That’s right us young writers are basically homeless.  We are homeless, red-headed step children.  I have finally gotten around to checking out the forums I joined, a little while back, and my findings are a little depressing.

When I started out trying to find places for young writers, I wanted to pull my hair out. Everything I found for your writers was for writers in the 6-18 crowd (I was unaware that 6 year olds did much writing) and as you all know, here at Two and a Half Writers we are trying to make a place on the web for 18-25 year olds (if you aren’t in that age group, stick around anyways).

I was finally able to find a couple, and eventually found a few more during one of my many journeys on the web. Sadly, I think it may have been in vain.  Onto the reviews.

youngwritersonline

I’m not going to lie, since I joined this forum, I’ve posted twice (my introduction thread, and a thank you I believe).  Despite my lack of activity, I still formed an opinion about this forum, not long after I joined.

Before posting my introduction, I read through some of the other threads.  Can you say RUDE!? God forbid you misplace a comma, you’d have half the members jumping down your throat (imagine if you misspelled a word.) Personally, when I go to a forum, I want it to be a little more relaxed, so what if my sentence was incomplete, yeah I missed a couple of periods or commas.  I’m not here to have you critiquing my thread posts or comments.  Now it would be a little different if the forum itself had the ability to do spelling and grammar checks, but no I had to pull up word and then copy paste it to the site so I didn’t get harassed. I still ended up with a message from another member welcoming me to the forum and reminding me to use proper grammar, spelling and punctuation.

I really got the feeling that many of the members are trying to hard.  Maybe they think they need to show the world that teen writers don’t all suck,(I believe is the forum I joined for 16-25 year olds) and are trying to do so by being writing Nazis.  Well I’m not convinced.    And I don’t see myself frequenting the forum here, when I have to watch every word I say.

Aside from the cold unwelcoming feel, there are a good amount of threads for resources, most that I saw however, were lists of “tips” that I really didn’t find helpful. Out of the 2,134 members only 302 are considered active (according to the bottom of their index page).

All in all, I doubt I’ll return.  Maybe it’s not so bad, but you know what they say about first impressions.

young_writers

This was a yahoo group I joined, or at least I’m pretty sure I joined.  However upon return, It’s now asking me to join the group again.  I’m not sure why, but I’m pretty sure I got booted.  Maybe I wasn’t active enough.  (Sorry Yahoo group people it’s hard to be active online, while chasing a 1-year-old, cleaning and cooking, and trying to find time to write. )

Needless to say, I am unable to review them.  If I was booted for inactivity, it’s not worth my time. I’ll just have to keep signing up and that will annoy me.

makeliterature

Though there is nothing saying this is a young writers’ forum, I had found this site a while back. (Before I even started this post idea.)

The forum seems to be pretty dead, many of the most recent posts are from 5 moths ago if not longer. (Not all of them but MOST). However I do like the set up, and feel.  They have a wealth of information, sections for play/script writing, poetry, fiction and no-fiction.  There are threads on publishing, marketing. As I said, there is a wealth of information offered. and though I haven’t gone through a great amount of it, I liked what I did see.

If for no other reason, I would join to have access to the resources they offer.  And who knows Maybe they are just going through a dry spell and the forum will come back to life soon.

newbiewriters

Last but not least, I think this forum takes the cake. though it’s not a “young writer” group, but a new writer group.  Everyone seems friendly and helpful and there’s a lot of helpful information.  I haven’t explored much but I plan on spending more time there. It seems like a wonderful place to go for help or just to talk to another writer.

Have you found any forums you’d like to suggest?  Did you join any of these forums, what were your thoughts on them?

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