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

[marta-bee.livejournal.com]

I think my favorite BMEM challenge ever was when there was a single prompt or theme that everyone somehow replied to. The creative juices of seeing how others were handling the same thing I was writing about really got my creative juices flowing. I'd really like to get back to that.

If you want to make it Hobbit-themed in honor of the new month, how about this: every other day you give a prompt to reply to. Perhaps a scenario or a theme or even a quote, whatever. In order to "win" you need to write thirteen of the fifteen prompts, *and* review an entry by someone else from thirteen of the fifteen days. Thirteen entries/reviews for the thirteen dwarves.

Would something like that work?

[dawn_felagund]

Thanks for the feedback, Marta! We've seen a few concrete ideas crystallize from this conversation in the past few days. I'm going to try to contact the B2MeM mods this weekend with a list of options and then put them up for a community vote. I'll make sure there is a prompt-a-day option for you in there. :)

The only thing I'd change is that, while we've done games in the past, we've never set a minimum to win. We always have a good number of participants who can only do one or two prompts, and setting a minimum kind of tells them at the outset that they're not as welcome. So, if we ran something like this, I'd just recast that bit as collecting icons or stamps or something--one for each prompt fulfilled--so that those who want the whole set can try to accomplish that, but those who can only join us once or twice can also walk away with shinies. :)

[marta-bee.livejournal.com]

I like your suggestion about offering shinies to people who don't meet a threshold. You're absolutely right, their should be rewards for everyone who participates at all.

Thanks for considering my idea. I'm sure there are a lot of ideas floating around; I've read a few but certainly not all. I hope my preferences, what works well for me (and not) are a bit clearer, though of course I do know I'm just one fandom member out of many so don't expect a custom-built program...