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!

1. INTERVIEW OF PARTICIPANTS IN JUNE'S PRIDE EVENT
2. BEING CREATIVE VOLUME ONE: AVOIDING BURN OUT
3. STORYBOOK COVERAGE
4. NEW ARRIVALS
5. STORYBOOK MONTH SUMMARY
6. SHAMELESS PLUGS
7. SUBSCRIBERS

INTERVIEW OF PARTICIPANTS IN JUNE'S PRIDE EVENTwritten by fraey < PM: >

Hello readers! This past June, as with every year, was Pride Month for the LGBTQ+ community. Our very own @Magestorrow created an event to celebrate - creating some kind of work, be it a storybook entry, short story, or a poem, that pertains to the LGBTQ+ community. I was lucky to be able to interview two of the participants @RavenLord and @mellifera, at separate times.

First, I talked with RavenLord about their poem Prayer For Pride!


RavenLord: Well, as a member of the queer community I'm always eager for some representation. On top of that, I hadn't published anything on the site and I'd been looking for an excuse to do so. This was perfect.


R: No problem!


R: I wanted to write a poem celebrating the community as a whole and giving a positive message to YWS. I wasn't sure what it would be until I wrote it.


R: Something I would like my readers to take away from my poem is that you should be proud of who you are, no matter how afraid you are to come out and that words only mean what we allow them to mean.


R: Bone Witch, Coyote Magick was a very vivid poem. I deeply enjoyed its imagery and the lyrical lilt to the stanzas. I highly recommend it.


R: I would absolutely participate in another! This was fun!

Next, I talked with mellifera about her short story Fairy Favour (1) and Fairy Favour (2) !


mellifera: I enjoy participating in site wide events whenever I have the chance. That combined with the two factors that I really wanted to write something for Pride anyway, and I've been wanting to write more short stories, it ended up all fitting together perfectly!


m: Thank you! I read a lot of fairy tales when I was younger - we had this big book of classics, which was, in essence, a family friendly version of Grimm's Fairy Tales. Along with that, fantasy has been a favourite of mine since I was young as well, especially when it happened to involve dragons In more recent years, I've grown increasingly fascinated in how faeries were originally depicted, as tricksters and overall malevolent beings. I grew up on the concept of "good faeries", but I have a certain soft spot to stories that take classically "good" entities (faeries and angels in particular!) and show them in a different way then they are, in most cases, traditionally perceived. So, short answer: yes!


m: I'm not sure I incorporated it very well, but while I wanted to write something gentle and sweet, I also wanted to write something that held some amount of doubt of identity. I struggle with, in essence, imposter's syndrome, and constantly second guessing myself and how I choose to identify. I've consumed a lot of media where characters who are part of the LGBTQ+ community are set in their identity and who they are, but I don't believe this is a rigid fact that you will "know" (I certainly haven't). So, I suppose, that sometimes you won't know what you identify as, and that's okay! What makes you happy makes you happy (which, in Sera's case, is faeries I suppose haha).


m: I didn't end up getting around to reading everyone's work (not for lack of effort haha), but I really enjoyed @Morrigan's Bone Witch, Coyote Magic . It had such an entrancing feel to it, like walking through fog at night with candles to light a path. That one probably stuck out to me the most, though I also really like @niteowl's Bluebell's Spring!


m: Absolutely! I haven't participated in as many events as I would have liked, but any time something like this pops up (and especially when I have excuses to write shorts like this), I always try to participate. I love the friendly atmosphere, and seeing how creative everyone can get with events like these!

To sum all of their responses - this Pride Event brought out some fun creativity and imagination for poetry and short stories alike, while still celebrating the LGBTQ+ community. Until next time!

BEING CREATIVE VOLUME ONE: AVOIDING BURN OUTwritten by LordStar< PM: >

Hello fellow writers!

If you're like me, writing is just one of the mediums you explore to unleash your creativity. As 'creators' - people who bear the title of such, who pour our heart and our very beings into the things we create, whether that be writing, art, dancing, etc - we yearn to create in any way that we can, even when that means exploring your creativity in things you aren't used to working with.

