Young Writers Society

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

1. R.E.D. COVERAGE
2. FEATURED MEMBER: GRINGOAMERICANO
3. TWO CENTS: A POEM BY LANGSTON HUGHES
4. LET’S TALK MEDIA: THE FARSEER TRILOGY
5. SOCIETY PAGES
6. THIS WEEK'S LINK ROUND UP 1/29
7. HOLY SPAM: WRITING ANXIETY
8. SHAMELESS PLUGS
9. SUBSCRIBERS

R.E.D. COVERAGEwritten by SirLight < PM: >

As you all might know, there is a huge event coming up this January. It demands nothing difficult from the participants, really. You just have to do what usually do here, which is reviewing! I present to you, R.E.D. 2.0 !

Now, for those who do not know what R.E.D. 2.0 is all about, I am here to explain. It is a squeal contest to R.E.D. , which stands for Review Every Day. The original competition started on 21st January 2016, and lasted until 30th June 2016.

Here is the premise behind the competition as stated by @Contest, a username whose purpose of existence is to hold R.E.D. and its later installments,






Interesting, is not it? Not only you can boost your review activity, you can also help in emptying the Green Room! Not to mention, there are rewards.






Imagine if the contest has many participants and the total review achieved is 100. After multiplying it with 125 (the maximum points of a review), you get 12,500 points. Fifty percent of it means 6,500 points. That is a lot! You can definitely post your entire novel with them. So, what are you waiting for? Grab this chance!

Of course, for a long-term contest like this, it is not fun if there is no other challenge in store. In that case, do not worry! Contest has set up a delicious penalty for those who do not review in the shortest amount of days. Here is the information:






Sounds scary, but only if you do not review for at least within three days. You only need to make a review a day, so the task is actually easy. You can win this, I am sure. Regarding the dates, the contest will start on 31st January and end on 31st march, so the quicker you sign up, the higher your chance to win!

At the end, the main goal that is shared by not only the contest holder but also the reviewers is to encourage reviewing. You can both help the author by criticizing their works and yourself by noting aspects and details that can be improved, which can be applied to your own work! You can help in heightening the spirit of helping each other by participating in this contest and if you win, you will get rewards!

FEATURED MEMBER: GRINGOAMERICANOwritten by Nikayla < PM: >

This week, we have an interview with the lovely @Gringoamericano! With being a great presence in chat as well as the owner of Music Buffs, this was no surprise that this would eventually come. Here's how the interview went.



G: Gooo ahead.



G: I did not. My contributions consisted of pretty much chat and chat alone. Sure, Music Buffs was still sort of a thing, but it was mostly its members keeping it afloat more than anything


G: The entirety of the FM post was about chat, so I'm assuming it was about that. Just a guess, tho.


G: You do you. Find what you like doing, or what you think would help most, and stick to it.


G: And thank you as well!

And that's all we had from him this week! It was a great time interviewing him, and let's hope that he continues doing what he's been doing.

TWO CENTS: A POEM BY LANGSTON HUGHESwritten by Aley < PM: >

This week for Two Cents I'm going to do something a little bit different. This is going to be an analysis of Langston Hughes' poem "Madame and the Census Man" because I picked up my Hughes book and it spilled out into my brain.

The poem is rather short, so I'll put it in the article in its whole and then review it.






Okay, so here's some background. Have you ever noticed how a lot of people are named things like Brown or Smith? That's because when immigrants came over to the states, a lot of the customs agents would actually change their name either because they couldn't understand what they were saying, they weren't able to speak English, they didn't have a ready name to give, or a combination of other things. The results? A name meant a lot, especially for African Americans who were forced to immigrate through the slave trade.

Their names were often assigned due to the original being unpronounceable, or the slave traders just not caring. For Langston Hughes, this makes for a poem particular to his cultural heritage. He is an interesting writer because he is one of the earlier poets who decided to focus on relatability and clarity in his poetry rather than the esoteric internal contemplation of some of the other poets of his time. Instead of trying to make complex layers of beautiful poetry, he tries to write poems that everyone can understand and relate to.

For me, this is a poem that's pretty perfect. I blacked out one of the words because we're considering it a minor swear on YWS, but it's pretty easy to find this poem if you google it online and you want to see it unbroken. That being said, let's get into the review.

First thing first, the poem approaches the topic of names with a sing-songy tone as the poem is rhymed quatrains with abab structure, and that continues throughout the poem. He also used line capitalization, but you'll notice that he didn't use line punctuation. The punctuation is more of an older style of sentence punctuation, meaning he punctuates as needed grammatically for sentences. As we continue speaking and writing, our language becomes more and more relaxed with how frequently we use punctuation marks, and this is an older poem. The same thing with our rhymes, structures, and things like quatrains.

