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, feature articles about writing, art and the world of humanities, member interviews, shameless plugs and opinionated columns. And where will all of this come from? Not only from the staff but also from you! Yes, as long as your item can be labeled with any of the above mentioned articles and it answers to YWS standards, rules and regulations, you can post 'em here. Visit the Reader's Corner for more information and other Squills activities.

Creative Staff

An Audience with Aley

1.) You're featured! How do you feel about all the limelight?
It's really strange to be in the hot seat. I get people talking to me saying Congrats when I haven't heard from them before and I'm never quite sure how to respond. I've defaulted to 'Thanks' actually.
When it happened, I came back to my computer with all of these chat-bar messages saying Congrats on being featured and I had no idea what they were talking about. I thought they meant one of my poems was featured in the Literary tab again. Seeing my name actually under Featured Member is surreal.

2.) What do you think have made you climb up to the status?
I was really bored. I had nothing to do and too much time, so I went to reading/reviewing, and making things. Unfortunately now I have to take the steps back down because I'm finally in the swing of summer. I just hope I can still be good enough for all this praise I've gotten. Actually I just got a job so I might end up off and on for a while yet until I get settled.

3.) How can a 'good member' help YWS?
Good members are essential to YWS in order to keep the community strong and reviewing. Without nice, strong heads to review things, the Green Room will overflow and moral will drop like a rock in a pond. We need people reviewing so people see how helpful it is and feel like they're important, and that they can reciprocate by reviewing too. If no one reviews their work, they might start feeling like they are entitled to avoid reviewing and that's a hard spot to get out of.
Instead of letting YWS drop into this sedentary cubical style, we need people to really care and help keep it moving forward.

4.) What would someone do to be a featured member, in your opinion?
People have to be active reviewing, speaking to new members, helping out members whenever they see them in need, and overall active. It doesn't take 24 hour commitment, but it does take activity when they are on. People can't become the featured member just by sitting in chat, they have to read, review, and play in the forums.

5.) Who inspired you to do what you always do to help YWS?
This is a really hard question to answer for me. I'm kind of self inspired. It sounds really self-centered, but I want to make an improvement in other people's lives because I want someone to do that for me. The golden rule here on YWS is to treat others how you would like to be treated, well I'd like to be one of 30 reviews someone does in a month. I'd like to get that helping hand when I'm on from a greeter, so I do that for other people.
Aside from that, I always feel like the mods do too much alone. They need just as much help as everyone else, so we, as members, can't leave it on them to hack through the Green Room, or greet all the members. It is our right as people in this community to help them out, and to meet new people. That's why we're here, isn't it?

6.) Do you have any other influences or friends who supported you by the sidelines?
Oh yes, always. I have Reason. She's not as active on YWS as he used to be, but she's the reason I got on (ha ha, reason). He's also the reason why I can review like I can. Half of the things I say are things that she's taught me over the years. He's reviewed my work for nearly 6 years now and somehow still puts up with me.

[PS: If you know Reason well enough, you will understand why I kept switching genders. Yes it was on purpose.(It's not just fun and challenging to remember to do.)]

7.) What activities have you served up or have participated in in YWS?
I have created the Poetry Exchange, which you can read about in the nice, long, sleepy-making How-To I made for it recently. I am also a member of The Buddy System, The Poetry Club, and I participate in most Poetry events including the Song Lyric workshop that GeeLyria and SparkofDoubt just put on! It was a blast and I hope to participate in more lyric workshops from them in the future.

8.) Any last words for our readers?
The mods are watching.
I don't know how they figured out how bored I was to feature me, but somehow they did. It might have something to do with me talking to them all the time because they're friendly, but watch out.
If you start planning events, hacking through things in the green room, and moseying through the forums, keep an eye out for the sneaky mods.
You might be next.
O.O

Storybooks Reboot!

Nate did some tweaking with the Storybooks and hey, there are some major changes! Here they are:

New SB feature: The Sokka Sequential

Sidebar Area
The sidebar area of SB is now almost completely customizable. SB managers can add rules there, a summary of the storybook, and you can also see the list of participants if the storybook is closed.

Storybook Managers
The owner of the SB can now optionally appoint other people to help him with running the storybook.


Character Pages
Participants of the SB can add pages for their characters, which are linked to via the sidebar. If the SB is open, anyone can potentially add a storybook page.


Open vs. closed
If you make your SB closed, it really is closed: only people approved by a SB manager can post in it (of course, this doesn't apply to moderators!).

When your SB is closed, you can choose to allow people to request to join. When someone requests to join, you'll see their name pop up in the participants section of the SB with the words "approve" and "deny" next to them.

All SB start with a default of open. To save time, if you switch from open to closed, anyone who has previously posted is automatically added as an approved poster. Of course, you can remove people if you like.


To read more, click here.