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. A REVIEW MONTH INTERVIEW: LADYBIRD
2. LITERACY SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW: ARCTICUS
3. REVIEW TIPS
4. TWO CENTS: PARTS OF A POEM
5. HOW IT FEELS TO BE IN LMS: FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT
6. POP CULTURE CORNER - BAD DISNEY CULTURE
7. RIDDLE MASTER
8. THIS MONTH IN HISTORY
9. A POETRY MOMENT: LANGSTON HUGHES "STILL HERE"
10. SHAMELESS PLUGS
11. SUBSCRIBERS

A REVIEW MONTH INTERVIEW: LADYBIRD

written by alliyah < PM: >

In case you've been avoiding the people tab and various forums and missed it... Review Month has officially begun and we're a week into the events! Review Month is the month long review month extravaganza where users try to get 50 reviews written, or whatever their personal review goals are, as well as make progress towards the site goal which this year is set at 1250. We heard advice and a game-plan draft from @BlueAfrica in Last Week's Interview and this week we were able to catch another fabulous reviewer who's been active over Review Month, @LadyBird. LadyBird was one of the Review Month victors last year, and is making fast progress this month at over 20 reviews! Let's see what information and tips she has to share.


LadyBird: There's the generalized answer of "I want another star". Because I do want another star but my eventual reasoning came down to "I want to help people."
My current strategy is to review old works of poetry that never got two reviews, just due to whatever thing within the system. Someone asked me if it was really within the spirit of reviewing because isn't reviewing meant to be done to help people?
And it is. The person I write the review to may never read my review but there's going to be other people reading my reviews. Other reviewers. Other writers.
People who can study the poetry pieces that I pick out and the reviews that I write to fit with each corresponding and unique scenario.

Whoops that's a lot of emotions and justifications, I just wanted to explain my plans.


L: I plan on doing at least 50 reviews but I would ideally like to do about 80, just so I can make it into the top 50 on the leader board. That was originally my end of year goal but it's been accelerated by certain events that happened in the past few months.


L: Really it's finding something to review. I found my sweet spot with reviewing underrated poetry and/or neglected poetry, and so that's really the goal for every reviewer during RevMo. I certainly review lots of other things but now that I've found this niche mission, I'm enjoying the adventure in it.


L: Don't focus too much on the numbers.

With reviewing in general, people do tend to get bogged down with the flashing leader board and wanting their name high in lights. But when they do that, they often neglect the other parts of reviewing, such as helping people. If you're rushing for a high review count vs actually taking the time for meaningful advice, the spot on the leader board doesn't mean as much.


L: Have fun?
Might sound weird in what is considered to sometimes be a battle to the death competition.
Read the review tips.
Add your own review tips.
Just take it easy and help however you can.

S: Thanks Lizz!
By the way if you're curious why some usernames around the site, including LadyBird's have distinctive shade of blue currently, and would like more information about how you too can get a fresh coat of pain on your username you can get more information at the RevMo Username Color Challenge .

Well that's about all we have for this week's interview! LadyBird has been busy making a variety of Review Banners to suit all interests and humors over at that the RevMo Club if you want to check out or borrow some of her work.

Finally, if you're participating in Review Month, whether you're planning on tackling 10 or 50 reviews and would like to share about your experience with Squills - send me a PM during September!

LITERACY SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW: ARCTICUSwritten by WritingPrincess< PM: >

On YWS, @Arcticus is one of the amazing poets. This week, their poem give your love time to grow got into the Literacy Spotlight with a total of 24 likes! I caught them for a quick interview about their poetry writing.


Arcticus: Sure, why not.


A: My poems, just like every poet's poems, are the products of the thoughts that pass my mind during the process of writing, and that is why I wrote this poem. The idea of taking your time with love, and the idea of love as an unhurried, gradual process between two people is what I wanted to write about.


A: I've been writing poetry since the age of eight or maybe nine or ten, but I started writing more often as a teen.


A: Everyone has their own way of writing poetry, so it's hard for me to come up with tips that would be helpful to everyone. But I can think of a few general tips. However, I'm not a poetry expert, so take these with a pinch of salt:

1. Observe
Look around yourself for imagery that catches you attention and gets you thinking. I always tell people that to be a good poet, you have to be a good observer first. You have to be able to enjoy observing people, nature, objects, ideas, everything.
Observing also means observing yourself. Observation has both internal and external connotations. It also means looking within yourself for emotions and feelings that can be translated and expressed as poetry.

