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.

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

See an empty position you'd like to fill? Find position descriptions and instructions to apply here .

1. CROSSWORD
2. POETRY POPPER: EMILY DICKINSON
3. ORIGINALITY, A CURSE
4. JUNE IS PRIDE MONTH!!!
5. WORD OF THE WEEK
6. EVOLUTION OF MUSIC
7. 100 WORDS DAILY: JULY
8. LINK ROUNDUP
9. SUBSCRIBERS

Crossword Puzzlewritten by Gravity < PM: >

Hello all! I’ve decided to start creating a crossword puzzle which will be published either every week or every 2 weeks. Anyone who submits the correct answers (I really don’t care if you use google, this is meant to be fun!) gets to contribute one clue and one answer to the next puzzle, and will be mentioned in the next article. You may submit by PMing me. including the number of the clue, direction (Across/Down) and the correct answers, or by printing out the worksheet, filling it in, and sending a photo of the finished product. If you have questions or would like to submit, PM me! Without further ado:

POETRY POPPER: EMILY DICKINSON written by Aley < PM: >

Hello everyone and welcome to a Poetry Popper. Today we'll be focusing on one of the famous hermits of the Poetry World, who is always proclaimed to be more of a hermit than she actually was. She was actively sending out her poetry to people and getting feedback, she just rarely actually left the house, or was visited in the house by anyone that she saw. All of it was due to school. That's right, Emily Dickinson is our poet of this episode.

Background

Emily Dickenson was a poet who began her career in an unorthodox way. She went to a finishing school for girls, but never graduated because she couldn't take the final pledge the school required to keep women "chaste" and basically permanently handicap them to the old ways of life. Instead, she decided to ignore those traditions, dropped out, went home, and started writing poetry. She wrote thousands of poems, literally, and although she kept them to herself, she did share them with people on occasion in letters.

Poems By:

All in all, understanding Dickinson's poetry is about hearing it. Reading it out loud is helpful with any poem, but it's nearly critical with Dickinson because of the nuances of capitalization, the use of dashes, and line breaks reading into the poem in unique ways. The words also often flow uniquely when read versus seen. This is really a "follow along" poet, where you have to read it and hear it to appreciate the full meanings. It's also good to ponder it. It's hard to say a particular batch of poems that are famous from Dickinson because most of them are short, and since there are over 1,400 of them, it's easy to pick up Dickinson and never read all of them. That being said, today we're going to look at one someone considers the #1 of her "10 Best" just to get a feel for her.

[I taste a liquor never brewed –]
I taste a liquor never brewed –
From Tankards scooped in Pearl –
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air – am I –
And Debauchee of Dew –
Reeling – thro’ endless summer days –
From inns of molten Blue –

When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove’s door –
When Butterflies – renounce their “drams” –
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –
And Saints – to windows run –
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun!

Poets.org

This poem is one of the easier to grasp of Dickinson, with less odd capitalization, but it still yields a lot of time to think. For instance, why does she capitalize "Butterflies" but not something like "Drams" when she had to quote it? Why did she quote it? What is it? If you don't want to look it up, it's a small thing of whiskey. A tippler is a pigeon. Foxglove is poisonous by the way. Debauchery is how we usually see that word used and basically it means fanfare or a ruckus, an uproar. A Debauchee, therefor, is someone causing a commotion.

Definitions aside, the poem is light and bright. It's dancing along with words, it has a rhyme scheme of abcb which gives the impression of lightness, but also a break in the fabric, something slightly off. It doesn't hold itself accountable to the rhyme scheme that it breaks with a slant rhyme in the first stanza, and it gently glides through the rest of them. That's just two layers of this poem however. That's just looking at what the words mean, and how they're creating the feeling they create. We still have to look at punctuation.

As you can see, Dickinson can be rewarding whether you read the poem and study it, or just read it once, get the meaning, and enjoy that it's giving you a feeling. You can also tell a Dickinson poem from another poet because no one quite writes with the same capitalization scheme, or the heavy use of dashes. That being said, if you like this poem, check out more Dickinson!

