Young Writers Society

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1. JULY ACTIVITIES
2. WORD OF THE WEEK: FLOTSAM
3. THIS MONTH IN HISTORY: JULY
4. NEW ARRIVALS
5. SHAMELESS PLUGS
6. SUBSCRIBERS

JULY ACTIVITIES

written by alliyah < PM: >

July is just overflowing with activities for you! We have Roleplay Month which has been off to a great start, featuring many great activities, perks, and events. And then we have Camp NaNoWriMo going on too as well as a ton of planned write-ins! And a very special holiday is coming up too... Christmas in July! Here's the summary for you!

Roleplay Month
Roleplay Month is being ran by your local Roleplay Mod Crew and here's a few quick bullet points about the events!

* Find the Main Information Thread here.

* If you want a challenge try out the Roleplay Month Checklist Challenge and see how many challenges you can accomplish before the month ends. There's different levels for every experience level!

* If you're looking for a very low-key way to join in on the fun you can join up in the #characterinterview or #ocforaday hashtags during the month and get interviewed as your fave RP / SB character! You could even try using your prose character if you'd like I bet!

* Finding Nate the Dragon Tagbook chances are you've already been tagged already this month in the chaotic tagbook if you're not sure how it works, here's the basics - every YWSer is in the YWS world which is featured in this tagbook, you get to pretend you are a character if you join in! The premise of this story is we are in the search for the mysterious dragon Nate, the Roleplay, Prose, KotGR, Poetry and Community folks are all joining forces to find the dragon. Along the way chickens, crows, and ducks, and bunnies have been around and even some YWS celebrities like Big Brother, @SantaYWS, and @YeOldeYorick! You can take the time to read all the back posts or can just jump right into the action, don't worry about making mistakes, just join in and have fun!

Write-Ins
There are write-ins being hosted all month long for both NaNo-goers and Roleplayers and anyone else who would like to join! These are happening every single week in July so be sure to check the calendar out here.

Camp NaNo
If you're not quite sure what Camp NaNo is, I actually interviewed @BluesClues about it a couple weeks ago for Squills. There's a host of activities and tips available going on for Camp NaNo too!

* @Carlito is challenging users to different Creative and Self-Care Challenges every week, and I've been trying to keep up with them a little bit and they're really nice! I definitely recommend you give those Self-Care tasks a look no matter what your writing goals are this month! Check them out right here .

Poetry Discussion
Not related to NaNo or RPMonth but every month there's a Poetry Reader's Discussion and the discussion this month lands right on July 25th coinciding with Christmas in July! This is led by @Liminality and @whatchamacallit with Info Here - we're discussing one of @kattee's napo poems and it's going to be a great time!

Last but not least... Christmas in July
Christmas in July is happening on July 25th! Please spread good cheer and joy on this beloved YWS Classic, you might celebrate by sharing #friendshippoems , or funny gifs, or random compliment spam or share one of those little YWS gifts for 50 points that you can send by clicking the link right under people's avvie's on their profile! It'll be a nice, festive day hopefully!

WORD OF THE WEEK: FLOTSAMwritten by EternalRain < PM: >

Pronunciation: flawt-sum

Part of Speech: noun

Definition: the wreckage of a ship or its cargo found floating on or washed up by the sea. (not to be confused with jetsam--debris that was intentionally thrown overboard)

Synonyms: wreckage, debris

Origin: early 17th century: from Anglo-Norman French floteson, from floter ‘to float’.

Used in a Sentence: The ebb and flow of the tide eventually washed flotsam to the shore: the helm of a boat, a torn sail, and splintered wood that was cracked and water-damaged.

THIS MONTH IN HISTORY: JULY

written by alliyah < PM: >

Well well well, it's been a long time since I've revisited this column! In fact I think according to my records it's been a whole year since I last wrote one of these! For those who are new to this column I like to jump into the YWS Time Machine and check out what was going on on YWS two, five, and ten years ago - sometimes we check out specific topics of interest like Classified History or the YWS Birthday Edition and then other times we just check out what's been going on generally on the site! This month we'll check out the month of July! So let's jump into the time machine and see what we see! This will be the first time we also check out what was going on fifteen years ago!

TWO YEARS AGO: YWS JULY 2019

Stats
Apart from the first two years of YWS's existence July 2019 actually had the lowest review count for the month ever - coming in at just 475 reviews. There were 172 literary works posted, 411 Forum Posts, and 1225 SB / RP posts.

Featured Members
The featured members for July 2019 were two SB / RP classics - @MultiColoredCyr and @silvermoon17 ! Here's silvermoon's announcement thread.

Lit Work Spotlight
The top liked literary work for July 2019 was @BluesClues' poem Things I'm Bad At - which I actually still remember reviewing! Still a great poem to check out!

