Young Writers Society

Welcome to Squills, the official news bulletin of the Young Writers Society!
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Well, that’s all I have for now. So, what are you waiting for? Enjoy!

1. LMS INTERVIEW: OXARA
2. FEATURED MEMBER INTERVIEW: DREAMY
3. REVMO STATS UPDATE
4. THE THRILL OF CREATING
5. A KNIGHT UPDATE
6. POETRY PERSPECTIVE: FOUR FRAMES WORKSHOP
7. SHAMELESS PLUGS
8. SUBSCRIBERS

LMS INTERVIEW: OXARA
written by alliyah < PM: >

The next round of Last Man Standing, or LMS, is right around the corner - with the deadline to sign up September 23. You may have seen a few different people working on their planning and entries over in the Writer's Corner. There are quite a few people who have committed to the task so far, and there's been some excitement in this last week before the competition starts. I interviewed @Oxara to get their perspective on participating in this coming round of LMS.

The next round of LMS or Last Man Standing is starting soon, in fact the deadline to sign up is September 23.



Oxara: No I participated in the previous round of LMS, with (one of my first) novel, The demon maiden.



O: I have not been doing as much writing as I want, and this is a great chance to get me in the habit and encourage me to write more. Plus It is always fun to join the last minute LMS write in, and panic with everyone.



O: I have never been one to lay out an entire story, I have always just gone ahead into it with a vague idea, and let the story develop form there. This time I have a bit more of an idea of what the world I want to write about, however it is still really loose.



O: This was by far the hardest step, as I always have to decide between two ideas, however, I decided for this to do a sci-fi fantasy story. Basically, this story takes place, where like most sci-fi there are spacecraft, however in addition to this, there are dragons used in these space battles, extremely rare. The dragon's then in typical fantasy fashion, bind to a rider, granting the rider the ability breath in outer space, and some other abilities.



O: I really am excited to write this story, but of course I am worried how long I can last. I am definitely more excited(then nervous) to be working on a long term project again and to see how much I have improved form last time .



O: My plan is to try to work on it 5-10 minutes every weekday, and if I ever have free time in school I will work on it then (in addition to the 5-10 minutes). Then on Saturday I plan to work on it till it is completed, But don't be surprised if you see me wrapping it up at the last minute.

Thanks for sharing Ox, and best of luck in the competition. If any readers are interested in signing up themselves, or finding more out about LMS you can read about it right here .

FEATURED MEMBER INTERVIEW: DREAMY
written by EternalRain < PM: >

This week, I had the pleasure to interview @Dreamy, one of September’s featured members! She’s been an active participant in Review Month with 15 reviews so far and have the beautiful bright cyan username. I got the chance to ask her a couple questions about her featured member experience!


Dreamy: Oh yes, sure! I’d love to! And thank you!


D: Initially? Well, I was ecstatic, of course. As I mentioned in the topic of FM, I was in the bus stop on my way to the college and I thought, "urgh, might as well check YWS" because I had just missed a bus and it would take too long till the next one came along. And when I saw the notification I left out a delighted shriek that made people move away from me.

The introduction by our amazing @Tuckster made me very emotional. It was my first time reading someone write about me. And they were nice things too. Ha! I'm thankful for Tuckster and everyone else who took time to post under the topic. And grateful for the ones who clicked on my profile and posted their compliments on my wall. I love them all.


D: I'm not sure. I did go AWOL. I mean, I would log in, talk about the movies I've seen and recommend it to people in my status. Talk about books that I've read. After much deliberation, I decided to take part in NAPO. I just wanted to write, it's more because I wanted to commit to something. And NAPO was one such opportunity I made use of. I completed it successfully, fortunately. After that, I simply got into reviewing. I thought if I reviewed enough I'd be charged to write my own stories. And Team Tortoise was kinda addicting too though I never completed the challenge once. Haha. But it's something I look forward to commit to in the beginning of every month. @ShadowVyper was encouraging all of us who were in Team Tortoise, I would like thank them too for their constant encouragement.

And as Tuckster has mentioned in their introduction about me, I think my reviews earned me the FM title which is an absolute honour.


D: Green room, of course! And I'd really like if Media Reviews was more active.


D: How can I give an advice when I’m not sure what worked? Hah! But if I really have to, be genuine in your reviews. Be helpful, support one another. And most importantly, don’t forget to have fun.


D: I'd like to thank Tuckster, once again, for featuring me and for their amazing introduction and ShadowVyper for being so supportive and kind. I'd like to give a special shout-out to @Moalex, @Anamel and @DottieSnark for sharing their amazing works and for being receptive of my reviews and simply for being so amazing. And thank you for interviewing me. Much appreciated!

Thank you once again to Dreamy for sharing thoughts about being featured member!

REVMO STATS UPDATE
written by alliyah < PM: >

RevMo is two-thirds of the way finished now, but the reviewers of YWS are still going strong! This week several users moved up the ranks on the Color Challenge and continued to work to towards completing that site-wide goal.

