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!






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

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1. MAKING TIME TO WRITE
2. SOCIETY PAGES
3. TWO CENTS
4. WORD OF THE WEEK
5. NEW ARRIVALS
6. SHAMELESS PLUGS
7. SUBSCRIBERS

Making Time to Write written by Princess Ink < PM: >

Writing is a really time-consuming activity. School, work, and simply life can take over and a week may zip by before you realize you’ve hardly touched your writing. And if you don’t write for a long time…it'll be hard to jump back into your writing because your muse will become lazy! Having no time to write is definitely troublesome. The good thing is: you can make time to write.

You’ve probably heard that many times and so have I. The key to making time to is to start listing all the jobs that must be done now (like school assignment, chores, and so forth). Then simply finish them! But that’s easier said than done. Procrastination is always lurking around and preventing you from wrapping up the tasks at hand. I’m guilty of it myself no matter how much I try not to. Yet if you finish them, you will have both writing time and satisfaction—and who wouldn’t want them? You may need to eliminate some fun activities to force some writing time in your busy schedules. But if you’re really serious about writing, you can do this!

Don’t forget your breaks, though. If you don’t have them, there is no way you can be productive unless your concentration is vast as the universe. If you work on something too long (especially studying), your attention wanders and silly mistakes pop up all over the place. This is really frustrating. The only cure: a break where you can relax till your attention comes home again. And then move on. You’ll be surprised at how efficient you are after a recess.

So once you’ve snatched some golden writing time, make sure that you actually write. Procrastination, paired with the attractive Internet, may step out of the shadows again and lure you away, because just looking up a fact or so can lead to “Oh…let me check my emails” or “Let me check my notifications in YWS”. Before you know it, your writing session will end and you might be thinking, What was I doing that time? Try disconnecting your computer from the internet when you write and tell yourself, “I’m not connecting till I work for [insert number of minutes]”.

And occasionally, when you finally sit down in front of your computer, your writing muse will take a vacation. That happened to me once when I was too busy for a week to work on my current project and when I had time I was stuck and not motivated to write it at all. If that happens to you, just persevere! A good remedy to coax back your muse is to write in small sessions, maybe ten minutes at a time or so. This is especially useful if you’re working on a lengthy project like a novel. You’ll be surprised to know how steadily your word count increases and you may be typing “THE END” before you even know it.

Now that you’ve finished reading this, you know what you should do now: write!

SOCIETY PAGESwritten by Mea < PM: >

Welcome, dear reader, to this week's Society Pages. Sit back, relax, and enjoy!

Another hashtag, #ThreeFavoriteMovies , was created this week. It's pretty much what it says: list your three favorite movies! @DreamingForever's are The Princess Bride, The Hobbit movies, and all the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, which I'm not sure add up to three.

Other trends have included #FiveReasonstoYAY , which is of course not at all similar to the traditional #fivereasonstosmile , and #ThreeFavoriteTVshows , which is not a knockoff of the above movies hashtag.

Lots of people are going to see the new live-action Beauty and the Beast, including @Iggy, @StellaThomas, and @Mage. Your reporter has not seen it, and considering the fact that she still hasn't seen Moana, probably won't get around to it any time soon.

@Sonder went through all the artwork she's made in the last year and realized she's grown a ton. She leaves us with an important reminder to just keep swimming!

Our favorite pi day sported @pi having their pie cake day and everyone bragging about the digits of pi they have memorized. @DragonWriter22 was outnerded by @KaraStevens with the latter having memorized several more digits. Temporarily defeated, DragonWriter promises to be back next pi day with more pi.

@LaVida has lemonized the Beatles! Or Beatle-ized the lemons? We'll never know.

In other news, @birk sees a lot of look-alikes. @ChieRynn's chickens are finally laying, @Dracula has Matt Smith's eyebrows, and apparently all of @Wolfical's advice includes puppies.

And that wraps it up for this week, folks! Tune in next week for more news from your fellow YWSers.

TWO CENTS: TESTING FRENZY written by Aley < PM: >

One of the things about the school system which is both unavoidable and unfortunate is the practice of standardized tests. They're useful to judge how well a school is doing against another school, or even schools in different countries against one another, but they're also something of a black hole.