Until next time!

Originality: A Curse

Written by DragonNoir < PM: >

Originality; “being able to express oneself in an independent and individual manner.” But to a writer, this word is a serial killer of story ideas. If one wants to be original, how is it possible? Maybe someone else already came up with the same or a similar idea to me. I tell you, ladies and gents, there is a difference between inspiration and plagiarism.

Plagiarism is the act of taking another person's piece of writing or idea and claiming it is yours. Inspiration, on the other hand, is when someone else's idea, or anything else in the outside world, inspires you to do or create something. Inspiration usually means you take something and, if it is something someone has created before you (like a book or poem), you would need to change the basis of the idea to ensure you're not using the same idea. It's like the “Hunger Games” series and the “Divergent” series; they're the same thing in some ways, but different from each other in other ways. Although I understand that the comparison isn't the best one, I think you know what I mean. To sum up, an idea you get from someone else will be plagiarism if you don't change a few things about it.

What if you come up with an idea by yourself and then find that a different author wrote a story around a similar idea to yours? You'd probably think something along the lines of “get a different idea”, but I'd say no to that. Instead of scrapping your idea, try making it unique. In fact, read what that author wrote and see what you could change, take out or add in to make it unique, whilst still making sure it's not something you either can't write or don't like writing. The key to a successful story is making sure you're loving what you're writing.

What if you're completely out of ideas and can't seem to find any inspiration? Don't despair; as stereotypical as it sounds, life will throw a lot of things at you. Maybe you'll find inspiration in those things? Or maybe you'll find out about something or someone who'll give you an idea? Whatever it will be, it'll come.

But don't wait. Although people say not every time is for writing, they’re wrong. Why wait with writing? You’ll most likely lose interest in what you were planning to write. Start searching, try new things, listen to new music, read new books, look at paintings or images you never looked at before. Do all of this, but don't wait for the idea to come to you by itself, because a second could be one too late and someone will realise a similar idea to you and you'll be back where you started.

To summarise, originality can be a real pain, especially if ideas don’t come easily to you. However, there are effective methods of being inspired and finding ideas which are unique to you. Start searching! Search YouTube or SoundCloud for new music, search Google Images for new sights; the limits are endless! The key is to not wait.

JUNE IS PRIDE MONTH!written by Iridescence < PM: >

The lovely month of June is pride month, a month showing pride for the LGBTQ+ community. Yet how did pride month start? How can we celebrate pride month? In this article, I will share the history of pride month and how it started.

So how did pride month start? According to the Library of Congress, we celebrate pride in the month of June to honor the the 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan. The riots were a tipping point for this liberation movement in the US. The riots were series of violent demonstrations by the gay community against a police raid. This took place on the morning of June 28 in 1969 at the Stonewall inn in Greenwich Village. The riots lasted three total days, from June 28 to July 1.

There were even a few key people in the riots that were very important and they are still remembered this day on. One person who took place in the riots, Dick Leitsch, was the executive director of the Mattachine Society of New York, which was a major gay rights group, according to newsmax.com. He was also the first gay journalist to write and give his perspective about the riots.

Because of this event, we celebrate pride by having pride parades, picnics, concerts, and so many other activities that celebrate love. Yet unfortunately, hate crimes towards this group are still here today.

Back on June 12, 2016, the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida was fatefully shot down. Millions of Americans woke up the next morning with the news and media flooding their devices with headlines like: Pulse Nightclub in Orlando Shot Down, 50 Dead. We shouldn't have to wake up being those first words we see. As humans, we were born to love and we learn to hate. Because of this tragic day, we hope to progress on as a society and learn that love and acceptance is the way to go.

Now, of course I'd like to leave dates and locations for pride parades around the world with this helpful calendar here: Gay Pride Calendar

To sum it up, June is the month of pride and we should celebrate it. Instead of belching out words of hate and disgust, welcome everyone with open arms and acceptance. Have fun celebrating pride!