COLOR CHALLENGE

With 15 or more reviews, @Dreamy, @Panikos, @JabberHut, & @Liberty were able to earn those bright cyan usernames. These users will really have to push forward if they want the gold username by the end of the month.

Next with 30 or more reviews we had @fraey, @mellifera, & @Tuckster who were able to earn an elegant indigo username.

And finally, moving up to the next tier of reviewers, we had @FlamingPhoenix, @Asith, @Querencia, @alliyah, & @Magestorrow each with 40 reviews or more this month. These reviewers were able to earn a limited-time-only crimson username - not to be confused with our wonderful admin color red that @Meshugenah is sporting. These users just have 10 more reviews to go in the following week to complete the RevMo challenge.

Even if you haven't participated yet in RevMo you can jump in and try to earn the grand prize of the gold username by completing 50 reviews by the end of the month. Best of luck reviewers!

TEAM TORTOISE

Over in Team Tortoise we still have 7 users continuing on strong! They are Panikos, JabberHut, mellifera, alliyah, Asith, Querencia, & FlamingPhoenix. Well done to you all! There's only a few days left to go!

OTHER UPDATES

This whole month we've been working towards the site-goal of 1000 reviews in September, the first few weeks the reviews came in quickly, but as the month is winding down, reviews seem to be decreasing too! Right now we are at about 600 reviews so we'll have to pick up the pace to finish the month with 1000.

There are a few other independent challenges too including the #JumpTheLeaderboards hashtag which a few members mentioned over on the People Tab this week. Another challenge is the Review Rampage which Tuckster decided to enter this week.

Let's finish RevMo strong everyone! We're almost to the end, but there's still time for a big final push!

THE THRILL OF CREATING
written by fraey < PM: >

Hey everyone!

On YWS, there is a large variety on what creation is. The clear idea is simply writing, which is a not-so simple thing when it comes to the bigger picture. Short stories often take a lot of work to plan out and to have a clear beginning, middle, and ending with good pacing. Novels are the big deal when it comes to creating outlines and rewrites and the like.

For some people, writing novels actually comes easy, or maybe the preparation is closer to riding a bike than jumping off cliffs concerning the difficulty of making words. For others, most might choose to ride twenty miles in the desert than having to sit down and really try to write.

I'm mostly of the second category, but with a twist of I love to write little snippets of words or plans or character ideas down, and then never be able to connect those things to actual writing. I'm not great at being productive on terms of fun stuff such as YWS in comparison to forcing myself to crank out a couple of lab reports for my science classes.

Poetry, on the other hand, is a weird mixture of short yet difficult, and also comes in plenty of shapes and sizes and kinds throughout the world. Some types appear to be easier or at least simpler to complete, but then there's not as much substance or meaning, which is what poetry is really meant to show.

I myself adore both writing and poetry, but I've become mostly a poet in the last few years. I find the process of coming up with an idea and metaphors and tone to be a fascinating adventure I gladly take on as many times I can during a month, and especially during NaPoWriMo.

In taking up the task of LMS however, I do want to prove to myself that I'm capable of sticking to one project and completing it - that I'm capable of writing 50,000 words, and that I can keep up with planning and related activities.

So, with these last few months, I want to make a challenge for you all - try what you don't usually do or feel less confident in. Short stories, novels, novellas, flash fiction, poetry, prose poems, anything, just make it something different. And try it out C: You may find that other activities are quite enjoyable, or learn something new about yourself that you didn't know before.

Hopefully you'd have fun. ^^ Until next time!

A KNIGHT UPDATE

written by alliyah < PM: >

Knight News
Since the last Knights of the Green Room update, much has happened, notably the Great Hall is back in buisiness! For those who missed it this summer, or maybe were just out of the loop, the section of the forum where the Knights go to collect their awards and declare their desire to join as Knights was closed due to a building permit expiring while the nights were working on Main Challenge Four, the Clearing of the Rubble. Thankfully in late August, the Rubble was Cleared, revealing the Library which had been long lost in castle decay. So the Great Hall is once again open, and the Knights are inviting new members to join them.

Interestingly, the Knight Leader, "The Commander of the Green Room" @KotGRCommander actually wrote a poem in commemoration of this occasion: Great Hall Grand Re-Opening .

Newly Knighted
There have been three new knights around the order, moving up from Squire-hood to Knighthood.

Squire Coffeeism (@AvantCoffee) is now Knight Coffee
Squire Killara (@Toboldlygo) is now Knight Killara
Squire Liberty (@Liberty) is now Knight Liberty

Knight Achievements
There have been also been a host of other awards given in the last month too!

Earning a Sword @nogutsnoglory, Liberty
Earning a Shield @jster02, Liberty
Earning a Helmet @Dossereana, Liberty
Earning a Horse Dossereana, @fraey
Earning a Suit of Armor: @Daughter
Earning a Jousting Lance: @TheBlueCat
Earning a Jeweled Chalice @FlamingPhoenix
Earning a Chest of Gold Fraey, FlamingPhoenix

Another noteable achievement was that Knight Fraey has officially been made a member of the Commander's Court with the title and position of Castle Grounds Consultant responsible for keeping up the Castle Grounds.