For Hughes, this is a pretty cut and polished example of falling in the lines. He has other poems where he doesn't follow these classic rules, so at this point in time, the poetic market is in flux between using them and not. On average, he uses line capitalization and sentence punctuation together for his poetry, and this is pretty standard from what I know of the times.

Looking at the poem as a whole, it is talking about how the government is attempting to shove people into their particular boxes and keep them that way. You can't have a letter for your last name. If you do have a letter for your last name, it will be elongated to fit our standards. This is something we see happen with pronouns now. Instead of accepting new pronouns like "xe" or "cis", we are struggling to force transgender people to choose between our binary terms of "he" and "she". We barely accept the use of "they" as something singular, or for when a gender is unknown. This old fight was going on for different reasons and will always happen, and that's what this poem digs into for me.

Hughes likes to add humor and allegory to his poems which allows him to expand from just a simple story, to a story about something important to him; his personal experience and his culture. While he doesn't claim to have the same experiences as everyone of his microcosm of the universe, he doesn't try to write like he has had different experiences either, which allows him to come off as a poet who is more confessional and actually sharing things that really happened rather than someone who is making something up.

All of this combines into a wonderful book of poetry which is usually considered crowned by "The Negro Speaks to Rivers" found here , I find that some of his other poems hold more punch with me than that particular one.

One example of this is "Theme for English B" found here which talks about how to find poetry from within yourself, which is something that is basically the pinnacle of esoteric poetry. They reach to write something that you have to craft from the delicate fibers of your internal being and splay them so that those who see them might understand. Hughes took this as an assignment to develop a poem that shared him, but not just him. He wanted to develop something that was so him, it was also his friends, his family, his neighbors, through their connection with him, and I believe he succeeded.

At this point in his career, he was still rhyming constantly in his poetry, as he was just really getting into his craft, and he was also playing with words like a lot of us do now. He was exploring the connections between ethereal words like "you" and "me" and he used those in his Theme poem to help discover and develop an idea of self, and how even though we are individuals, we are still part of one another through influencing one another.

That being said, I think he is definitely a poet to dig your teeth into because he's developed a body of work that is both deep, and easy to understand. These poems have a surface value to them which can be something new poets shy away from as they try to develop the internal value, or the value in specific words being placed in a certain order. His poems have that too. If you sit there and study the poem, you can get more out of it than just the surface value, but you don't have to. You can choose how long you spend on them. You can take them as a laugh, or you can develop a 12 page essay on them.

It's up to how much time you have to think.

LET’S TALK MEDIA: THE FARSEER TRILOGYwritten by Mea < PM: >

Welcome to Let’s Talk Media! I recently finished reading The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb and thought it would be a great fit for this column. So let’s get into it!

The Farseer Trilogy is a YA/Adult fantasy made up of three books: Assassin’s Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin’s Quest. It follows FitzChivalry, a royal bastard, who is put in training as the king’s assassin, but cannot avoid the larger web that ensnares him into his role as a Catalyst, destined to set thing turning that will change the world, for better or for worse. Amidst the external threat of constant raids along the kingdom’s coast, a jealous prince who wants to be king, and Fitz’s own secrets, Fitz struggles to hold together both the kingdom and his own life.

I loved this series. From the beginning, I was completely drawn into the world through Fitz’s eyes. The story is told in first person, and Fitz’s voice is simple and endearing. The prose is breathtaking, but what I most loved were the characters — each of them felt so real and distinctly different in the way they saw the world and what their priorities were. As a whole, the series was gripping and fascinating, and I highly recommend it.



I’m not sure I could say who my favorite character was, but I think it would be the Fool or Patience. I really liked both of them, and I especially loved the Fool’s friendship with Fitz. Kettricken and Verity were another pair of favorites.

Something else I loved was the character development throughout the series. I noticed it most with Nighteyes, actually. I didn’t really like him at first because he felt rough and wild and angry. But as the series went on, I could feel him becoming more human, and I grew to like him more and more. Similarly with Kettricken and Patience, as they rose to their circumstances.

To be honest, I didn’t like the third book as much as I loved the first two. I found the pacing of the third too slow, and I was a little unhappy with exactly how much was going wrong because I couldn’t see how it would ever be right again. But mostly it was the pacing, and also that I had originally picked up the first of the Fitz and the Fool series, which is the third series. I’d read about 50 pages of that before realizing I needed to go back and read the original, and was spoiled for a few things I was expecting to happen, but didn’t happen in this series. So I went into it with the wrong expectations. I also really loved Buckkeep and was sad to spend a whole book away from there. I think if I were to re-read it, I would enjoy the last book even more.

Something I love about the series, though, is how well the magic and mythology is woven into the world, with the Skill and the Wit and the Elderlings all tying together and back into history. I’ll be reading the other series soon, and I’m looking forward to seeing how their knowledge of the magic and history develops.

