Young Writers Society

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1. V-DAY ORIGINS
2. NEW ARRIVALS
3. THOUGHTS ON VALENTINE'S DAY
4. WEEK ONE OF LMS: WE INTERVIEW TWO OCTOPUSES
5. TWO CENTS: ERAS OF WRITING
6. SHAMELESS PLUGS

V-DAY ORIGINSwritten by Holysocks < PM: >


Valentine's Day came, and it felt like many of us held our breath, watching it go by in slow motion. V-Day is a holiday for lovers to express their undying love for one another, a day to buy flowers for your gal or guy, a depressing day for those that aren’t single, and another excuse for shopping centres to re-do their colour scheme. But why did Valentine's Day become so popular? And where did it come from?

There are two common theories of where Valentine’s Day came from. The first is pretty obvious- and is that Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage of young couples because he saw that warriors that weren’t in love fought better. But Valentine supposedly saw that that was unfair and married couples in secret. Though there seems to be some confusion about what exactly happened to Valentine, and there’s another story of Valentine falling in love with the Jailor’s daughter (History.com Staff, 2009).

The other theory is that Valentine’s Day comes from a Pagan fertility holiday called Lupercalia, during which Roman’s sacrificed goats and a dog and they’d enjoy a game of tag, of sorts, where men would hit woman with the goat skins- women welcomed this though because it was supposed to increase fertility, and help pregnancies along. Once their game of tag was over, women would put their names in a pot and bachelors would draw them. Some people say the name you drew was the gal you’d be with for the whole year, other’s say it was more of a one-night-stand kind of arrangement that potentially could have paved the way for a marriage (Matt Blitz, 2015).

Apparently this holiday got less popular by higher-ups in Rome, and eventually mostly the working class celebrated it.

“In fact, the wealthy would insult one another by telling each other to attend the feast of Lupercalia.” (Blitz, 2015).


Works Cited:
History of Valentine’s Day - History.com
The Origin’s of Valentine’s Day - Matt Blitz
Love actually: Lupercalia and St. Valentine’s Day - Heather Greene

NEW ARRIVALSwritten by Mea < PM: >

Take a moment to welcome this week’s newest members to the site!

@PrincessInk has already written 9 reviews and 29 forum posts! She has also posted two poems, one of which is about an old traveler's visit.

@voiceofdragons has started an awesome art thread for their work! So far, they've posted a beautiful acryllics piece.

@Felix has already done 7 reviews and has posted several chapters of their novel about people who can travel through different multiverses. Be sure to check it out!

THOUGHTS ON VALENTINE'S DAY written by Aley < PM: >

Hey everyone!

There was a Valentine's Day this month and in spirit of that, I thought I'd go over a couple of the basics for the pro-side of the argument. After all, there has to be a reason it's a thing, right?

Well, for a lot of couples, that reason is waning every year, and while there is good reason for that, there is good reason for it to have been what it was. After all, the world wasn't always exactly as it is now. It's changed! My argument today is that there is still room for Valentine's Day.

I can't say I'm a huge supporter of this holiday, but I do see why having it around is a good thing. The main argument against Valentine's Day is that "romance should be year round, not celebrated on a single holiday" but if we wanted to argue about that, then we should say the same negative things about Thanksgiving, or harvest festivals depending on where you're from. Pretty much everywhere has their own version of a traditional harvest festival which celebrates the boon of the earth. Why should we celebrate it when we should always be thankful?

The reasoning behind it is simple: why not? Celebrating the good things in life, be it romance or a plentiful harvest, can be really fun and a joining, unifying moment. Valentine's Day, at its core, is giving a chance for couples to enjoy each other's company doing something they love to do. The problems with the holiday are the same problems that go unchecked with other holidays like Christmas! Commercialism has gotten involved.

If you watch anything in January on the television, or listen to the radio in February you would think that the point of Valentine's Day is to lavish gifts upon your female companion, and that's it. However, think back to December. The same thing was being said about lavishing your children too! All of the commercials gear towards buying expensive items for children because it's the 'must have this holiday season' to the point where people could watch the news to see what their child wants for Christmas rather than asking them!

