned dark green, her interview made me quite blue and made me reflect on all the things I've done in my life like that one time I poured syrup all over the floor as a toddler and thought it was funny but other people had to clean it up. Sadface. Congratulations to Aley on becoming a GM and we hope to see more from her in the future!

SOCIETY PAGESwritten by EternalRain < PM: >

Hello, and welcome to a new edition of the society page! This week has been started off with the “death” of the chatroom and the break the chat event that was hosted on January 10.

@FairyLights has posted a positive post attached with the hashtag #vivalaYWS , which includes the idea that the chat bar may have just been a distraction, and maybe that YWS’s priorities like reviews and works will increase.

Though many members only went to the chatroom for special events or not at all, quite a few members were “chat regulars”, who are probably all especially sad to see it go. Many YWS members used the chat bar to communicate one on one with their fellow friends, as well. Though I’m sure we’re all sad to see the chat room and chat bar go, our safety online is very important as well.

@Carlito is in the process of revising her novel, and after only going through 14 of her 50 chapters, she’s cut 5,000 words out - an impressive feat!

Most people have already finished their first semester of exams, but @Love is halfway through theirs. With 2 complete and 2 to go, they’re exactly halfway through! Let’s send lots of luck.

Many YWSers are hyped (including me!) about the new Netflix original series - A Series of Unfortunate Events - based off the lovely books by Lemony Snicket. @ birk loves the show but wishes Jim Carrey were Count Olaf instead of Neil Patrick Harris. I haven’t watched the film version, but apparently Jim Carrey played a wonderful Olaf! @Iggy seems to be very excited as well, and @StellaThomas loves the narration.

With the hashtag #thoughtoftheday , @bookishminecrafter is saying a simple thought of theirs everyday! One of them, which I find pretty interesting, is:






Guess what’s back trending this week? That’s right, #fivereasonstosmile has taken hold of the wall posts. A very interesting reason to smile is @BiscuitsLeGuin’s friends did very well in a debating competition - even reaching the semi-finals of the world championships! Very impressive and smile-worthy, indeed.

@marmalade has started a daily hashtag, #lifelessonoftheday , offering advice and opinios every single day. I especially enjoy her first one:






This has seemed to be a week full of exciting new hashtags, as well as the one that cycles around YWS every so often - #fivereasonstosmile. If you’ve got any hashtag ideas, be sure to get posting!

TWO CENTS: KNOWLEDGE BASEwritten by Aley < PM: >

One of the hidden treasures on Young Writers Society is Resource's Knowledge Base . This beauty is actually something that's been on YWS for a very long time. It's a place where you can go looking for information about anything. Currently it's split up into five different categories: Grammar & Research , Miscellaneous , Poetry Tutorials , Writing Tutorials , and YWS .

All of these categories are tailored towards collecting articles from everyone on YWS about anything they want to say. To get an article into The Knowledge Base all you have to do is write it, and get it approved by two resources moderators, then post it! The resources mods read over your article, check for clarity, grammar, and the conciseness of the article, and then allow you to post it after two of them have checked it over.

This is a safeguard against people posting articles without enough information, or things that aren't actually articles, like games or discussions.

The Knowledge Base started out very differently. I got in touch with @Rosendorn who currently is a leader of the resources moderators, and @Kyllorac who heads most of the submission logistics to hear more about how this feature has evolved over the years.

I started by talking to Rosendorn asking them about what they knew of the history.





Back when YWS was young, there were ways to mark users apart from one another such as purple names, and things like secret clubs for the best of the best writing reviews. These people wrote the book, so to speak on all the things they knew and put it in The Knowledge Base for everyone to read and use for reviews. It also used to have an automated system for collecting articles that needed approval, so when you posted an article, it went into a holding dock to be checked before it was released upon the world.

The use of The Knowledge Base has remained the same throughout its life. This is a place to save yourself from typing the same thing over and over again. Today, everyone is encouraged to post what they know in The Knowledge Base, and there are new ways to do that too.