Congratulations to Consultant Fraey and all the other Knights in their recent achievements!

After Watch

This last Review Day the reviewers were able to clear up the Green Room, a noteable achievement, because this hasn't been done on record since last September's Review Month! That's a whole year! We've finally done it agin though, and Knight @tgirly was the first to spot the Golden Goose. Whenever the Green Room is cleared Knights are invited to take place is the the After Watch . Which is an effort to see how long they can keep the Green Room under 15 works, if you'd like to join the mission click on the link and pledge your loyalty to the cause. It's certainly a difficult mission. The record for the After Watch is 14 days, which was back in 2017, we'll see how long they're able to last this time around.

A Word from the Commander

Our Squills newsroom recieved this missive via a dark orange or yellow-hued goose that would not leave my office until I promised to print whatever was in the envelope they were trying to hand me. The envelope was marked "COMMANDER" in large green script across the header.



And those are your Knight Updates for this Squills Issue!

For your latest knightly news and achievements you can stop over at the Great Hall . And if you are interested in joining the Knights of the Green Room yourself, why not check out the Information Forum .

POETRY PERSPECTIVE: FOUR FRAMES WORKSHOP
written by alliyah < PM: >

This week after a little break in there being many poetry workshops on the site, I hosted a poetry reviewing workshop with @AvantCoffee. The workshop presented the Four Frames Art theory, which you can read a bit about here, and showed how the theory could be apply to poetry reviewing (and writing).

The Four Frames are different lenses with which you can critique a work.

There's the Structural Lens - which analyzes the different structural pieces of the poem, like rhyme, line-breaks, and structural poetic techniques.

There's the Subjective Lens - which analyzes the reader's subjective interpretations inspired by the piece, and may deal with elements like the mood, tone, theme, and interpretation.

Then it gets a little more complicated. There's the Cultural Lens which looks at how the poem addresses or is influenced by the culture it's in and how the poem conveys or disregards it's cultural position. This lens also can address a poem's cultural impact. I've noticed this poem is rarely dealt with much in YWS poetry and prose reviews, beyond maybe saying, "what a great message!". Though if you take a look at essays that are posted on the site, you'll find the opposite is true then, and sometimes people will spend the entire review arguing with the impact/conclusion of the piece, and forget the structural and subjective elements.

The next element is also a bit different to think about for your reviews, it's the Post-Modern Lens. This lens inspects how a poem subverts or conforms to genre conventions (does it look and feel like a poem) and how it acts in conversation or reference with other poems and art forms, as well as how it might challenge or affirm different assumptions, possibly from a feminist, colonialism, or minority perspective.

To give a bit of background on how we came to this topic, Coffee and I were brainstorming different topic ideas, and Coffee brought up this Four Frames Theory. I've often thought it's important to address both structural and subjective feedback in a review, and think that leaning to exclusively providing feedback in either one of those can really leave a writer without important feedback. However, I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about how to give feedback on the cultural and post-modern elements mentioned in this theory, and think it can be a really important element to address both in your writing and reviewing. These elements may have a bit more bearing on the impact of a poem, than on it's writing process or it's artistry. Put another way, the cultural and post modern elements I think can go beyond simply evaluating whether a poem "sounds pretty" and have the potential to address really big topics like truth and what even is poetry.

While maybe not every poem will have a lot to mention on these last two lenses, I think having them in mind, can be a really important element to reviewing, interpreting, and for reviewing. They can also expand your vision and imagination of what a poem's function is or can be - and I believe expanding your poetic imagination, will benefit your poetry writing. I can see this from my own writing, when I began to read more experimental poetry, my poetry didn't necessarily automatically become more experimental, but it actually changed how I read traditional poetry. It gives you more elements to look for, and then a wider range of tools and techniques you can apply to convey meaning in your own writing.

I really enjoyed helping out with this workshop, not only because I could explore a neat theory that I think holds value in reviewing and writing, but also because I could hear from the perspectives of other poets who joined the workshop on what their impressions were of the Four Frames. If you have ideas for poetry workshops - either in ones you'd like to see or ones you'd like to lead, please drop by the Poetry Jam Club Page where we've started a discussion on that. It'd be great if we could continue having more workshops on poetic topics that'll help stretch those poetry muscles and hopefully expand our poetic imaginations.

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 August 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!







Want to be a part of Squills, the YWS newsletter? Perfect! We want you. You can find more information here, and you can apply now by sending a sample article to SquillsBot's PM.





With Review Month here and the Great Hall officially re-opened it is a perfect time to join the Knights of the Green Room. If you enjoy reviewing, this is the group for you!

For more information: KotGR Information
To declare you interest: Declare in the Great Hall .
If you have questions: Send a PM to Captain of the Guard Jack (@CaptainJack) or Court Magician Knight Alliyah (@alliyah).


That's all folks~ Now send us yours.

SUBSCRIBERS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

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