However, also as creators, we have the habit of overworking ourselves and our creativity to the point of burnout. Burnout is a state of exhaustion (physical, mental, emotional) that comes from being too stressed for too long. While mostly seen in professional settings, this can also happen when you’re constantly pushing yourself to create (doubly so if creating art, in any of its forms, is what you do for a living).

So if burnout is so bad and leads to dead ends and blocks in your creativity, how does one avoid it? I’ve asked around, and here are some tips and tricks from fellow artists.

One artist says that meditation helps, along with making a schedule so as not to overbook and planning vacations ahead of time so that you’re forced to take a break. From the author: forcing yourself to take a break when you’re in a block is better than trying to force creativity. By forcing creativity when it won’t come naturally, you’re only pushing yourself over your boundaries and what you end up making won’t be nearly as good as you hope. It’s important to block out times during the day/week/month in which you have absolutely no obligation to create so that your brain and creative juices get a good rest.

Speaking of rest, sleep! Sleep is so so important. You can’t do anything well if you’re not well rested.

Another tip from the author (me) is to try and pull inspiration from new places as often as you can. If you pull inspiration from the same places every time, eventually you’ll run out of things within that thing to be inspired by. Not only that, but finding inspiration in new things helps stimulate your brain and makes it think.

Another thing to consider is if you do what you love for a living, you have to treat it like a job. In the same vein as booking breaks, you have to decide what hours/days are “work days” and which ones aren’t. Do not take a project “home”; avoid doing your work projects all of the time so that way you avoid getting tired (YouTuber Hannah Witton has a whole slew of videos about being an online creator/influencer and setting boundaries to avoid burnout, if you wanna check her out!). As well, make sure you charge an appropriate amount for your commissions. So many artists undercharge people because they fail to see the value in their labor.

Along with that comes organization and hobbies. If you do what you love for a living - illustration, painting commissions, essay editing, etc. - I highly recommend getting hobbies that aren’t that thing for you to do outside of your work time. For instance, I recently bought myself a ukulele, with no pressure to become good or even decent at it. It’s a hobby - something I practice purely to relax.

Organization, I believe, is also something that plays a big part into burnout. I know that I always get stressed and lose myself if my life and my room isn’t organized and together as I need it to be. I’m constantly trying new organization systems - calendars, to-do lists, this app or that, a bullet journal - to figure out what works best for me. I recommend you do the same.

Considering that I still have a lot of tips and thoughts about burnout and how to avoid it, as well as general thoughts and opinions about living life as a creator, consider this article a part one of what may become a series. In the meantime, consider these tips, and avoid the burnout as best you can!

STORYBOOK COVERAGEwritten by fraey < PM: >

Hello readers, and welcome to another round of SB Coverage! A lot has changed since the last issue, so I figured why not give an outlook on some new stories that seem interesting. In addition, SB Month just passed, which took place during July, so there are a few Official Storybooks on this list - feel free to check those out as well!

First off, we have quite a few Official ™ Storybooks to look over.

- No. 1 is a Tagbook called Sky Pirates vs Sky Ninjas started by @Omnom! What makes this unique from all the rest is that Tagbook means someone “tags” as in uses the @ sign in their post, so as to get other people involved!

This Storybook entails every tagged member (or whoever wants to participate after being tagged within the text) writes two versions of themselves - a Sky Pirate and a Sky Ninja within that same post! Sounds interesting, right? Click that link above or head over to the Discussion Thread found here!

- No. 2 entails a Slice-of-Life storyline, written by @Magestorrow titled Bluebell's Spring . This was the official SB back in March, but it's still accepting users who want to participate in a sweet, sort-of-daily-normal time set in the fictional town of - you guessed it - Bluebell. That first link directs you to the overall SB page, while this link guides you to the DT!

- No. 3 is our last Official SB in the spotlight - coming in as the official SB from May. Yet another fascinating tale spun by Magestorrow, The Quest for the Slime King is all about joining various characters to finally defeat this villain - that no one, not even the King's royal army could defeat. Do you have what it takes? Learn more on that web page, or here where the DT lies!

Next up are just as interesting Storybooks that aren't Official ones.

