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. BIRTHDAY ACTIVITIES
2. TABLE OF MASTERMINDS
3. THIS MONTH IN HISTORY: BIRTHDAY EDITION
4. POETIC MADNESS
5. NEW ARRIVALS
6. WRITERS CORNER
7. SHAMELESS PLUGS
8. SUBSCRIBERS

BIRTHDAY ACTIVITIES

written by alliyah < PM: >



YWS is turning 14 on November 14th! *Throws a pile of confetti* And you know what that means? There are tons of Birthday Week activities you can get involved in to celebrate.

Here's a quick re-cap of the events that are taking place:

Birthday Cake Badge and Birthday Wishes
The YWS moderators have baked cake for the party, and they want to share. If you wish YWS a "Happy Birthday" before the end of Birthday Week (November 14th) you will receive a limited edition Birthday Cake Badge. You can also use this thread to share some of your favorite things about YWS and tag some friends to share the cake with you.

14 Word Story Contest
This event is hosted by @DarkPandemonium and @Tenyo and all it takes to participate is about a dozen words. You read that right! In 14 words try to write your best story and enter it in the contest. There are some great point prizes for the winners so enter your own or check out the entries at the thread above. Entries are due November 14th.

YWS Birthday Collaboration Contest
This is an incredibly neat event, hosted by a group of regular members on the site including @CoffeeCat , @TheWeirdoFromBeyond , and several other members that make up the Table of Masterminds! The Collaboration Contest challenges members to pair up with another person and see what they can write together. More details about the event and how to get involved are in the link above, entries will be due November 19th.

Poetry Workshopping Event
@Casanova and @alliyah are hosting a Poetry Workshopping event for Birthday Week. You can post your entries by the end of today, and then get in a short piece of feedback by the end of November 14th. More details in the above link. Please bring your birthday hats.

Monkey Versus Dragons 2018 Event
A YWS Classic event, hosted annually by @Rydia in a quiz style format. This event may actually be completed by the time that this article is posted, but feel free you can read the results of what's sure to be an epic battle between the legendary Dragons and Monkeys up above. My money is on the Dragons this year, but I heard the Kangaroos might make a surprise re-appearance to defend their title.

14 Lines for 14 Years
Be on the lookout for @Mea's Birthday Sonnet event. All you need to do to enter is write a sonnet about a topic of your choosing and then enter it into the contest thread. According to Mea there will be flexibility on the strictness of the form, so what are you waiting for? Go ahead and try one! Entries will be due midnight November 14th according to your respective time zone.

Birthday Radio Show
And last, but certainly not least, @Nate will be hosting a YWS Radio Show on YWS's Birthday (November 14th). There hasn't been a radio show for some time now, so this is sure to be a lot of fun!

And there you have it! A week full of YWS Celebration, I hope you all have the chance to get involved with at least one of these opportunities.

TABLE OF MASTERMINDSwritten by TheWeirdoFromBeyond< PM: >

With YWS's birthday only a week away, @Tenyo, @CoffeeCat, @Oxara, @WritingPrincess and myself have been planning the events, and here is what we have so far.

• There is the possibility of a workshop for a collab hosted by Tenyo and someone else (if you can help host, make a post saying so here: Table Of Masterminds- Wall .
• Having a Secret Haunt, where you post a ghost picture on someone's wall and then leave a name with it, and that person then has to post a ghost picture on the new person's wall and leave a different name for the new person to haunt.
• A contest of a collab between old YWSers and new ones. Contest details are being figured out here: Table Of Masterminds- Forums
• A two way Q/A between mods and the rest of the members. Post your questions here: Table Of Masterminds- Forums
• As prizes, we are giving away review coupons, so if you'd like to volunteer for that, post here: Table Of Masterminds- Forums

If you'd like to help with any of this, join the club here: Table Of Masterminds- YWS Birthday 2018

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY: BIRTHDAY EDITION

written by alliyah < PM: >

In case you missed all of the neat events on the site, and haven't heard yet, Young Writers Society is celebrating their Fourteenth Birthday this week! For this special Squills Birthday edition, I took a little something from each year of YWS's history to celebrate where it's been!