Events
Not to be depressing but I think the July 2019 Review Day was perhaps the lowest turn-out we had for a review day in YWS history. It was a battle between "Awesome Team" and "Cool Team" with just 28 reviews between the two.

FIVE YEARS AGO: YWS JULY 2016

Stats
July 2016 had more than 3 times as many reviews as 2019 with 1410 total reviews! Wowza! There was just 1 work short of 500, with 499 works total posted in the month. The forums and SBs were also popping with 1494 and 1058 posts respectively.

Featured Members
Over the month of July in 2016, YWS had three Featured Members. All three users certainly made their mark on the site through reviewing and the people tab and other ways as well! They were @cleverclogs, @Lael, and @Junel. You'll of course still see @Lael frequenting the people tab quite often sharing wisdoms or updates on her writing.

Storybook Stats
In July of 2016 @BrumalHunter ran a little survey on what the most popular SB Genre was Results Here the results favored Fantasy!

Map-Making
Throughout the years there have been different nifty maps of YWS made! There's that classic YWS town map that LZ made last year! I made one a few years back that was KotGR themed, and then @Vincian made one recently that was featured in the site-tagbook, in 2016 @Mea made a very neat map of the site as well! It's featured below!



Events
The July 2016 review day was particularly exciting because it was Pokemon Go themed! check it out!

Literary Works Feature
In July of 2016 the world was looking quite a bit different politically - but a very impactful work was posted which recieved quite a bit of positive support on the site written by @Evander. The work is about some of Evander's thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement - you can give it a read here if you would like.

TEN YEARS AGO: YWS JULY 2011

Stats
2011 was a very strong year for site activity with 4334 total reviews (10 times the amount from 2019) and 1228 works. There were over 3000 forum posts, and 1531 SB/RP posts. From time to time @Nate has posted a Statistical Summary for the site to check out and in July 2011 he posted one of these for us all! read more here from those stats it looks like YWS had a record number of new members that month (503!) and a record number of site visits! Here's a map of stats he posted as well.



Featured Members
In 2011 YWS did month-long featured members and @ultraviolet was the user with the honor of having that status for July! Here's the Announcement Post.

Member Highlight
According to the YWS History Books @Carlito actually finished writing her first novel on July 1, 2011! Considering how many novels that Carlito has gone on to draft and write, that is incredibly special and inspiring to think back to when it all started! Happy novel-versary Carlito!

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO: YWS JULY 2006

Stats
YWS was still getting up to speed and getting started back in July 2006 - but there was still a respectable showing of 221 reviews, 118 works, and 1954 forum posts. The SB/RP posts were some of the lowest on record with only 7! Wow! It'll be interesting to compare that to this year's RP Month!

Featured Members
In 2006 / 2005 YWS was still figuring out the time-period for Featured Members so a user named @Shimmer was actually able to be featured member for all of March 23 2006 all the way to August 20, 2006! Congrats Shimmer, that's a pretty long reign! This was also right before (YWS LEGEND) @Snoink was made featured member in late August of 2006.

YWS Relaunch
Did you know that for a while YWS had to close? Here's what Nate had to say about it in this Squills Interview:

Nate wrote:I think the relaunch of YWS in late July 2006 is my favorite memory. At the time, YWS had been closed for two months as the hosting costs for the site had simply become too expensive for me to pay for, and I was very worried that no matter what I tried to bring it back, it would never again take off. However, that turned out not to be the case, and in some ways, I think the downtime actually turned out to be a good thing; it brought about a renewed focus on the community and on the literary areas. From that point on, YWS has been able to do well even through very difficult times.

I'm glad that YWS was able to relaunch and hope it's around for many many years in the future! Yay YWS!

If you have any fun history nuggets you'd like to share about reminisces from August 2, 5, 10, or 15 years ago please reach out to your YWS Unofficial Historian and I'll possibly include it in our next edition! Thanks for hopping in the time machine with me!

NEW ARRIVALS
written by EternalRain < PM: >

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

@AlmostImmortal, whose cake day is June 24, is already an avid roleplayer, WFP pad-goer, and overall YWSer! Keep an eye out for their WIP, THe Revolutionaries, which they will be posting soon.

@Ve has posted an adventure and teen fiction short story called Randy Richards and the End of the World .

At 3 reviews, @sam2es is just 2 reviews away from their first review star! They like writing, playing video games, talking with friends, and have already posted the first chapter of their story, Tavernkeep .

SHAMELESS PLUGS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

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The YWS OLYMPICS ARE BACK THIS AUGUST

The long-awaited writing contest is back this August on YWS! Start up your training by reviewing the contest tapes from 2018, 2016, and 2014. The contests and fun are not to be missed! Old legends will return. New heroes will arise. Will you join the quest for the gold?





That's all folks~ Now send us yours.

SUBSCRIBERS

written by SquillsBot < PM: >

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