2. Make poetry your lifestyle
Try to write a few lines daily. It doesn't have to be high quality poetry every day, simply the attempt counts. In the long run, it wires your brain to write and be consistent about it. Good poetry will come out every now and then if you write consistently and make this act of expressing yourself in words your lifestyle. Keep a small notepad for this and carry it everywhere, or simply type it into any device that you carry with you all the time.

3. Don't discard drafts.
Don't worry if you can't come up with a poem in one go, leave the draft as it is, revisit it later. It will serve both as a prompt, as well as a starting point for further writing.
I hope this helps.


A: If you can write, it's a gift. Never give up on it, no matter what you end up doing in life, keep this thing close to yourself. Keep it safe.
That's all!

Thanks very much for the interview and for those tips! Yes, it is review month, but without any new works to review it could get a little boring. So grab a pen and some inspiration, and start writing poetry!

REVIEW TIPSwritten by TheWeirdoFromBeyond< PM: >

Have you visited the back of the Green Room lately? If yes, you would know that it is filled with chapters from novels, a few of them over a month old!

#reviewtips has been spreading through the website thanks to @alliyah, @StellaThomas, @Mea, @Holysocks @LadyBird, @Carlito and @Kazumi who have given their tips for reviewing, and others who reshared these posts on their walls.

So here is some of the best reviewing advice that is sure to help The Knights Of The Green Room , the members of The Better Review Bureau and other reviewers to clear out the back of the Green Room.

Holysocks says:





And Carlito seems to agree:






StellaThomas says:






and Kazumi agrees, posting the following






According to LadyBird






I couldn't agree with you more.

And as Mea already said:







And when you do receive a review, make sure to show you feel grateful, as StellThomas said:







And that's it for now folks, but there are more tips out there. If you have your own reviewing advice, make a post with the #reviewtips on your walls. We still have time to complete our revmo goals, and your advice might help someone out

TWO CENTS: PARTS OF A POEMwritten by Aley < PM: >

Since it is Review Month and a lot of people are probably looking hungrily at poetry to review, I thought I'd share some insight about what makes up a poem so you can review those parts in particular and try to judge whether you like what the author has done in that aspect of their poem or not.

The parts of a poem are basically the message, the sound, the emotion, and the look, at its basics.

The Message

The message is often known as the theme of the poem and it is composed of both the denotative and connotative meanings. There are many ways to construct a message as well including the uses of poetic devices like metaphor, simile, allusion, alliteration, rhyme, rhythm, and so on. These are the ways a poet attempts to deliver whatever it is they're trying to say, sometimes. Sometimes a poem might be writing in a straightforward way where they don't use these things in obvious formats, but they still may be using them, and even if they don't, it may still be a poem.

So let's look at what all that means.

Theme is basically the message of the poem. The poems message can be a direct dictionary translation of what is actually written in the poem, that's the denotative meaning. The reverse is the connotative meaning. For instance, if you look at a poem about loss like "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop , the denotative meaning of the poem is simply that loss doesn't bother her, but if you read into the connotation of the language, you can see that loss bothers her, especially near the end of the poem where she's writing notes to force the words out. This poem is powerful because of that reversal. That's the connotative meaning, the true feeling behind the words, like dog versus mutt, or house versus home, or father versus dad. All of these words have slightly different feelings to them, a mutt is usually looked down upon, a house sounds cold, father is incredibly formal, these are connotations.

About the rest of it: Poetic devices are one of the ways that messages are written, and they have a huge part to play in poetry, but they aren't all that poetry is, so here's an article if you're curious.

The Sound

If you read a poem out loud and it's just hard to get your mouth around the words in sequence, that can mean that the poet didn't really craft the poem that well, or that there was an intentional jumble of words there to create a certain emotional response like frustration. This can be a huge part of rhythm in a poem. The way that the poem sounds, and the beat that the poem has, or lacks, can create different emotional responses from the reader.

The sound is also highly influenced by poetic devices which are oriented around sound like assonance, consonance, rhyme, alliteration, and so on. Check out this article for more information on that!