November 2004
YWS all began on a fateful November day in 2004 when @Nate officially opened the doors of Young Writers Society. He recruited members from other writing sites and soon a community started forming. By the first week, the site had 32 users and over 600 posts. Read more about those early days in Nate's One Week Old Statistics

November 2005
YWS's first birthday celebration featured the addition of new forums, a chat room meet and greet, and a scavenger hunt! @niteowl celebrated the day by making a giant emoji gift with twelve sets of emoji collections, one set for each of YWS's months of existence. You can admire that in the
2005 Birthday Festivities . Nate also released an Autumn Newsletter to let users know about changes on the site.

November 2006
This was a difficult year for YWS, as the site actually closed temporarilly, However by YWS's birthday it was back and running. In 2006, the long tradition of having a thread to reminisce about YWS's birthday and existence continued led by @Firestarter
Birthday Appreciation Thread . This practice was so appreciative, that users even took to jumping back into the 2006 thread in 2013 in a show of nostalgia. You might also find the The Official Unofficial Guide to YWS posted by @Gannon in 2006 to be an interesting blast from the past to see more about the site's practices back then.

November 2007
One of the most contentious and historic moments of 2007 on YWS, and arguably the world, was the election for which Mascot would be supreme on the site. The end vote totals were extremely close between Dragons and Monkeys, 103 vs 106 respectively. You can read everyone's in-depth reasoning for this difficult selection here though the topic is locked, so don't try to change the course of history!

November 2008
YWS had a lot of new activity in 2008, in fact in March 23 was the first day that YWS had more than 1000 posts in a day. Different changes were made to review counts and also to the site's appearance. I highly recommending checking out this series of screenshots of different ways YWS has looked throughout the years which includes 2006, 2007, and 2008. YWS Over the Years .

November 2009
In 2009, YWS continued the tradition of having a birthday appreciation post page here which featured many dancing elephants. And that's all I have to say about 2009.

November 2010
A big change in 2010, was it was the last year of formal Greeters and Instructors. Still YWS continued to thrive and grow. Users voiced their appreciation for the site here . While @lilymoore wrote a poem for YWS' 6th birthday
Happy Sixth Birthday

November 2011
2011 featured a Series of Birthday Challenges and Events . Including a story contest which was won by @CelticNoir, @Calligraphy, and @Ignorance. @Mikko also celebrated their love of the site by writing a birthday acrostic poem.

November 2012
The 2012 Birthday Bash included a Scavenger Hunt by @Rydia that was all about YWS Members. For more nostalgia you can check out the YWS 2012 Yearbook .

November 2013
In 2013 Birthday week officially became the YWStival and members reflected on their favorite YWS Memories .

November 2014
2014 featured a new Peoples Page and also the introduction of accessible work statistics for each work posted. In honor of YWS's Birthday there was a contest for writing Birthday related stories or poetry, @Dutiful's poetic skills won the day with their poem, Little YWS Turns Ten .

November 2015
In 2015, the big news that shook the site came from @Iggy that Nate was stepping down from the site. This turned out to be an April Fools Joke of course! YWS's eleventh birthday featured some of the Classic YWS BDay activities, like scavenger hunts and Monkeys vs. Dragons. It also featured a Birthday Storybook . For more of the 2015 highlights you can check out 2015 in Review .

November 2016
YWS continued to grow throughout 2016 as could be expected from the trend! And the 2016 Birthday Celebration featured several events catering to different time zones. Users came from all over the world and Nate put together a series of maps to show the different locations. Where did YWSers come from in 2016 which is really something crazy to think about when you look back to the first week of the site when there were less than 50 members, to now when YWS has spread so far.

November 2017
In 2017 @Yewis turned 13 years, making the site finally old enough to join the site, or however that works. Entering the teen-years, @BigBrother came with a list of demands for YWS Birthday Week along with other relevant festivities .
For more 2017 nostalgia you can check out the 2017 Yearbook .

And there you have it! A little bit of YWS history from these very eventful 14 years. Happy Birthday YWS, and may you have many many many more!

