New Challenge: Bollywood
This month's challenge offers songs, films, and tropes from Bollywood, the world's largest film industry based out of India, as prompts for fanworks.
SWG News
Cultus Dispatches: Fandom Chocolate … or Authors Love Comments
Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data provides insight into how comments benefit authors and which authors are most impacted by a lack of comments, with a digression on authors' perspectives one-click feedback like kudos.
A Sense of History: Passing Ships
As Tolkien's characters in various texts gaze out to the sea, what do they see? What is brought by the ships coming out of the West?
Beta-Reader List Now Available
The beta-reader list and profiles have been moved into our new system and are available again.
New & Updated Fanworks
[Writing] No Time Have I by Flora-lass
A Silmarillion acrostic.
[Writing] I called it Fate that I should fail by AdmirableMonster
Nimruzimir, a natural philosopher recently out of his apprenticeship, hardly considers himself very important to anyone, least of all his colleagues. When his strange, prophetic fits bring him to the attention of the High Priest, however, he may find that his existence is less superfluous than…
[Writing] All of you by chrissystriped
Elrond and Celebrían celebrate their anniversary with their family.
[Writing] Lament for the Singer by daughterofshadows
A short thing about Maglor, death and grieving.
[Writing] Cosmological Poems of Arda by AaronAzrael
I would like to share my revelations of Tolkien's Universe in the form of narrative and emotional poems.
[Writing] Eä's Redemption by AaronAzrael
This is my new poetical attempt to add my own interpretation to Tolkien's Cosmology as to Eru's Creation and the Valar's minds and behind-the-scene providence reasons and mechanisms.. I often review Eä as part of our own world, just in another dimension, this is why I have always seriously…
[Artwork] Map of Valinor by Aprilertuile
My newly drawn map of Aman, as complete as I could make it.
Current Challenge
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
Random Challenge
Holiday Party
No matter if you're in the Northern or Southern hemisphere, it's a time of year to think about holidays. Whether you're bundling up in blankets or slipping a swimsuit into your suitcase, we invite you to an SWG holiday party! Read more ...
New in References
Fandom Chocolate … or Authors Love Comments by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data shows that authors view comments as driving their motivation to create fanfiction. However, perception of comments by authors is part of a larger shift in fandom around how and how often fans interact with each other.
Passing Ships by Simon J. Cook
[]The arrival and departure of ships across the Great Sea carries mythic significance for the peoples of Middle-earth. The image of ships crossing out of and back into a mysterious West appears as well in Beowulf and is alluded to in Tolkien's tower analogy in his lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," where the tower allows those who climb it to observe the passage of the ships.
Fanfiction and the Serious Business of Writer's Craft by Dawn Walls-Thumma
[]Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data shows that while most authors self-identify as taking their craft seriously, a growing subset of authors may be pushing that norm.
Beyond the Silmarillion
[Writing] Staging a Battle by StarSpray
[]He and Diamond were visiting, though Pippin had been disappearing every afternoon, and taking Frodo and Elanor and most other lads and lasses in the neighborhood with him—though why they couldn’t use Pippin’s own pony, Sam couldn’t imagine.
[Writing] From whose bourn no traveller returns by losselen
[]So gathered they were to Bree, what lieutenants who could be spared, from their scattered watches west and east, for their chieftain had returned from his long sojourn in lands godless and mountains strange.
Aragorn returns from the South to tells his tales. Halbarad listens.
[Writing] Sand Sorcery by StarSpray
[]It is well known that Psamathos does not leave his cove. He does not like to get his feet wet, and prefers to spend his days dozing under the sun.
Around the World and Web
Fellowship of the Fics: Summer Stories 2024
Fellowship of the Fics offers four weeks of summer-themed prompts during the month of July.
Elrond Week 2024
Elrond Week is a fandom event dedicated to Elrond Peredhel that will run from July 10th to July 16th on Tumblr.
July challenge at tolkienshortfanworks posted
The tolkienshortfanworks challenge for July has been posted to the Dreamwidth community. The thematic challenge is: original character or unnamed canon character; the formal challenge: fixed length of multiple of 50 words. New participants welcome.
July 2024 Call for Papers and Proposals
Conferences and publications that have open calls for papers and proposals in July 2024.
Teitho June/July Challenge: Mentor
The June/July prompt for the Teitho challenge is "mentor" and invites fanworks about this relationship in Tolkien's works.
While These Visions Did Appear by oshun
| | |
A Fanfic Writer's Biography of Sorts (Day 3)
I have been writing Tolkien fanfiction since 2006-2007. I spent the first year writing a huge LotR novel (still a WIP--I add a few chapters a year)--The Princess and the Horse Lord. Not recommending here--it is not one's standard LotR romance and will only frustrate people looking for that. I love it the way one loves one's firstborn, despite its flaws. Randomly, it is still my most read work by a tremendous margin.
I mainly write Silmarillion fanfiction (but not only Tolkien fanfic--I have written stories in the following fandoms: Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint stories, G.R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, Harry Potter. Wraeththu, Mary Renault's Greek novels and modern ones, BBC Merlin TV, and Shakespeare. Recently, have started writing the seeds of something (a novel?) in original fiction based in the War of the Roses, mainly focusing on Richard of Gloucester). I do also a monthly character biography for the SWG almost every month.
My personal favorite fic to recommend to new readers of my work is a short novel of Fingon/Maedhros slash A New Day--if you can read slash at all you can read this--it is a love story of sorts and for grownups, but not over-the-top with the physical details.
I have another 50 or so stories written within the same universe and story arc about the children and grandchildren of Finwe. The majority are NOT actually slash and there is a lot of Gen fic also; check the individual story elements if you are fussy about that kind of thing. There are a bunch of other fics also about the denizens of Doriath and Gondolin; even a novella featuring Haldir and Celegorm. My current compulsion is a novella set in Númenor which I just began a couple of months ago, based upon the circumstances and events in Tolkien's story Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner's Wife.
I write every day very slowly. I am probably the slowest writer I know (only part of it is that I have really bad eyes). I read a lot widely; mainly fiction and history. I read an inordinate amount of fanfiction and try to be supportive of other writers. I talk about my kids and grandchildren all the time. I live in Brooklyn, New York and talk about that a lot also! This is embarrassingly long and I am too tired to edit it and make it shorter. I am so sorry!
