B2MeM 2013 Is Coming!

[dawn_felagund]

Yes, that time of year is almost here again: time for our annual Back to Middle-earth Month event! Once again, the Silmarillion Writers' Guild, Many Paths to Tread, and Arda Inspired will be teaming up to bring the Tolkien fandom a month of fun, creativity, and community.

We are currently in the planning phases for this year's challenge, and we need help and feedback from our community to help us decide the challenge we want to run this year. If you have an idea for an event, please do share it in a comment here! (If you want to see what kinds of events we've run in the past, we have links to them all on the SWG site here: http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/specialprojects.php.)

Even if you don't have a specific idea for an event, if there's a past event that you loved (or a past event that you'd rather not see something similar to this year), please comment and let us know.

We have only one requirement for B2MeM events: They should be open to the entire Tolkien fan-writing and -art communities. Ideally, this should also allow people to participate whether they have one or thirty-one days free to work on challenges.

We look forward to hearing everyone's ideas and getting this year's event ready to roll!

Comments

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

to meta ideas like revisiting (possibly rewriting) an author's earliest Tolkien fic, or something of the sort

That made me laugh! I think I am too vain! Maybe not, mine is pretty funny (unfinished Legomance anyone?).

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'll raise you a horridly sappy Éowyn/Elladan fic that I wrote because of my rampant Faramir dislike back then! XD

[dawn_felagund]

Wow! Okay, I would actually like to read that! :D

My first fanwork was that Feanorian play I posted years ago on LJ, which I dread to reread much less ever do anything to again! :D

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

I do have an account on the Pit of Voles and was not horribly creative in terms of usernames, just saying... *ducks* But warning you, that was more than 10 years ago (yegads!!!) with only a few years of English under my belt, and... ergh. XD

I remember your Fëanorian play! Though I think the first of yours that I read was AMC. Hmm, fandom nostalgia.

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

I love it! Those stories sound like a match made in heaven!

[shadowbrides.livejournal.com]

I'd read it. :P

[shadowbrides.livejournal.com]

Hah! That actually sounds like an amusing idea. Mine is even more bitter than most of what I write now, however. Pointlessly violent elves , mainly. Although I suppose the horrifying spelling/grammar could be amusing, kind of. But nothing beats a good old Legomance!

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

Pointlessly violent elves with really bad spelling and grammar party.

Hey, link me to it! I sometimes even read Harry Potter dark!fic (talk about spelling and grammar and pointless violence)! I wouldn't dream of writing it. But that is the beauty of fanfic.

[zdenka]

How about finishing earlier Tolkien fic? Maybe it's just me who still has an intimidating pile of unfinished beginnings from last year . . . *slinks off*

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

That is always a good idea. I have five chapters of six-chaptered fic that I started for the SWG 5th anniversary (how many years ago now??).

[dawn_felagund]

I don't even remember! How old the SWG is, that is. I could figure it out, I guess. I forget what year I started it in. Sad, that ...

Okay, according to Fanlore, the SWG was started in 2005 (in March!), so the fifth birthday is three years ago.

Irregardless of what we decide to do for B2MeM, I think the SWG needs another Season of Writing Dangerously so we can all dust off our languishing WiPs! ;)

[ladybrooke]

It's not just you. My pile is several hundred fics high. If I leave it for too long, it respawns on it's own and I come back to new plot bunnies lurking in the stories. ;P

[dawn_felagund]

I don't think you were with us yet when we ran the Season of Writing Dangerously on the SWG--but it was a challenge designed especially for people who needed to finish things. ;) You set your goal and had three months to meet it and got a shiny if you did. A few people have already expressed an interest in seeing it again (in part because of those unfinished BINGO prompts!), so I'll definitely bring up to my comods running that again this summer.

[ladybrooke]

I don't think I was! But that sounds like it would be awesome, and a shiny makes everything better! If it happens again, I'm definitely signing up, because I need to set goals to actually finish things.

[huinare.livejournal.com]

I need something like this to make me finish editing/drastically rewriting a ~120,000-worder, definitely.

[dawn_felagund]

I'm definitely going to bring up to my SWG comods running SoWD again this June-August! :D It's a very easy event to run. They might not kill me for bringing it up right on the heels of B2MeM. ;)

[pandemonium-213.livejournal.com]

I can't even remember the plot (if there was any) of my very earliest Tolkien fan fic, written in 1970. Just that it involved semi-bad boy Boromir somehow.

Therefore, if I were to revisit my "earliest" fic, it would be Trinity. Don't know what the hell I'd do there.

Also don't know why the hell I'm posting this, buried in a gazillion comments, when I might as well just send you an email!

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

Therefore, if I were to revisit my "earliest" fic, it would be Trinity. Don't know what the hell I'd do there.

No sympathy here. That one is a bit like Athena bursting from the head of Zeus full-grown and powerful. I guess I might have done better--I did know how to write, if not fiction--if I had tried a short story first instead I had the hubris to try a novel and also the stupidity to court the fandom instead of flying into its face. (I was trying to sell a YA novel--cough, cough, Legomance!--instead of writing from the heart.) So, yeah, my effort is mortifying. After that, it took me nearly year to find my feet.

[pandemonium-213.livejournal.com]

... like Athena bursting from the head of Zeus full-grown and powerful.

That's a very flattering analogy! Thank you!

A Legomance? Really? I guess that could be construed as courting fandom, but hey, a Legomance can be good! But I can imagine what you encountered if you posted it where I think you might have. And then later, didn't you make your way into *ahem* a certain writers' workshop? Here! Have some cheese! I can see why you were traumatized!

The only thing I can think of w/ regard to Trinity is to tell it from Fionn's POV. Not Fionn of Oppie's dream, but Fionn O'Noran, the brash young Irish physicist back at Los Alamos. I might need to do a little Tolkien-style revisionism and have him on hand for the detonation of the Gadget!

That is, IF I were to write such a thing. I have far too many irons in the fire as it is.

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

I am going to leave my Legomance in its unquiet grave (hidden on ff net). I don't take it down, simply because I believe if we forget the past, we forget its lessons.

I could definitely re-write Maitimo and Findekano from a different point of view. There are a score of candidates available. Everyone from Feanor, Nerdanel, Fingolfin, or even Finwe, through all of the siblings and cousins as a pool from which to pick one.

[pandemonium-213.livejournal.com]

Maitimo & Findekano! Yes! You have a tremendous supporting cast there.

[tarion-anarore.livejournal.com]

It can't be worse than my classic kid Faramir and mean Denethor fic! Hey, I thought I was bucking the trend by making Denethor a bastard but NOT abusive... ;)

Now you all may forget you ever heard anything about this...

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

my classic kid Faramir and mean Denethor fic

Oh, I remember those! Not yours, but the genre!

[tarion-anarore.livejournal.com]

Not yours

Thank goodness! ;)