That's not a problem with the holiday, that's a problem with the community at large. If you really want to get in the spirit of Valentine's Day, the romantic version of it, then you'll do something that you know your significant other will like whether you're a girl or a boy. It's not just about the boys giving girls things. We don't have a White Day here! It's also not about assuming your significant other is going to do something romantic and then becoming dramatically upset about t when they don't. You're supposed to talk about things like this!

Half of the fun of Valentine's Day is being able to enjoy something with someone else, like watching a movie together, or going out on a date, or writing romance poems that are so cheesy you'd puke any other time of the year. It's about being dramatically in love, not dramatic about failures to show it.

Honestly, I would be more upset with my significant other if they didn't talk to me about what I wanted for Valentine's Day and assumed I wanted a star named after me [that's literally an advertisement I heard] and did that instead of asking. That's a lot of money! Not only that, but for something romantic to happen, it has to be personal, and not talking about it with them, not being close enough with them to tell what type of thing they would like, is a huge red flag in a relationship.

That being said, Valentine's Day is a good holiday, it just gets a lot of bad publicity with commercials and advertisements because we have left the market unchecked. It might be easier to buy a ring for your significant other than to be thoughtful and romantic, but Romance is the name of that game, and if you want to play it well, you play it right.

WEEK ONE OF LMS: WE INTERVIEW TWO OCTOPUSESwritten by Holysocks < PM: >

Last Man Standing round three has officially kicked off this week, and we figured we’d spy check in on some of the participants! @amelie and @Lumi we’re kind enough to answer some burning questions we had! Let’s kick it off with some words from Lumi:



Lumi: If wits were candy, I'd be a dentist telling kids to stop eating so much of them. Of course, if they did, then they wouldn't need to come to my office as much and I'd be out of business fairly shortly--this analogy is falling apart. Week one was my first foray into novel-writing since I was 16 years old, so it's super rusty and all that jazz. Plus, thousand-word installments leave much to be desired.



L: The story is about two young men in Nowhere, Georgia as they come into their own persons. In the time frame for the first part of the novel, I plan on covering sexuality, abandonment issues, polyamory, and the hard realities of coming out stories in the south.



L: It's fulfilling. It's bad so far, but it's fulfilling. It's nice to write solo again and be fully in charge of the content I put out en mass. Plus, the main character has a voice that I think really writes a nice love letter to southern states and their charm, even in their dusty places.



L: If my characters had any idea where they'd end up by the end of this project, or in what shape they'd be, they'd likely hit the road.



L: Week two introduces a third main character to the story who is paramount to David's development, and the ending for week one is brought into question for more depth. Also, I'm questioning some morality lines for week two and beyond--just by what's in my head.

Also, I like octopuses. Do you?



Next up we hear from the lovely amelie!



amelie: It was super fun and easy this week, but I'm crossing my fingers for the coming weeks.




a For this project, I'm hoping to follow a bit of a theme with people and instances in my life, really, as boring as my life is. And oddly enough, I haven't exactly met an octopus before so I wouldn't have much to say on that matter.



a: Eeeeek! I'm getting so antsy to actually work on it more but I've gotta wait 'til Monday. Darnit. I like where it's at right now though, and I'm really excited to dig more into it.




a: I'll be following a few "characters" I guess, but you'll just have to wait and seeee, Holy.



a: I do, and I may or may not wind up switching it up but for now, yep I do. (And it just might include octopi.)



Well, I’d say those two are off to a good start. I wonder what next week will bring for LMS enthusiasts? I guess we’ll just have to find out!

TWO CENTS: ERAS OF WRITING written by Aley < PM: >

The study of literature has discovered the tried and true saying "the younger generation is horrible" which stems from a type of rebellion eras have against one another. For centuries, writing has had certain arguments that are on a continuum between two extremes, such as first person vs third person, present vs past tense, neutral observer of everything vs inside one point of view, and so on. For poetry, it's no different. Poets have arguments about structure, reason for writing, and the types of words used throughout the generational divide. Today, I want to talk about the different ways that this plays out for us as readers, and writers now.

