Admin Post: January 2020 Challenge: New Year's Resolution

[dawn_felagund]

The New Year's Resolution is a tradition that many people observe, and nearly as many break. As we start a fresh year, we invite our members and friends to recommit to their creative life. However, instead of making a pledge that extends into the unforeseeable future--a resolution almost certainly broken--we challenge you to take a single step in the present moment by simply creating a fanwork.

For our first challenge of 2020, participants can choose to complete any of the previous year's challenges. Did you miss a challenge you wanted to complete? Do it now. Did you start a fanwork for a challenge but never completed it? Here is your chance to finish. If you didn't leave any unrealized or unfinished projects behind you (congratulations!) or if none of the unfinished challenges strike your fancy, choose from any of 2019's prompts and start the year by creating a new fanwork, or choose a challenge older than 2019.

You will receive a stamp on your 2019 collection for any challenges that you complete now*, as well as a stamp for the New Year's Resolution challenge on your 2020 collection. When you post to the SWG archive, please make sure you select the 2019 challenge you're completing and the New Year's Resolution challenge.

*If you choose to complete a challenge older than 2019, we will not be giving out past stamps; you will, however, receive your January 2020 stamp.

In order to receive a stamp for your fanwork, your response must be posted to the archive on or before 10 February 2020. For complete challenge guidelines, see the Challenges page on our website.

How to Contact Us

Some challenges require us to send you a prompt. You can contact us several ways to get your prompt.

• Email us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org.
• Comment on the New Year's Resolution post or the original challenge post on Dreamwidth or LiveJournal.
• Send us an ask on Tumblr.
• PM Dawn Felagund on Discord or any of her social media.

2019 Challenges

The listing and complete guidelines for the 2019 challenges are available here.

February | Love Actually
This February, we are taking our cue from Valentine’s Day and invite you to join us in a contemplation of love! Your prompts for this month will be quotes from the Legendarium that are all about love. You will choose your own prompts for this one. See the Love Actually prompt list on our challenge page.

March | Hidden Figures
For our March challenge, we will focus on rare characters and textual ghosts. Rare characters, for the purpose of our challenge, are defined as any character with fewer than five fanworks on the SWG archive as of the start of the challenge. In addition, any character who is unnamed counts as rare, as does any textual ghost (a character who must have existed but is not mentioned in the texts). Choose your character from our list of rare characters or Elleth Textual Ghosts Project.

April | Sirens and Songstresses
This month, in honor of Legendarium Ladies April, prompts will be a song by a female artist or a band with a female lead. You can use any part of the prompt that inspires you - the mood, (part of) the lyrics, visuals from the video or whatever else works for you. Contact us to receive your prompt.

May | Caprice and Chance
This month's challenge is a Matryoshka challenge based on the sultry, swoony tropes of that perennial favorite for beach reading, the bodice-ripper romance. Your fanwork does not have to be a romance story, but prompts will be loosely inspired by the plot arcs and tropes of these novels. (Please note that prompts are not romance-specific. Any genre of fanwork can be created based on these prompts.) If you want to participate, please comment here with whether you would like an easy (3 prompts), medium (5 prompts), or difficult (7 prompts) challenge. If you want to make fanart or another type of fanwork for this challenge, you may use the prompts in the Matryoshka format (building on your fanwork with each new prompt) or you may use the prompts individually to create a series of fanworks (flash fanworks are fine for this) or you can open all of the prompts at once and create a fanwork that addresses all of them using either the prompt, the prompt title, or a mixture of both. Make sure you include your SWG username or an email where we can reach you.

June | Pride
June is Pride Month, a time to recognize and honor the contributions of LGBTQIA+ people, whose work and identity (or both) have often gone unrecognized in history. This month's challenge will involve a prompt by an LGBTQIA+ person. There are music, art, poetry, and quotation prompts. Contact us to receive a prompt. If you have a preference for format (music, art, poetry, or quotation), include that as well.

July | Solve a Problem
For this month's challenge, create a fanwork that solves a canon problem. You can come up with your own favorite (or most frustrating!) canon problem to solve, or choose one of the member-submitted canon problems from the list on our Challenges page.

August | Notion Club Revival
In the spirit of the Notion Club, this month's challenge presents you with several (more or less) mysterious "historical" documents. What's the story behind them? Well, that's up to you! You can select any (or several) of the documents and let them feature in your fanwork for this challenge somehow. Find the Notion Club Revival prompts on our Challenges page.

September | In Rare Form
Gapfiller. Romance. Slash. Drama. Horror. Hurt/comfort. These genres have populated fanzines and archives with stories for decades and continue to be popular among fanfiction writers. This month's challenge, however, invites fanworks creators to try something "in rare form," using a format or genre that is rarely utilized in Tolkien fanfiction. Find the list of rare formats/genres on our Challenges page. This month also has a recommendation challenge. Find a fanwork or few for one of the rare formats or genres listed below and recommend your favorite(s). Please post your recommendations to our Dreamwidth, LiveJournal, or Tumblr (please tag @silmarillionwritersguild) to receive the stamp.

October | Start to Finish
For this month's challenge, choose one of the famous first lines from the list below and use it to start your story. If you are creating a fanwork other than writing, you may use one of the first lines to inspire your fanwork. Find the list of Start to Finish prompts on our Challenges page.

November/December | Season's Greetings
For this festive season, we invite you to create a fanwork in which one (or several) of the holidays of Middle-earth plays a role. See our Challenges page for Season's Greetings prompts.