The way that the poem sounds, the amount of breath you take, the speed of the poem, and the way that the words flow through the lines or stop around the lines can all make a poem feel smooth, jarring, relaxing, stressful, happy, sad, and so on, so this really has a lot to do with the emotion in the poem. If a poem is boring to read, it's not going to get read, so this is an important part of the poem for the general attraction to it as well.

The Emotion

Speaking of the emotion in a poem, that's a huge part of what makes a poem a poem. Sometimes a poem doesn't go for the emotion, sometimes it goes for telling a story, informing people about something, or even just crafting words together to sound pretty like painting a picture of nature. Those cases don't rely heavily on their emotional content to really make a memory for the reader, but other types of poems, and sometimes those types of poems mentioned before, do use emotion to try to stick into the memory of a reader. If you read a poem and you don't have any emotional response, chances are the author should at least be informed about that because they might have been going for a particular emotion and you just didn't pick up on it.

Using poetic devices, like I've been mentioning all along, are a great way to create emotion in poetry, but there are other general writing devices people use too, like creating suspense through repetition, or blacking out information. Just about any writing technique you use for a novel or short story can be used in a poem too, it's just condensed.

The Look

Surprisingly enough, the way the poem lays on the page actually plays a part in how a poem makes you feel and interpret the words. For instance, if a poem lays words above and below one another and offsets them, that can imply a juxtaposition between the two words, it can give them a new relationship!

Line breaks are especially important as a poem should give any particular reader a chance to savor each and every line. There shouldn't be any lines that don't add value to the poem when taken away from the poem, and as lines don't need to have particular sentence requirements, a line can be as short or long as it wants to be. Usually shorter lines when surrounded by longer lines hold more weight, or more importance in a poem, and the reverse is also true. If a line is super long in a very short poem, it's usually because it's supposed to be more important.

Quick How To Review Poetry

It's important when reviewing poetry to be honest with the author and tell them how you're feeling, what you interpret their poem to mean, what you see as potential alternative meanings through the locations of words, rhymes, and so on, and most importantly, what you liked about the poem.

It's really easy to write a bunch of poems all at once, but if you don't know what to keep doing, then you might write 50 poems in 50 different styles. Telling a poet what you liked about the poem gives them a chance to focus on something they can do well and use it again in future poems while they trade out what isn't working.

Until Next Time!

HOW IT FEELS TO BE IN LMS: FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHTwritten by shaniac < PM: >

Writing for LMS is the equivalent of walking into a lion cage unprepared but somehow making it out alive just in time to fight another vicious animal. And for someone who is relatively new to whole thing, it is almost ten times more terrifying given that you have to write a chapter per week, which if someone had told me before I joined YWS that this was a thing, I would've just laughed because I didn't see myself as someone who could ever write 1k per week.

It is an insane idea and I love insane ideas. Not only has LMS been terrifying in a retrospective manner but also helped me figure out how to write better. When I first joined YWS, I struggled mostly on leaping over that boundary of feeling comfortable about posting work online. That and constantly worrying about if my work was going to be entertaining to others that read it. I didn't expect my murder mystery to really take flight and gathered such a large audience.

The idea of doing LMS is challenging. You panic for weeks without much of an idea of what you are going to be doing. You kind of expect the unexpected when you're writing since the characters write through you. I haven't been writing for long - nearly 2 years coming up - and LMS has helped me improve slightly and kind of understanding the meaning of "this is the first draft and you can always go back and edit it".

In the long run, I think LMS will be a good fight that I will try my best at winning. I do want to end this with a good note and say good luck to everyone who is doing LMS - may you continue being great and I hope you the best of luck with your novels.

POP CULTURE CORNER - BAD DISNEY CULTURE

Written by LadyBird < PM: >
TW: rape, bad things

I started to talk about this a bit last week and if you don't remember the particular line, feast your eyes upon this quote.






Rape.
Yes, I did go there.

There's plenty of people to question me in my opinions of how I treat Disney and I'm waiting to hear the reply. But the aspect of rape still heavily exists in Disney culture, mainly through the princess set up. That every princess/equal character is a damsel in distress and just because the guy saves her, he has the right to her.

It's not as apparent in current movies, so let's turn our sights to the first princess movie Disney made: Snow White.