THE WORD OF THE WEEK: Quixoticwritten by megsug < PM: >
Pronunciation: kwik-sot-ic

Part of Language: adj

Definition: Romantic or chivalrous to an impractical and unrealistic level

Used in a Sentence: Tired of the earl’s quixotic courting, she turned her eyes again to the stable boy who seemed to understand more of the real world.

Origin: First recorded in the early 1800s, the word is based off of the literary character Don Quixote.

Related words: Quixotal, adj; quixotically, adv;
half-quixotic, adj; unquixotical, adj

THE EVOLUTION OF MUSICwritten by Iridescence < PM: >

Music has really come a long way. The oldest known hymn was dated back to 1400 B.C. and music is still being created as we speak. We'll start in the 1900s, the turn of the century, when music was emerging from the Romantic Period and into the Modernism/Popular Period. In this decade, jazz was starting to become a genre. Scott Joplin, a very influential jazz artist was known for Ragtime, which is known for its syncopated, or "ragged" rhythms. Most Ragtime songs can be recognized from most cartoons, even. One of Joplin's most famous pieces is called "Maple Leaf Rag."



Not only jazz was popular in this decade, but there were also more classical-like songs. Claude Debussy is very famous for his piece "Clair De Lune."



In the 1910s and 1920s, jazz music was becoming more prevalent. After World War I was the Harlem Renaissance, which was in the 1920s. This was a famous art movement that took place in Harlem, New York. One of the most famous musicians in the 1920s was Louis Armstrong.

The 1930s was the Swing Era of jazz. One famous musician in this time period was Glenn Miller. The Glenn Miller Orchestra had a significant jazz sound, which made them one of the greatest bands of all time. Traditionally in jazz, you have saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and tubas, but he included a clarinet, which gave his music a very significant sound. Here is one of Miller's most popular pieces, "String of Pearls."



Of course jazz was not the only genre. In the 1940s, there were other genres like country and there were even some influences of latin music. After World War II, the crooner genre became popular. Frank Sinatra was a famous crooner in the 40s.



In the 1950s the rock genre started to emerge. Famous rock artists in the 50s included Buddy Holly, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley. Presley was a big pioneer and influence to rock music. Most elements used then are still used today.



The 1960s was a very diverse time of music. Rock was one the most, if not the most prevalent genre. Other sub-genres of rock even started to emerge. The most famous and most popular group in the 60s was The Beatles. The Beatles' music made rock music more famous. They were all very innovative and they wanted to make something different. They are most famous for the song "Hey Jude." Other artists in this decade that were also popular were The Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix.



In the 70s, disco music was becoming favored. Disco music uses elements of string instruments, usually a violin, and percussion instruments. Disco was the music that you wanted to dance to. Famous disco artists were Gloria Gaynor, The Bee Gees, and Diana Ross.



The music in the 80s and 90s decades were diverse. There were so many different genres, like rock, pop, country, and even more genres and sub-genres. Michael Jackson was a popular artist during this time. He came out with hits such as "Thriller" and "Black or White."



In the 2000s and today, music is even more diverse than it was before. Hip-hop, rap, country, rock, pop, and so many genres and sub-genres have been created. With music today, it's progressed on so far and has been evolving ever since the beginning of music.

100 WORDS DAILY: JULY

written by Princess Ink < PM: >

Hear that July’s Camp NaNo is coming up? What is your goal for Camp NaNo this year? If it’s to build good writing habits, @Lareine’s 100 Words Daily: July is perfect for you!

It's pretty easy to accomplish. After signing up, create a thread in the club 100 Words Daily and update your progress while you write a hundred words every day during July. If you can accomplish this task, you can win a prize! Pick from 400 points, 2 reviews, and a book cover.

