This is just to say… by Himring

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Fanwork Notes

The prompt this was written for was the blanket story and I suppose this was inspired as much by other SWG members' response to it as by the original letter! More on this in the end notes.

Fanwork Information

Summary:

A letter to the author, by a writer of fan fiction.

That is, to Tolkien.

Written for a prompt of the "Dear Irmo" challenge.

Major Characters:

Major Relationships:

Genre: Experimental, Nonfiction/Meta

Challenges: Dear Irmo

Rating: General

Warnings:

Chapters: 2 Word Count: 469
Posted on 25 September 2021 Updated on 26 September 2021

This fanwork is complete.

Table of Contents

This is just to say…

This is a defence of fan fiction, even if it is poetically framed, so if that needs a warning, consider yourself warned!

Paths of Story

I had briefly toyed with the idea of writing "This is just to say..."  (or rather an earlier version of that concept) in verse, as a fill for the tolkienfanworks challenge to write a piece based on any of the verse forms used by Bilbo.

That idea came to nothing, but my eventual fill for that challenge nevertheless is on a related subject. I decided to post this little poem as a second chapter here on this Archive, although I am posting the two pieces independently on other sites.

 

Summary: 

Walking song for a teller of stories.
(And maybe for readers of stories or listeners to stories, too.)

Adaptation of a familiar song by Bilbo.

My short piece here stays very close to Bilbo's own verse, but I think my adaptation brings out one of Tolkien's central themes (that was perhaps already implied and is also close to my own heart) more clearly and more strongly.

 

 

Comments

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Thank you so much for this! I enjoyed everything about this - your richly coloured imagery, your tone, your analogy that so clearly highlights the very valid nature of derivative works, and the fitting reference to Williams. Lovely!

Thank you very much! I'm happy that my approach to the subject worked for you!

And it is good to hear that yarn as a metaphor spoke to you, personally.

Or, possibly, not exactly good, as I'm sorry that you have an extreme critic in your head, too, apparently!

But I had wondered whether I was carrying coals to Newcastle, posting a defence of fan creations to a fanworks archive, and it seems I am not the only one who can still use a reminder to self, sometimes.

I think perhaps it's often more a case of an eternal battle with embedded internalised external critics (that seem to have a tendency to leak from one area of one's emotional life to another), especially having received derisory judgements at a developmental stage, (whether that's childhood or beginning a new craft), and which are frequently reinforced by other people, usually those who are ignorant of the full picture or refuse to acknowledge that there's more to it than suits them. So it's never a surplus to express supportive backing that reinforces the reprogramming of a healthier viewpoint.

(Urgh, that's a mouthful and a half and could be expressed way more attractively, but it's bath time (aka TRSB reading catchup time, yay!) and it gets the message across, so it's staying as is.)

Thank you very much! I'm happy that my approach to the subject worked for you!

And it is good to hear that yarn as a metaphor spoke to you, personally.

Or, possibly, not exactly good, as I'm sorry that you have an extreme critic in your head, too, apparently!

But I had wondered whether I was carrying coals to Newcastle, posting a defence of fan creations to a fanworks archive, and it seems I am not the only one who can still use a reminder to self, sometimes.

 

[ETA: Apologies, you may be getting this twice, but looking at this on the site, I am not sure my reply has threaded as I had intended, so I am trying again.]

Oh, I didn't expect any reader on AO3 to see any connection, or anyone really, unless I had explained it to them!

And the "walking song" is very much meant to be about storytelling more generally rather than fanfiction specifically, even though in both pieces one story to leads to another.

I'm glad you like both of them!