Now Snow White as a fairy tale has a super long and gorey back story. And like most other fairy tales with multiple versions about princesses, rape is involved.
Just think about what the solution to the sickness was?
Kissing a girl without permission, while she was unconscious.
Yep sure, let's keep living in that fairy tale world.

And it brings the further question of what qualifies for the fairy tale dream?
- How far can it be taken?
- How long can you use it as an excuse?
- Why do people so desperately strive to have it?

There are far too many people I know who wish to live in a different era, mainly women. Women who somehow don't realize the realism of even a recent time, much less dreaming of a far away castle in the 15th century.

It might seem cheap but I blame Disney for this.
Disney has been making movies with damsels in distress for almost a century and have certainly had the most impact.
The plot cliche exists in other studios like Universal, which made so many billions off the structure in their horror movies.

But why I blame Disney is because of who it's targeting. A lot about this series of articles that I'm starting to work on, is

Young children.
Young girls and boys.
People who are seeing inappropriate situations as okay, such as the Snow White scenario above. To be fair, there's a lot of ways to dispute my opinion on this. The most common is by saying "what about the involvement of parents" and "parent will explain that all of this is wrong".

But again, that's going to be a generational thing. I was never informed as a child that you shouldn't randomly kiss people in the woods who are knocked out and under funeral glass. I was taught stranger danger but not in the application of fairy tales.
Fairy tales basically discredit a lot of those "lesson to be learned" stories.
[And then a completely separate article for another time is how stranger danger isn't very accurate in application to missing person cases, but that's a whole other ball park.]

Disney does provide some good things, like believing in your dreams.
But even this notion turns toxic easily.
I don't mean to say there's nothing good to see in Disney (because I do see them trying to improve in the 21st century). There's just a lot of material to talk about from the last century.

That's all the commentary I have for now.
Until next week with the backstory of Sleeping Beauty,
Lizz

RIDDLE MASTERwritten by WritingPrincess< PM: >

Welcome to the second article of Riddle Master!
This week I have received a total of 5 responses, from @Mea, @TheBlueCat, @BlueAfrica, @Cloudkid and @snowmonkey9. Thank you so much for participating, and well done as you all got at least one riddle correct!

Last week’s riddles and their answers are:

What is the 8-letter word that can have a letter taken away and still make a word. Take another letter away and it can still make a word. You can repeat that until you are down to one letter. What is the word?

Starting/starling, staring, string, sting, sing, sin, in, I

The more you take, the more you leave behind. What is it?

Footsteps

What has a head and a tail but no legs?

A coin

Name three consecutive days without using the words Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, yesterday, today or tomorrow.

Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day

What comes once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in one thousand years?

The letter ‘m’



Now for this week’s riddles...

What goes up but never comes down?

David’s father has three sons: Snap, Crackle and .......?

Where does Christmas come before Thanksgiving?

You live in a single story house where everything is painted yellow. What colour would the stairs be?

What belongs to you, but other people use it more then you?

As before, if you know the answer to even one of these riddles, head to the Google Form here . Have fun riddling this week!

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY

written by alliyah < PM: >

So here we are in September, otherwise known as Review Month! The last two months we started the column "this month in history" covering some of the major happenings from YWS Septembers of olde. Let's take a look at what was happening on YWS two, five, and ten years ago this month!

TWO YEARS AGO: YWS September, 2016

Featured Members
Two years ago, we had a very special set of featured members over the month of September. There was the novel writing, reviewer, storybooker extrodiaire @reikann and some other user named @alliyah. You can read the lounge posts of those announcements here: Featured Member Announcement and Featured Member Announcement.

A Past Review Month
YWS held their first annual Review Month in September of 2015, at first the event was called "National Review Writing Month". But as things go on YWS, by now we've shortened that name to just five letters - RevMo. In 2016, eight reviewers were able to accomplish the goal of writing 50 reviews during September. They were @Dracula, @Mea, @Kaylaa, @BlueAfrica, @Megrim, @TheSilverFox, @SunsetTree, and @Elijah. You can read more about their accomplishments in the Review Spotlight Thread from that year.

Prose Highlight
Two years ago, you might remember a popular series of writings called "Frost Lark News" that took the form of short news entries with different little narratives and entertaining news snippets worked in. @Sheyren started this series in late August of 2016 and the series actually went on for an entire year. In September of 2016, Sheyren's "Frost Lark News" was extremely popular, taking five of the "top ten chapters" in the Literary Spotlights for that month. This series certainly made it's mark on the site, and you can still check them out today.