The first, and biggest thing it does is allow us to say "well you just haven't met the right [writer/poet] yet." Whenever you run into someone who isn't involved in your craft, we have the luxury of telling them that chances are they haven't stumbled on the person or people who write like they like yet. It's very hard to read all of the different types of poetry or novels and not have something spark your interest. After all, we have a lot of it out there!

We have so much of it out there, it can actually be really complicated to figure out what you like, and what you don't like. That's the second thing I want to talk about, and the thing that will be the rest of this article.

The thing to remember is that different stages are made through the rejection of the previous stage, most of the time. After all, if they didn't change away from the previous thing, they would just be lumped together with the previous category! This is the case with writers who are in categories but they're not in the era of that writer. Sometimes these writing trends were even at the same time as one another, and you had two pockets of competing writers, like with the Romanticist movement and the Transcendentalists.

What this means is that while we have the internet, they had publications, and a lot of the time, these people would write letters to one another, send drafts around, and, with the example of the transcendentalists, would even live in the same town. Today, we basically have the publications, and then the websites like YWS. If you went on another site like Poetry Soup, you would find a completely different vibe than the poetry on YWS. This is less extreme than it used to be, but that's how these cliques of writers were formed.

That being said, a lot of the time if you hate one type, you'll probably love the other! If you dislike Poe [Romanticist], you probably like Emerson [Transcendentalist]. These different eras are usually based around a common point of argument too, and finding the point of argument that tickles your fancy will help you find the group that you like best.

For me, I like both Poe and Emerson because they were arguing about whether poetry should be entertaining, or realistic, and I don't think that argument matters. I think it should be a combination of the two. I like what Emerson added to poetry, but I also really appreciate Poe's artistic verse.

To me, the argument that matters more is whether poetry should be complex or simple, whether it should be made to exclude or include people. I am strongly in the camp of "inclusion" so I like a lot of poets who write things that aren't trying to be riddles. One example of this is that I enjoy Haiku, but I can't analyze it very well. For me, Haiku is more of its own separate planet, and while it's still in the solar system, it's not my planet. I much prefer the spoken word, conversationalist poetry, and the generations that aim that direction.

That being said, I still tackle complex language that can stand between me and some of the oldest poets like Spenser and Milton. Spenser and Milton could be considered the baby steps of this argument. Spenser wrote in an old English which was pretty much early modern English for those of you who know about how English evolved. He didn't obey the spelling book, and, while he wrote in verse, he wrote to get a story across. That story was an epic fantasy which was an allegory about the current monarchy in England. While his language isn't easy to read, I find it very satisfying and worthwhile because he is trying to get across messages of human nature in a clear example, which is how that era operated to avoid persecution.

Meanwhile Milton was much more direct. He came through the scene after Spenser by several years, and while he used language that was still like Spenser, he wasn't trying to get his messages across clearly to the modern public. He used that language, then added complexities to it like a verbose vocabulary that he vivaciously flaunted. This isn't my favorite style, and while I appreciate Milton, I don't get really excited whenever I find my books of his writing. I do get excited when I find Spenser.

As a last subject, I'd like to urge you to find the thing which you enjoy in writings you like, and ask yourself "what makes me happy about this writing?" Once you've figured out what you like, and why you like it, you can find a lot more of it by looking for that argument in literature.

The more you find that you like, the more you'll discover what movements in poetry have in common, and that will build your reading knowledge, and allow you to begin to break into the conversation between writers.

All of these older writers, and even writers today, are in a conversation with one another. They are all arguing about what they think makes the best writing, and we see that come to light in the different movements. Being able to put your two cents into that discussion takes time, and a lot of back-reading to catch up on what arguments have already been made, and what the opponents are saying.

I hope this article helps you understand how these movements shifted from subtle disagreements, to the all-out war we have today over everything involving writing. I also hope it gave you a brief introduction to at least two of my favorite arguments.

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