- No. 4 was created by @Chaser, with the name of Runaway Time Machine . If you've ever wanted to personify a historical character, here's your chance - this SB is all about a professor creating a time machine that is currently hurtling through time in general - will anyone be able to stop it in time? Read all about it on that link and ask questions in the DT found here!

- No. 5 is a SB all about uniquely powered characters! Children of the Sky created by @hiraeth takes you to a fictional world in Caelum where a few rare children hold magical powers and are tasked to find a hidden place somewhere in the universe - before another team makes it there first. If that interests you, hit that link or the Discussion Thread .

- No. 6 is our last SB of this article - called I Solemnly Swear that I'm Up to No Good: The Marauder Era is, as you might have guessed, all about the pre-Harry Potter times at Hogwarts. There's a whole, long list of characters set in this time you can choose to write as, and there's certainly quite a lot of possible adventures out there to discover! Let the creator @Desdemona know if you're interested!

That's all for now, folks, but I hope one of these SBs caught your interest!

NEW ARRIVALS
written by EternalRain < PM: >

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

@classicdreams joined August 1 and is 1 review away from their first star! They’ve also participated in a couple forum games, including the Coffee vs. Tea thread.

@saint1y has already gained their first review star by doing 5 reviews. Check out the prologue of their story, What If… , if you’re interested in mystery or suspense.

@writeasmile has recently joined! Among other posts in the forums, she has a welcome mat thread! Welcome her in her thread .

@DottieSnark has been a reviewing machine! She’s writing her own Gilmore Girls fan fiction and she has even set up a Will Review for Food Thread where you can request reviews: Dot The Reviewing Fairy .

STORYBOOK MONTH SUMMARYwritten by fraey < PM: >

In case some users missed it - Storybook Month just finished this past July, stocked to the brim with plenty of activities and ways to rack up some of those awesome SB points. Just a few of those were the storybook crew moderators creating a few official SBs, multiple roleplay opportunities, and the Double Trouble Writing Huddle Contest that is running until the end of the year!

Due to this great influx of SBs, RPs, and challenges alike, I wanted to interview a SB moderator to gain more details on how this operated. With me today is the one and only @ScarlettFire!


ScarlettFire: I don't know why, but I feel like the SB forum doesn't really get as much love as other forums? And it felt special because so many people--and mods (from different crews, too!)--got together to set it up. It was awesome!


Sc: Kind of all of them lol. I'm still helping Omnom with YWU and I'm still leading my own SB, On Stolen Wings . It's been my project for SB month. I'm just waiting for the first post still. >.> I also have two other SBs running, but they're not my main focus at the moment. XD


Sc: Plotting with Omnom and Mage for both SB posts/SB Month projects and The YWU Lore.


Sc: All the potential possibilities! The idea of creating characters and tossing them all into a situation or setting and just experimenting with how they react to things and interact with other characters. It's so exciting!


Sc: Probably AstralHunter's Dragons of Mystic ? It looks interesting but it's full and not accepting. ;-;


Sc: Fantasy! It gives you so much more room to play with the settings, magic and characters, etc.


Sc: Just give it a go and join an SB. Don't be afraid to ask questions even if you think they're stupid. You won't know if you'll like it or not, and won't really know what to do until you ask and just do it. XD

Overall, the SB Tab definitely needs some love in general - please ask any SB moderators if you have any questions about how character profiles work or how joining a SB works! SBs are certainly a lot of fun although they can require some work at first. Good luck to all of you readers - regardless if you’re newbies or experienced - SBs are something to delight in.

SHAMELESS PLUGS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

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Submit to Queer as In F*** You!

QAIFY is an alternative compzine that is going to be published physically and digitally every month starting in August, and is currently accepting submissions. August's theme is Exit, Kindly, although submissions can range anywhere in topic from feminism, punk, identity, queerness, womanhood, social justice, or just experimental. QAIFY accepts poetry, short essays, serialized novels and short stories, articles and art such as collages, drawings, paintings, and photography.

Send submissions as a word document, .jpg, or .pdf file to queerasineffyou.zine@gmail.com..... before July 31 to be considered for publication in August's issue. While you're at it, follow the zine on twitter and tumblr and look out for the official website soon!







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SUBSCRIBERS

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