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.
Founded in 2005, the Silmarillion Writers' Guild exists for discussions of and creative fanworks based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion and related texts. We are a positive-focused and open-minded space that welcomes fans from all over the world and with all levels of experience with Tolkien's works. Whether you are picking up Tolkien's books for the first time or have been a fan for decades, we welcome you to join us!
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.
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.
[Writing] No Time Have I by Flora-lass
A Silmarillion acrostic.
[Writing] An exercise in music... And patience by Aprilertuile
Makalaurë was sitting at the harp in his music room. He was holding a dark blindfold in his hands and was looking at it with much scepticism.
[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…
Bollywood
Prompts this month are films, songs, and tropes from India's dazzling film industry, Bollywood. Read more ...
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.
[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.
Fellowship of the Fics: Summer Stories 2024
Fellowship of the Fics offers four weeks of summer-themed prompts during the month of July.
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.
Scribbles & Drabbles 2024
A chill Tolkien event, where artists make art, and authors write little stories in response. Begins in June and ends in November.
What a vivid glimpse into Feanor's creativity: really compelling, the play between the mundane detail of life, family, and household, and the ecstasy/compulsion of his work.
And that there is an element even of humilation to it: that he will never have full control over it--will never be able to re-create the Silmarils because he can never consciously track everything that went into making them.
Thrilled that you found it vivid and compelling, and that you enjoyed the lack of control I've brought in. Thanks a lot for your comment!
This is terrific. It moves from a totally reocognizable and relatable concept to one that becomes magical and frightening.
Gone, even, is all sense of self: He does not feel hot or cold, hungry or thirsty, awake or exhausted, happy or sad; he simply is. The world ceases to exist, time ceases to exist, and he ceases to be Fëanáro: he becomes one with his work, whatever that may be.
A lot of us have had this experience to a somewhat lesser degree. I get really annoyed with myself when, because of interruptions and the responsibilities of daily life, I can infrequently reach this point.
But I really love the part that the reason he can never repeat the creation of the Silmarils is not because of lack of raw materials or the amount it sucked out of him to make them, but the fact that he lost track of what he did to reach that point.
It is frustrating, for when inspiration takes over and erases all conscious thought, it also erases his working memory. He cannot afterwards say just how he created these marvels: the Silmarils, the Palantíri. He refuses to admit it – he says that their making is a secret that he will not share with anyone - but the humiliating truth is that he could not share it if he wanted to. It is locked even from himself. More humiliating yet is the nagging feeling that, since he is not in control during these spells, since he is unaware of the process and can neither begin nor interrupt it of his own volition, that these astounding achievements are, somehow, not properly his; that he is in fact nothing more than a tool, however useful, in their creation.
I doubt that anyone who ever got lost in thinking about Feanor or wondered about his creative process hasn't wondered how worked or ever thought it came easy to him.
The end part is really wonderful and devastating.
One day, it may wring every last spark of life from him, consuming him in one final, relentless surge of grandeur, in the same way that his mother's strength was burned up in the effort of giving him life.
When that happens, he can only hope that it will be worth it.
It makes me want to answer this question in two parts--yes, it was worth it (it gave us the Noldor and The Silmarillion); second, it did destroy him.
That's why I always want to give him a chance for redemption.
Thank you so much! I initially meant to write it as a perfectly ordinary "flow" experience, but the story took over and insisted it had to be something MOAR. The story was right, of course! I'm glad you enjoyed the heretic little ideas that made their way into this fic, like Fëanor's lack of control over the creative process. I never doubted that it would be an enormous, potentially draining effort, but the idea that he didn't even plan for it was new (for me), so it's good to hear that it works for you.
Your thoughts about the end are particularly delightful to me! My vague idea was that the Oath, exodus, ship-burning and Balrog duel (ultimately, the entire Fall of the Noldor - but also the eventual liberation of Middle-earth in the War of Wrath) can be seen as a sort of final creation (under the same sort of influence, possibly?), and yes, it did indeed burn him out.
Me too, as you know! :)
This is very well conceptualized, it seems to me, and provides a very plausible context for what Feanor says (and does and feels) about the Silmarils.
It is, as Oshun says, relatable, because it is a bit like what sometimes happens to us when writing (or drawing), only much more so and therefore different after all--which is of course a point you are making here, too.
That fear at the end evokes sympathy. Only what actually happens to him in the end is a bit like that, only it isn't: he burns up on the battlefield, not in his workshop...
(By the way, thank you for the lovely border design for the Silm40 pages, which I see is by you.)
Thank you very much! The original concept was actually a lot weaker, but fortunately, it gained momentum in the writing. As you say, part of the experience are relatable, although I was indeed trying to depict this as something more intense and overpowering.
He burns up on the battlefield, but in the process of creating something: The Fall of the Noldor (but also the chain of events that will eventually overthrow Morgoth, if you want), "the matter of song until the last days of Arda". Whether or not it's worth it is up to interpretation! ;)
Aww, you're very welcome! I'm glad you like it. It was so much fun to come up with!
I'm excited that I arrived at most of the points you were making. I love that you take it further in your head to extend those considerations to include this:
My vague idea was that the Oath, exodus, ship-burning and Balrog duel (ultimately, the entire Fall of the Noldor - but also the eventual liberation of Middle-earth in the War of Wrath) can be seen as a sort of final creation (under the same sort of influence, possibly?), and yes, it did indeed burn him out.
The best part of reading others' ruminations on the texts is when they ring true to what one wants to explore/imagine oneself.
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