Fifth Birthday Ideas, Part the Second

[dawn_felagund]

Hi, all,

First of all, thank you to everyone who contributed ideas or weighed in on our discussion of possible plans for our birthday. (For those of you who may have missed it, SWG will turn five at the end of July, so we are coming up with possible ideas to celebrate.) Not surprisingly for such an imaginative bunch, you all came up with some awesome ideas! I am going to compile a list of ideas here with the goal of whittling it down to a few favorites that we can vote on.

A few thoughts: this is a very diverse group, so whatever we do should be inclusive of as many of our members as possible. Even though we are the Silmarillion Writers' Guild, our membership also includes artists and people who just like to discuss JRRT's stories.

Ideas range from very specific, such as a specific challenge, to very broad, such as a month of different challenges. We may be able to combine multiple ideas to create a single event. We're certainly open to suggestions on that.

If you contributed an idea and don't see it here, that is not because I didn't think it would work or that it didn't deserve to be included. It's because I forgot or overlooked it, plain and simple, while working between the many threads of this discussion. Please email me at DawnFelagund AT gmail DOT com or leave a comment on the LJ or Yahoo groups, and I'll not only fix my mistake but send some kind of homemade baked good or candy in apology. I'd send some of my homemade ice cream but suspect it would melt in the mail.

Finally, I'd like to be able to set up a poll in a week, on 22 June. Please email me or note your favorites in a comment to the LJ or Yahoo lists before then.

List of Ideas

Challenges

• "Five things" challenge--stories/art constructed around a challenge beginning with "Five Things ..." (e.g., Elleth's "Five Things That Never Happened to Maglor Feanorion")
• "Five ages" challenge--each week focuses on stories/art for a particular age, created for a daily challenge or theme
• "Different themes of the Ainulindale" challenge--change a canon detail to show the story as it might have unfolded in the first or second themes of the Music
• A different challenge theme each week for a month, suggested by members, of course
• Recommendation challenge--recommend a story from the archive that fits a weekly/daily theme
• Remix challenge--expand a detail or incident described in another author's story or illustrate an existing story

Competitions

• A writing contest--create a story and members vote for their favorite
• Silly awards--members hand out awards for not-so-serious topics
• Silmfic award--members nominate and vote for a favorite Silm story

Other Stuff!

• A compilation of work (old and new) that matches a daily/weekly challenge or theme (e.g., Seven in '07 or B2MeM 2008)
• "Stories We Dare Not Tell"--outline a story you would be too embarrassed to write but sorta secretly find compelling
• Fic swap--request a story to be written by one of our members and also write a story for someone else

Comments

[heartofoshun.livejournal.com]

The majority of these are quite interesting to me except the "Different themes of the Ainulindale" one--just not my favorite part of the available texts; and I do tend to panic at the idea of fic swaps. (I'm still trying to finish a story for one that was due last January! I submitted the first 2/3 before the deadline and have never been able to finish it!)

"Stories We Dare Not Tell"--outline a story you would be too embarrassed to write but sorta secretly find compelling --this one sounds like a lot of fun, although the rules for it could make it or break it for me.

[klose.livejournal.com]

I like all the ideas, but in terms of what I'd like for SWG's special fifth anniversary -

- Silly awards;
- Remix challenge
- Stories we dare not tell
- Compilations. Yeah, sure, it's been done before, but I feel the occasion deserves some looking back & celebrating what's been accomplished! And it's pretty inclusive by nature.

See, that's four things. One per week, right? :P