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.

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

1. FEATURED MEMBER INTERVIEW: NOBUNAGA
2. APRIL MADNESS RE-CAP
3. SOCIETY PAGES
4. NAPO THREAD HIGHLIGHTS
5. WORD SEARCH
6. THE EPICS: SONG OF MYSELF 1, WALT WHITMAN
7. LITERATURE LESSONS - DEATH OF A SALESMAN
8. SHAMELESS PLUGS
9. SUBSCRIBERS

FM INTERVIEW: NOBUNAGAwritten by Kanome < PM: >

It’s that time again where a member becomes the new Featured Member. This member has only been on the site for less than the month and she has already involved herself into the community. She has participated in Inspo for NaPo and has completed the challenge that was set in the nick of time. You can check out her Inspo Journal here . She has even joined NaPo for this year! She has been currently writing wonderful haikus. You can check them out Here . She’s even pushing herself to the limit by participating in camp nano, where her goal is to write 20K words for this month! Of course, I am talking about the wonderful and outspoken @Nobunaga! Welp, enough of me rambling. Let’s get to the interview, shall we?



Nobunaga: Yeah sure!



N: I was super surprised. I haven't even been here a month so it was so crazy. I'm really happy to be recognized though.



N: Oh yeah. More than I thought it would actually. I still missed a day though... But I don't think I would have even gotten this far without my inspo list. Speaking of, I need to post today…



N: I wish I could say yes, but I've fallen way behind on camp. It has helped me realize that, whenever NaNo comes around, I need to plan my days more carefully because I've just found that I have no time at all. I feel like I have a more realistic sense of what participating in NaNo really means.



N: Lol I just think I'm loud xD Plus I really jumped into things whenever I discovered this site. I was just so happy to see an actual community of people and I wanted to bad to be a part of that. And y'all put a lot of emphasis on reviewing so I tried to do a lot of that too!



N: Get involved! Be loud! Sign up for things that you're not sure you're up for. Trying is better than just doing nothing. And, of course, review a lot!



N: Thank y'all for accepting me here! I hope I can continue to be a good member :3



N: Thanks Kano lol

Nobu is also really fun to talk to. She does enjoy anime if you love to discuss anime. She is also into Studio Ghibli, which is also fun to discuss about! She is outspoken and just a fun person in general. If you wish to talk to her, just simply PM her. She is a nice person, so don’t be scared haha. She did bring up great tips on how to be FM if you want to be next. Simply just be part of the community, such as reviewing, NaPo, storybooks, and more! Push yourself to the limit. Challenge yourself in the events we have going on this month, like NaPo or camp nano. It’s never too late to join in on the fun!

APRIL MADNESS RE-CAP

written by alliyah < PM: >

We're here for another exciting update on the Madness - April Madness that is. During NaPo this April, poets are facing off head-to-head against other poets to see who will become this year's April Madness Champion. This week, the results for round 2 came in and it was another tight match-up between the poets.

Congratulations to @TheSilverFox @Audy and @Kaylaa who have all came victorious with their poet powers in the winners bracket after round 2 making them each semi-finalists. And also a congratulations to @LadyLizz @soundofmind and @Nobunaga who have all came away from the redemption round with a win. They will now face off to see who will go to round three against the three semi-finalists.

Check out the winning poems and more results as they come in live over at the April Madness Thread . And best of luck to all the poets competing in your next rounds!

SOCIETY PAGESwritten by EternalRain < PM: >

If you’ve been on the people tab at all this week, you no doubt have noticed the plethora of hashtags. #whatsmyname circled around the entirey of YWS! It’s a hashtag where, simply, you guess what someone’s name. There were some Irish names floating around… If you haven’t yet jumped on the bandwagon: why not?

#myhandwriting was created to show people what your handwriting looks like! If you’re up to it, write on a piece of paper to show others what your handwriting looks like and upload it to YWS.

#writingstrengths is a tag where you can describe your writing strengths (or have people tell you!). On the flipside is #writingweaknesses ! @LadyLizz said her writing strength is sarcastic characters and her weakness is sarcastic characters. Buuut, sarcastic characters are pretty cool.

#foodmetaphors @StellaThomas created a hashtag to explain what you look like using food metaphors! She created this because of common writing where many people tend to use food to describe someone’s appearance. If you want to take the challenge on, use this hashtag!

Of course, if you ever have any idea for a hashtag, share it! They’re tons of fun and great ways to get to know people or interact on the site.

This week, @neptune got a succulent plant at a garage sale, @Mea finished Warcross by Marie Lu, and @Elinor has completed watching 50 out of 90 of the Best Picture movie winners.

And some more random tidbits from some YWSers lives:

@Sonder found a website where you can find music from any country in any decade! If you’re interested in checking it out, here it is.

@outvaders tried to cook a hashbrown but ended up with mashed potatoes

@Nobunaga, about NaPo, states how it is turning into National Haiku Writing Month for her.

@Carlito went to a concert several days ago and is going to Honduras next week!

If you have anything interesting going on, be sure to share it through a wall post, and you might be featured in the next society pages!

NAPO THREAD HIGHLIGHTS

written by alliyah < PM: >

The NaPo threads are still going strong, and we have another full list of highlights from this week! Make sure to stop on over to the NaPo Zone and take a look at the rest of the lovely NaPo Threads .

I write in the sand,
imagining that the waves
will carry the words to my heart
that beats wildly in your chest.