My questions for you lovely readers: Who were your favorite characters? What drew you into this series? Have you read the sequel series? (No spoilers!) Head over to the discussion thread to tell me all about your experience with the Farseer Trilogy!

SOCIETY PAGESwritten by EternalRain < PM: >

Another column of the weekly Society Pages is up and ready, hot off the presses! What’s been going on this week?

Well, @Sheyren has posted a “Fandom Question Tuesday” post with a fandom-y question to be answered by anyone. This sounds like a fun weekly post! If this sounds interesting, maybe you can go check it out.

Along the fandom lines, @DeepRoses asked a question that makes you consider. The question was:






@Morrigan is now in a band! She plays the keyboard and sings, and if you’ve got any band name suggestions, be sure to let her know.

Doctor Who, the (awesome) time travel TV show, is being filmed at @Auxiira’s university! That’s pretty cool - who wouldn’t want a TV show filmed at their school?

Think a 100k fan fiction is long? @Rosendorn and her co-writer may have accidentally written half a million. Oops?

@Craz posted a ‘ #storytimewith Craz’, featuring the sun:






@JuliasSneezer got tagged to do the #fivefavoritethings challenge! One of theirs was playing the violin.

@Kelpies has decided to start a tag, #bookrants , and it seems pretty interesting! Their first rant was about The Diabolic . Let’s see what book rants they have in the future!

@featherstone9086 posted a sciency #nerdjokes , saying,






This was quickly followed by @Mage’s joke about oxygen and potassium’s date. How did it go, you’re wondering? It went OK. Badum-tsh!

This has been quite a good week, ending with the end of January as well as the weekend Review Day! R.E.D 2.0, the reviewing contest here on YWS, is approaching as well as Valentine’s Day, so be sure to keep everyone updated on what’s going on!

THIS WEEK'S LINK ROUND UP 1/29 written by megsug < PM: >

You know your best sources for the hottest links is This Week’s Round Up


@KaiRyu displayed some pretty awesome art two months ago, most of which features her character Suji:



Check the thread for some real talent.


what do you want it to be? @Mea wants to know. @NicolMemo gave a unique answer. She wants others’ interpretations of her poem or story. She even gives an example:







Others want discussion or genuine interest in their piece. What are you hoping for when someone gives you a review?


@featherstone9086 created a place for all of those crazed with the roleplaying bug can meet. It’s simple to set up a meeting.







Check it for some RPing fun.


@Mage wants to have a conversation about siblings in fiction, specifically siblings who are close because she can’t think of many examples. @haredrier came up with:







What related dynamic duo (or trio) has a special place in your heart?

HOLY SPAM: WRITING ANXIETYwritten by Holysocks < PM: >

Ironically, but not surprisingly, I’ve been procrastinating writing this article all week. In fact, I thought I only had four more hours to write this- thankfully it turns out I have a whole day to finish it. And yes, I was tempted upon realizing that to put off writing this a little longer. But I have everything open now and finally a bit of motivation, so here we go.

Why is it that so much of the time, writers have problems making themselves actually sit down and write? Yes, writing is hard, and it can be stressful- but is it really as difficult as we make it out to be? I feel like most of my fears about writing are monsters that I think are there, but aren’t actually there. Maybe I need someone to take a flashlight and look under my metaphorical writer bed and remind me that the scariest thing under there is a pair of old socks.

To me, when I sit down to write, everything is suddenly far more important- reviewing, answering emails, checking YWS notifs, drawing, and I start to feel guilty that I’m about to write instead of all these doing these apparently way more important things. And then if I try to do things like art or reviewing, the SAME thing happens! Suddenly everything else is more important and I’m struck with overwhelming guilt!

So lately I’ve been trying to think of how to get rid of this ridiculous mindset. How can I, or we if other people have similar problems like this, get past that guilt or even that fear of writing? I think the most common advice for this is to “write for yourself” AKA stop caring about what others think, and just write what you love. Maybe my subconscious continues to write for others, but mainly, I do try to write for myself- if I was writing for anyone else, I can promise you I wouldn’t be writing at all. Something though that really struck me this week that @Gringoamericano said to me after I complained that I was having trouble making myself sit down and write because it made me anxious, was:






And though I don’t think that was his exact words, he basically said that and it really got me thinking. It’s true, most of the time it’s just that beginning wall that you have to break down each time to sit down to write. If you can pull up the word doc and exit out of all the other tabs, and just start typing- sometimes you’ll actually get onto a roll and start loving the process. I live for that pure-bliss feeling when the words just pour onto the page and you feel like a genius. So maybe maybe that’s the key thing to remember- the first part is always hardest; the hill looks like a mountain from a distance, but once you get closer it’s not as scary.

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