When I asked Rosendorn about what they feel the best improvements have been, the indexes were the first thing out of their mouth. Here's what they said.





This is the most recent update to The Knowledge Base. The Resources crew all chipped in and formed an index for each and every article currently housed in their library! This is a huge help because you used to have to go through all of the pages of articles to find what you wanted to read, now there are indexes to help you!

These indexes are organized by type of article, so if you're looking for articles about writer's block, you can find all of them together in one location in their index under Writing Tutorials .

Other improvements that might be in the future are things like breaking up some of the larger topics, such as reviewing and/or publishing, into their own unique sub form akin to Writing Tutorials and Miscellaneous. This is going to take an insurgence of unique types of these articles to happen, so it might not be for a while.

The Knowledge Base is always accepting new articles. No matter what you want to write about, it has a home in one of the forums and your friendly resources mods will help you place it wherever it needs to go.

Personally I use the service whenever I have to repeat myself about something more than 5 times in a review. Usually by that point it's a review day and I'm starting to lose track of how many times I've had to write about why capitalization is a delicate art, and I'm really getting tired of it. For that reason, I write an article that I can link to in my review instead, and that's where I dump everything I know about the subject. It helps me review more specifics about particular poems because I don't have to go over capitalization or punctuation again, I just link to the article, make a brief comment summarizing what I think they should check out about it, and move on. It saves a lot of time and keeps my word count away from book levels.

Kyllorac has read and fixed a lot of these articles, so I asked them what their typical volume of articles was a month.





When I asked Rosendorn their thoughts on articles, they said, please submit! The only way to make The Knowledge Base yours is if you add to it, and get to know what's there. It's missing a lot of topics that could be filled in by you and your friends. Repeat articles are encouraged when they cover different ideas of the same topic.

One example of this is the multitude of articles covering YWS's formatting for poetry. Once one was posted, four more popped up trying to cover the different methods, and all of them are useful for their own unique things.

Rosendorn said:





As I said above, the requirements to submit an article are pretty simple. Once you have it written, you can either PM it directly to Kyllorac , or put it in a Writerfeed Pad and PM Kyllorac (or another resource mod) the link. Here are the official rules to submit.

How To Submit

I'll leave you with the words of Kyllorac who gets to read and manage the submissions for articles that come in!

This Week’s Link Round Up 1/15 written by megsug < PM: >

Stats, Easter eggs, and gender come together in This Week’s Round Up.


This year’s location statistics for site visits have been posted by @Nate. As usual, there are users wondering about who nearby users are and some celebrating from users living in areas that made it in top five or ten lists. There’s also some interesting conversation about hotspots of activity like Columbus:







Check the thread out to see if you’re all alone or if there are other YWSers hiding in your geographic location as well.


Nate has also let us in on a few Easter Eggs about the People’s tab. I’ll let you discover them for yourself but each of these words unlock something:







Just type in the word as you see it in that list in the comment box and hit post comment to see what happens.


@Megrim drops some knowledge about the power of a verb:







Check out the article, and you’ll see that Megrim doesn’t only talk the talk but walk the walk, breaking down alternatives for the word “sat” and how each would effect a sentence and more!


@StellaThomas wanted to talk about how to write good male characters, and @Mage made a partnering post about female characters. Gender is something that can be taken for granted but not if you swing by these two posts.

@Prokaryote gave some insider advice about the male perspective, only a small portion including:







See what else you can learn about how to write the opposite gender or even your own!

SHAMELESS PLUGS

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Here are this week's shameless plugs!

Poetry Jams


Nikayla, Aley, and myself are starting up weekly poetry jams once again every Friday. This upcoming jam session will be held January 21 4:00 GMT or January 20 11pm EST, and will discuss how we can make our readers care about the poems we write.

Anyone interested in any of the jams are welcomed to join the new club!

That's all for this week. Now send us yours.

SUBSCRIBERS

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