@niteowl "i send my love from across the sea"





@Mea "a collection of sounds"





@StellaThomas "God's face is seen best in the dark"





@Kaylaa "Harbinger"

i can
see your
name in the
cracked pavement and
it has more spaces
in it than
i remember.

@Sachiko April 12 poem





@Arcticus "Day #11 "





@bluewaterlily "April 13th poem"





@Sonder "10."

That wraps up another week of NaPo highlights, remember if there's a few lines of NaPo that you come across that you'd like to see featured here, send a PM my way and it might make it into the next article. And if you see the "Comments Welcome" tag, be sure to leave your comments on the authors' threads, I'm sure they'd love to hear from you.

WORD SEARCH written by killeham< PM: >

Hello everyone and welcome to the weekly word search!



I hope you have fun and feel free to send in your completed searches! Great job on last week’s @Aley!

For future reference, if you have any themes you’d like to see, please send me your ideas! I want you lovely readers to enjoy doing these searches, so by all means, give some advice on what you’d be more willing to complete! Thanks!

That’s all for now, folks! Be sure to finish the searches, since there might be something waiting in your PMs. Until next time!

THE EPICS: SONG OF MYSELF 1, WALT WHITMANwritten by Aley < PM: >

I want to try something a little different than what I've been doing, and mostly it's a selfish reason why. I want to actually read the whole thing of some of these epics I've loved to look at for a long time, so I am going to try to read and write about them with you. To start with, I've chosen "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman because the cantos are short. So short, they're considered "stanzas" rather than cantos, but I've already talked about that somewhere.

How this will be set up is I'll provide a section of an epic, and then give an opinion in relationship to what I know about the epic, the writer, the previous parts, and potentially even future parts after you have had a chance to form an impression.

If you read along with me, I hope that you'll learn a little bit about analysis of poetry along the way. I'll give you some questions to think about before I dive into my analysis. All texts will be copied from public domain and I'll give sources to anything I reference for analysis.

Song of Myself

1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

Questions

Is this the tone you're expecting form an epic?

What sort of tone do you think it has?

Who do you think the speaker is? Is it Whitman? Is it someone else?

Does it remind you of anything or anyone you've read before?

Well, to break this nut open, first give yourself time to answer the questions above, think about them ruminate on those answers, then keep reading.

Analysis

When I first ran into this poem, this was as far from the tone I was expecting from an epic as ever, but I was lucky enough to encounter it in a poetry English class, so we covered "what makes an epic" and things like "what have they done" and it really does follow the formula. It is an epic. Chapter 1, so to speak, is super short, but it's an epic.

The difference here is that the epic is taking on the tone of the poet. This is more confessional than the epics of the past which can absorb themselves in mythology. Epics were used to epic stories, not epic one's own life, and that's basically what Whitman is doing here. The tone is so different from our expectations because this epic is about an ordinary man, an ordinary life, or a somewhat ordinary one anyway.

What happened was Whitman was around transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau who valued personal expression above all else. They believed in expressing oneself no matter how complex or mundane, and that purity lay in exposing nature for all it was, in living with nature sort of thing. They're the ones who put the focus on internal thoughts and cogitation.

Anyway, back to this. It makes sense once you see him as a man who is trying to live up to this idea of expressing everything we think with pen to get true art. His first verse is basically explaining his point of view, and drawing on his motivation, which is himself. "I celebrate myself" meaning this whole thing is going to be about him, his thoughts, his ponders, his good, his evil, all of it. He explains, "I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,/ Nature without check with original energy" and means that no matter what is thought, felt, or done, he's going to lay it bear for the world to see in this poem.

Interestingly enough, he actually follows through with "Hoping to cease not till death," meaning he kept writing "Song of Myself" with additions for a while. There are numerous versions which gradually get longer the later the edition was. Unsurprisingly, his poems weren't that popular when he was alive, but they've since gotten recognition since he's been dead.

So overall, this is an introduction of the poem. He's saying that he's not going to stop writing for as long as he lives, and the whole thing is going to be a "celebration of himself" or, incredibly navel gazing. From what I've read so far, it does get pretty deep in there.

Until Next Time!

LITERATURE LESSONS - DEATH OF A SALESMANwritten by killeham< PM: >

Hey everyone! Welcome to this week’s lesson, on the play that is something else - Death of a Salesman.

This was penned in 1949 by Arthur Miller, a playwright seemed to be one of the greatest in the 20th century by many performance-goers.

His earlier play All My Sons had been fairly popular, but nothing compared to how Salesman erupted into.

Salesman is set in the 40s, and mostly in Brooklyn, New York.

A couple of times, during the movie at least, the characters make reference to the changing city around them. It was interesting to see firsthand how much the country was turning to industrial means, over simpler times.

In a way, that plays into one of the main conflicts of Salesman - there’s this growing divide between the older generation of Willy Loman, the father and long-time salesman, and his sons Biff and Happy.

As the play progresses, the reader is able to make an ever clearer assessment of the characters, since they all appear in situations to reveal their thoughts.

I must admit I didn’t read the play; I only watched the 1985 film, but it was really fascinating to witness.

One thing that Arthur Miller wields repeatedly is the use of flashbacks, which led to confuse me, for a time. Once I kept watching, however, I got used to it.

At one point, there was a flashback within a flashback! Maybe that was the inspiration for Inception. You never know.

This is definitely a more mature play to watch or read, but I still hope this piqued your interest! Maybe read it down the road in a few years.

That’s all for now, everyone! Please stay tuned for next week’s lesson!

SHAMELESS PLUGS

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SUBSCRIBERS

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