You see, in order to determine who is best, they have to make the test for the people who are better than the best. Think about it this way, if you're trying to judge who is the best at fast running, you can't make the competition short enough that they all cross the finish line at the same time. It wouldn't tell you anything useful. All it would tell you was that all of the runners are faster than your test.

That's why standardized tests are made harder and harder every year. If they didn't get harder, then they would have too many people crossing the finish line together. That also means that if they have any group cross the finish line together, chances are they will make it harder. They aren't made to test to see if a certain grade knows everything they should for their grade level, they're made to test which school or country is best.

That's where the problem comes in. While there are some tests which do assess whether you've learned what you need to for your grade, tests which actually help teachers learn what their failings are in teaching, there are a lot of tests that don't. Most standardized tests, if they're more than school wide, tend to just be competitive rather than accomplishment oriented. Rather than focusing on whether or not students can pass a minimum, they are looking for the maximum.

That's one of the reasons tests get so stressful! Teachers feel stressed about testing because their school could gain or lose funding based on the results, which transfers to the kids. It's sort of like seeing the captain of a ship panic, everyone else does too.

Well, here are some easy things you can do to help throw off test anxiety.

Figure out what type of test it is that makes you anxious. Is it a test that only your teacher will see, or a standardized one?

If it's a test that only your teacher will see, make it a game in your head! Those tests are your chance to be an amazing student and show your teacher that you have been listening, and I can guarantee you that if they are trying to trick you, and you write something about your thought patterns on the test when you're taking it, they'll appreciate it. Teachers like to know where they've gone wrong, and they like to know what you're thinking. On these private tests, teachers are looking to pass you. They are actively seeking out every little thing to give you a point for, so write your name, date, and hour on the test! They'll give you points for it! Write your thoughts when you're stuck! Not only could it help jog your memory, but they might give you points! Doing these little things make tests more communicative. After all, this is your chance to have a private conversation with your teacher about what you have and have not learned, so take this opportunity to speak up!

If it's a standardized test, well, don't sweat it. Seriously, unless it's the SAT or ACT that's got you bumming, they just aren't worth it.

Speaking of the SAT/ACT, the only place those will ever be used is getting into college, and if you're looking at a college that requires good scores, you can re-take the test, no biggie! If you fail twice, or three times, you can always go to a college, raise your GPA and transfer to your dream college if they allow that. There are options. Talk to college councilors about your concerns. Talk to your parents, talk to your school councilors. Chances are, everyone is going to have advice because, guess what? We've all been through it.

Test anxiety is a natural thing. Most of us hate being up on a stage and judged by third parties. It's an invasion of our individuality, and it makes sense! That's why interviews are difficult, why writers have problems accepting reviews to begin with, and why a lot of people have test anxiety.

The bottom line is that there are things you can do to help get over the stress, and unless you're graduating college this year, and you already have landed a stable job, tests are going to be in your future, so learn to handle your problems now before they become anxiety attacks, hair loss, headaches, stress weight, high blood pressure, and vomiting. Stress is no joking matter, and if you do experience those symptoms, it would be a good idea to learn stress relief techniques like meditation, breathing techniques, and so on.

THE WORD OF THE WEEK: Enigmawritten by megsug < PM: >
Pronunciation: uh-nig-mah

Part of Language: Noun

Definition: A puzzling, confusing, inexplicable or contradictory person, thing, or situation.

Used in a Sentence: The high schoolers, with their odd mood swings and hormone-fueled logic were enigmas to him.

Origin: The word itself is Latin but has Greek roots. Enigma comes from the Greek ainigma which came from ainissesthai meaning to speak allusively which came from ainos meaning fable.

Related words: Enigmas (plural); Enigmata (archaic plural)

NEW ARRIVALS
written by EternalRain < PM: >

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

@RavenBlack has completed 8 reviews since they’ve joined on March 11!

@RyleighInWonderland has done 8 reviews and seems to like the Youtuber Markiplier, based on their profile picture!

@ObsidianLight has 4 reviews and has already posted chapter one of their book Aspen Faye .

SHAMELESS PLUGS

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SUBSCRIBERS

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