FIVE YEARS AGO: YWS September, 2013

Featured Members
Five years ago, we had another great set of Featured Members who made their mark on the site. There was @OliveDreams who eventually would become a Junior Moderator and also @AdventurerDaniel who has been involved in many storybooks throughout the years.

Poem Spotlight
Back in September 2013, a popular poem making the rounds was written by @Tenyo. With 25 likes and 8 reviews a lot of folks seemed to connect to the nostalgic imagery and narrative. You can still read Tenyo's poem if you want to check out what people were reading back in 2013, Rain doesn't fall in the desert .

Event Spotlight
2013 had a lot going on, as YWS frequently does! One of the unique events I saw as I was turning through the history books, was a music themed contest that took place in September of that year. @Iggy hosted A Musical Challenge , where participants had to write short story based on a song they were assigned. What a neat challenge! In total 10 people partipated in the challenge, and @Blackwood went away with the win, with @TriSARAHtops and @CowLogic following close behind in 2nd and 3rd place respectively.

TEN YEARS AGO: YWS September, 2008

Greeter and Instructor of the Month
Back when YWS had Greeters and Instructors, they also had "Greeters of the Month" and "Instructors of the Month". @Demeter (now a distinguished moderator) was recognized in September of 2008 as a Greeter of the Month a distinction she earned more than once in fact! And then @alwaysawriter earned her spot as Instructor of the Month.

Storybook Spotlight
Storybooks have long been an exciting part of the YWS community and activity, though they aren't always highlighted like some of the other works on the site. None-the-less they're a significant part of many people's activity on the site where lot's of great writing, characters, and plots are developed. In September 2008 one of the Storybooks that had a lot of traction was Your Thoughts are Not Safe . Started by @[jacob]blackisthenewpink, the basic premise involved a group of people who could read minds and were involved in a mission started from a Yahoo Answers post. Many storybookers were involved like @Rydia, @RoryLegend, @Bella, @StolenHearts. and other folks. The storybook ran strong for the whole month of September reaching 9 pages.

This site is sure full of neat history, users, and writings! If there's something you remember from October of 2016, 2013, or 2008 in YWS history send me a PM and I'll be sure to include it in next month's history issue! Until next time, I'll be searching through the archives for our next month's features.

A POETRY MOMENT: LANGSTON HUGHES "STILL HERE"written by Aley < PM: >

In this poetry moment we examine one of Langston Hughes' poems titled "Still Here" for your enjoyment. Like the last one of these, the purpose is just to enjoy a poem. If you're someone who likes to analyze things, I've also included a brief contemplation on my part about how it's relevant to everyone who reads it.

Still Here
I've been scared and battered.
My hopes the wind done scattered.
Snow has frizz me, sun has baked me.
____Looks like between 'em
____They done tried to make me
Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'—
____But I don't care!
____I'm still here!

I feel like everyone needs a fight song at some point in their lives, just a moment to shout at the stars that the universe has yet to take you down, and that you're still there, still living and struggling and suffering because you've yet to give up. We're all struggling with something, whether that's our personal empathy for others sorrows, or our struggles life puts upon us, it doesn't matter. We all struggle against something, and all of us sometimes need a chance to scream at those feelings and things which try to push us down. We're still here.

SHAMELESS PLUGS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

We love to run articles and questions, but we also love to advertise for you. Let people know about your new blog, a poem or story you’re looking for reviews on, or a forum thread you’d like more traffic on through Squills’ Shameless Plugs. PM @SquillsBot with the exact formatting of your advertisement, contained in the following code.

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Review Month Review Contest

@ReviewBuddy is hosting a Reviewing Contest along with the Better Review Bureau. Submit your best poetry and prose review anytime over the month of September for a chance at the prizes.

1st Place - 700 points
2nd Place - 500 points
3rd Place - 300 points



More information here: Review Month Review Contest .

THE COMMANDER:
CALLING ALL KNIGHTS



The Commander is challenging all Knights of the Green Room to pledge their support to reviewing 10 Green Room Reviews during the September Review Month.

For the good of the Green Room will you support this noble cause?

Tales from the Airwaves
Have Arrived

That's all folks~ Now send us yours.

SUBSCRIBERS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

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