Remembering 10 Years of Back to Middle-earth Month: Discussion Post 2013

[dreamflower]

Discussion post for 2013

Back-to-Middle-earth Month 2013: Scavenger Hunt: Expedition in the Abecedarium

Middle-earth is full of hunters. The Vala Oromë found the first people of Middle-earth while hunting, and hunters have remained central to the stories since. Whether hunting for an Arkenstone or a band of Orcs or for truth and justice, Tolkien’s world is full of hunts for things both physical and metaphorical. Back-to-Middle-earth Month Scavenger Hunt: Expedition in the Abecedarium seeks to encourage creativity in the Tolkien fandom through a “quote scavenger hunt” that participants will use as inspiration for stories, art, meta, and other creative responses.

In 2013, a "Reading Week" was added at the end of the event. This was to encourage those who could not find the time to read, due to working on projects for the event, could take the time to read and comment afterwards.

Did you participate in the 2013 Scavenger Hunt Challenge? Did you make posts or write stories for it? If you did, please share your experience with us here in the comments. Give us links, share your anecdotes and memories.

Did you miss out on it, but find yourself curious about it? Check out the comments and ask questions and join in the discussions! And if you check out previous works, be sure to let the creator know how you liked them.

Comments

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed taking part in this one, though I fear I cheated and didn't look up the quotes! I think I wrote something each day.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

This was a challenge that worked really, really well for me - in a bit of a roundabout way. I wrote something for (IIRC) 15 prompts, a personal record, and created heaps of icons in advantage which was nearly as addictive as the actual writing! However, I didn't start the writing project by looking up the quote; rather, I'd first respond to my associations with the prompt quote (or sometimes just the title, if it happened to spark an idea), and when the fic was done, I hunted for the quote. That sometimes was a bit frustrating, because it turned out to have been something completely different so I felt like I had missed the point! However, the prompts worked as inspiration really well, and I decided that it was all right to write something that had nothing to do with the actual quote, as long as it fitted the general idea.

[hhimring]

I don't think I ended up looking up all that many of the quotations. I imagined I recognized many of them but who knows how accurate that was? I remember I had to ask around on B2MeM Support, because I couldn't figure out how a quotation from the Prophecy of the North related to the letter P (I was mentally stuck on D as Doom.)
I ended up writing two fics for two of the original themed prompts, two for daily prompts and two for wildcard prompts, with extra prompts from Dwimordene and Elleth, much of it quite late in the month; I kept feeling I was cheating slightly on the prompts that year, but fortunately nobody seemed to disapprove.
I also wrote a non-fiction piece about reading Lord of the Rings. Here is a link to that year's summary post in my journal: http://hhimring.livejournal.com/53411.html

Some of the personal reminiscences were very moving indeed.
And of course some really excellent stories came out of that B2MeM!

[zdenka]

I enjoyed this, though I didn't write a lot--two drabbles and finishing a story from 2011 for a wildcard day. I still have a few WIPs left from that year too. (I did also make a bunch of icons, which was oddly addictive, as Lyra says.)

I enjoyed reading the quotes and admiring all the beautiful icons!

[hhimring]

The icons really were great that year!