POETIC MADNESSwritten by TheWeirdoFromBeyond< PM: >

Prompt 3
A special memory

This week’s prompt is to write a poem about a memory special to you. It could be the biggest thing that happened in your life, or that one moment that is not special on the outside, but holds a very important meaning to you (and maybe a second person who shared that incident with you). The poem can be of any style and a rhyme scheme is not necessary, completely up to you. The last day for submission is Friday, whatever time zone you are in, PM me your entries or post them through the publishing center/your wall and tag me.

Featured Poems
Prompt 2
Out Of Reach

By @alliyah





Make sure to let the poet know what you think about their poem.

By @Traves
Author’s note- Left aligned lines make up the good day poem, right aligned make up the bad day poem and centre aligned are part of both good day and bad day poems. (the out of reach thing being the good day, and every ordinary day is similar to bad day)

good day/bad day
The alarm goes off at 5 O’clock

I open my eyes and breathe out a sigh

I close my eyes and breathe in a lie

Jumping out of warmth before the sun says ‘hi’,

“A few more minutes and not one would die.”

last night I told myself that I will not whinge

Late sleep last night guilt tripped with a new binge,

let us see how good today goes before I lie.

so I go back from the frying pan and into the pigsty.

a few hours required to take stock,

from those meridians shovelled away since dawn

a mounting terror preceded by a yawn,

I derive some self-worth and feel less of a pawn

late morning’s rushed reflected regrets be gone!

in this road robin knock-out weekday

yet they shoot down endless recursive paths, led astray

for which my lots are already drawn.

as hurried steps crunch out drying dreams of an unkempt lawn.

Slippery slopes and dreamy hopes (too real) tropes
yet I have staked blood in the fray,

with an incessant voice in the back of my head

with an incessant voice in the back of my head

that tells me to keep it going, just a few hours left.

that tells me every waking hour is a potential theft

3 proper meals yet time to skip up the stairs,

it’s okay to take a nap but it forgot when I wake up,

and the day at six and onwards I tread.

I wake up to silent anxiety turning to deafening dread.

The Butterfly effect is a terribly wonderful thing
but no complex rationalizations needed for what I did,

I did what I told myself I would do

I’m only human and my depredations I cannot undo

Drowned out all till only my own I could listen to,

last minute dashes and windswept eyelids my fruit

wrote a little poem

stuff my mouth to stuff shut the voice

and kissed the moon goodnight.

of this self-induced existential fright.

If every day were today, everything would be alright.

Another today and my life is permanently trite.

You can leave a review or comment here: good day/bad day

And that’s it, see y’all next week.

NEW ARRIVALS
written by EternalRain < PM: >

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

@sophies36 has not only done a whopping 22 reviews since joining, but she has also posted her own work! Shine Chapter 2 is still in the Green Room!

@RowenaLynn has already earned her first review star by doing 14 reviews! Her reviews are informative and have a great combination of constructive criticism and praise.

@TeaParty has been a wizard in the forums! They’ve entered the 14 Word Story Contest, met users in The Welcome Mat, and have been active in The Writer’s Market and Writing Tips forums.

@bigsisfarmer has already created a post in the Will Review for Food Forum. She also has a story started, and you can read it here: I Hate My Life - Chapter 1 .

WRITERS CORNERwritten by TheWeirdoFromBeyond< PM: >

The Writer Corner is another amazing place in the forums where you can find help for your writing, and here are some threads that you might want to check out if you were stuck with the same problem, or answer the question if you have any advice.

Note- Go through the first post of the thread before posting in it.

Check out The Uber Writer's Block Thread which seems pretty helpful.





Plot Bunny Adoption is an amazing thread for when you have an amazing idea, but do not want to write it or use it in a story (no time/no motivation etc) and is also helpful if you are searching for an idea to write about.

Name Central is where you can ask for help figuring out a name for your character, or post tips that help for the same. Pretty neat thread, don't you think?

@Cyvain87 has asked






Answer their question here: Where to begin...

@Soulkana has created the thread Soulkana's Magister and Assassin Series (NaNo '18)
to discuss their NaNo 2018 novel's plot, head over to know more.

The forum also has many other threads, some even old, but if you have a question, you might find your answer there, so visit Writers Corner today.

SHAMELESS PLUGS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

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SUBSCRIBERS

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