The great thing about this challenge, which is different from NaPoWriMo and NaNoWriMo is that any kind of writing qualifies! The contest rules say:






Sound easy? But you'll going to have to write. Every. Single. Day. You can miss maybe a few days because of some life-related reason, but remember that the main focus of this is to write every day. No excuses if you're being lazy! But even if you’re busy, I bet you can carve out some ten to fifteen minutes to just do some writing. Perhaps you can do it right before bed or right after you wake up or during breaks at school or work.

I asked Lareine a few more questions about this event:



Lareine: So the question, in the beginning, was, "How can I make progress on my writing?"

I've always been a fan of good habits. Having good habits makes it easier to achieve what you want to -- for example, having a habit of exercising for 30 minutes a day makes it easier to stay active, or having a habit of cleaning your kitchen right after cooking makes it easier to keep tidy. In the same vein, having a habit of writing a little every day makes it easier to keep writing, and to keep moving forward with projects.

So the answer to the question was, "Write a little bit every day." How much is a little bit? That depends on who you are, how much you can write in one sitting, and how much free time you have to sit down and focus yourself. I thought that 100 words was achievable enough -- you can hit 100 words with a short poem! -- so I told myself, "We're going to write 100 words every day."

And then I had the idea to make it a club, so others could get involved and record their progress on whatever they were working on. After that, I decided to make an additional contest to get more people into the club, get more people interested in making good habits, and offer prizes to anyone interested in joining.



L: TO FULLY ASSIMILATE ALL OF YWS INTO MY EVIL HORDE I mean, uh, obviously I'm hoping to keep up my good habits and I'm hoping that this spreads to others so they get the idea that this isn't that hard. Writing 100 words a day could take you a minute or an hour, but the point is that you put in the creative effort to write that 100 words, and now that's an achievement that no one can take away from you.

Hopefully, in the future, I want to host more contests similar to 100 Words Daily, but maybe with a few different rules -- and better prizes! I'm just dipping my toes in the water right now to see what works, so this contest is really a guinea pig for future contest ideas in this same vein.



L: Oh, you know, stuff and things. I have a couple of novellas I'm going to try to make progress on -- I'm also attempting Camp NaNo in July with a writing goal of 20,000 words, so that's more incentive for me to hit my personal goal, which is actually 200 words a day at this point in time. Between my life, my job, and my family coming up in July, I think 200 words is feasible.



L: Writing every day is so, so important to making progress. You stay in the habit, you keep your skills sharp, and over time, it becomes part of your daily routine. Shower, brush your teeth, write 25 words, eat breakfast, write another 25, go to the beach... Or eat dinner, write 100 words, and go back for dessert. No matter what kind of person you are, it's possible for you to get 100 words a day -- or even more! -- and I hope this contest inspires you to push yourself into making a habit without burning out.

In the end, though, this contest is for people to have fun with. Test your patience, see what you're capable of in a month, and maybe you'll be writing every day in August, too. I'll be interested to see how many people keep up with 100 words between this contest and the next one I host!



So let's see how 100 Words Daily will turn out! I signed up so that I could strengthen my writing habits and I encourage you to do so, too. Just as a quick round-up, here are the links you'll need to check out to join this challenge:

-100 Words Daily: July

-100 Words Daily

This Week’s Link Round Up 6/17 written by megsug < PM: >

More fandoms and movie discussions on This Week’s Round Up.


There’s a fairly active club for all of you Undertale gamers out there. This doodad was on its wall:



If you understand the reference, you should join.


@FalconryGirl9086 is making book covers for 75 points a pop. Using Pages, Preview, and Photo on her Mac. My favorite example she offered was:



She’s already given @Snoink a banging cover for Heart of a God.


@TriSARAHtops wants to know what people’s bucket lists are made of after reading a few travel blogs. @Cflorence21 has a pretty good item to try to cross off someday:







Might be a little challenging depending on how old her favorite books are, but it would be fun to do!


@KAL can’t quite understand why Manchester by the Sea only has three stars on Amazon, so she wants to know what others thought when they watched it. @Dreamy thinks it may not be a movie for everyone because:







@Holysocks couldn’t even finish it. If you’ve seen it, jump into the conversation.

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