[Tap, tap, tap] Is this thing on?

Hello Rose! This is Elliot, though most people here call me Ellbae, Elmo, Ellstar, Ellmist, or Complete and Utter Psychopath, depending on how well they've gotten to know me. Welcome to the site! It's great to have an older person around, but I will admit you are a bit of an outlier around these parts, but that's fine. We're a mostly friendly community and, as far as I've seen, we're pretty mature taking everything into consideration. We don't randomly go on tangents on how all Muslims are evil or how all gay people are going to hell, is what I'm saying. This place is a considerably mild mannered and very well groomed community, though the works that you will be reviewing (and you will be reviewing works here, if you plan to post your own works) are made by younger folk, so they may or may not have the same quality as adult writers works. However, don't use that as a reason to talk down on them. We criticize everyone here equally, no matter the age, so try not to start compliments with something like "this was good for your age" (no matter how well intentioned the compliment is).

Feel free to walk around the forum and see what interests you. If you're looking for a review and you don't want to wait, you can always pop into the Will Review for Food forum to find a willing reviewer. If you're looking for a friend to chat to, well, the chatbar is also available if you're not into forums. And we have a thing called storybooking, which is similar to roleplaying, that you can mess around with in the storybook sections.

I think that's all I can say for now. Hopefully that's caught you up to speed, and if not, feel free to ask me or one of the mods.

Signing out,

--EM.

Hey there RedRose and Welcome to YWS! It's just Lizzy dropping by real quick with some tips and a review.

This isn't quite the right place to put something like this. You need to move this over to the welcome forums, more specifically the welcome mat. That way you can get welcomed by all sorts f people and mods who can help.

Yes. It is true you're a bit older than most of the writers on the site. Most of us are 13-25 but there are older members who joined a long time ago.
Just keep the age of the users around you in mind when publishing. Always be careful of the rating on stuff.
12+ is mild cursing mild violence
16+ is medium cursing medium violence
18+/M is high amounts of curing violence and other content

We do have two chat rooms along with the chat bar. Have you reached five stars yet? Oh yes you have. Okay now you can access the chat bar which is where you can chat to a specific user. If you just want to go and have fun try the blue button labeled 'Chatroom' on the index page. There are two rooms here: The Lounge and The Cloakroom. The Lounge is just general, fun stuff. The Cloakroom is more for playing games and stuff.

I need to leave all of these comments as a review because otherwise this will be staying in the green room for a long time. Maybe I should explain reviewing a bit more.
The first mile marker for reviews is 5 and that's when you can access more things and you get your first shiny star. Reviewing is a lot of fun once you get used to it. For the first five months when I joined, all I did was review.

The green room is the best place to go and review. All works go to the green room until they get two reviews. And here I am getting this piece out of the GR. I asked a friend of mine who also likes to welcome new users, to stop by and give you a review.

Best of luck to you. Did I see something about a book? Hmm. Are you going to publish that on the site for feedback? What's the book about anyways? I see from the AN that the title is Rose but that doesn't say much.

Have a nice day.
Lizzy
The Queen of the Book Clubs

I'm aiming for five stars by birthday!

Hello, Rose! Nice to meet you! Perhaps we'll see each other around.
...I don't suppose this wants a review, does it?

Welcome to the site, Rose!

You're right! You are considerably much much older than most of us here, however, in my years here I have seen a few people who are well beyond the the 25 years old age mark, so you are not alone (but sometimes I do question the people who mark their ages as 90 or more than 100 years old *squints eyes suspiciously*)! Either way, you made it past the monkeybot-thingys, so I guess you're welcome here...

Just kidding. This place is super-welcoming to all kinds of people from all over the world. Also, have you met @Nate yet? We love the guy!

So I take it you must be a much more learned, experienced, and lived writer than a lot of us here--or perhaps see yourself that way? Maybe you aren't that cocky. Or--I don't know, I didn't mean for that to come across as rude, but it was a compliment. Maybe you can teach us a few things about writing if you have any tips up your sleeve?

And did you say BOOK?! *drools* Do you perhaps have a copy or an excerpt for us to read?! That sounds so amazing!

And you sound just like me--writing since I was a little girl! Although, I never sent letter to myself, instead I built "time capsules" and kept journals. Do you journal or are you more of the blogging type? All forms are super-duper awesome, in my opinion.

Anyway, hope this is a warm greeting. Happy YWS-ing!

--MooCowPoop