Silmarillion Writers' Guild

Prizes for our Season of Writing Dangerously winners were technically due on Friday. If you're still working on yours, that's fine (I'm still working on one of mine!), but please check in with your author here to let them know that it's still coming.

If you've finished your prize, please post a link to the finished piece on the post above. If for some reason you have not posted the prize publicly (e.g., you've emailed it to your author), just drop us a line at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org to let us know. It doesn't need to be posted publicly. But we do want to be sure that all of our winners get something for their hard work. :)

If for some reason you cannot complete the prize you signed up to do, then email us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org so that we can make other arrangements.

And if you've finished your prize and shared it with the author, thank you!!! :)

Well, here we are, September 23 and the official closing date for the Season of Writing Dangerously! Three cheers for all of our participants, whether you made your goal or not, and a huge thank you to everyone who participated and especially to those of you who were so good in supporting, encouraging, and helping each other.

If you did make your goal--congratulations! Feel free to display one of our lovely winners' banners. Winners are also entitled to request a custom piece of art or writing.

Claiming Prizes for Winners

How do I know if I won?
If you met your goals, then you won. Don't remember your goal? The original post for declaring goals can be found here. Remember that changing your goals during the event was allowed, so if you adjusted your goal since stating that goal and it no longer matches, no worries, you still have won!

If you're still having trouble finding your goal, please let us know, either in a comment here or an email at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org.

Determining if you have met your goal is done strictly on the honor system. You don't have to "prove" to anyone that you reached your goal. Publishing or posting your work is not required, and we trust participants to be honest about whether they completed their goals.

I won! Yay! What next?
If you won, you are entitled to display a winner's banner and also to request a custom piece of art or writing as your prize.

To claim your prize, leave a comment on this post with the following information:

Preferred format: (story, art, icon set, etc.)

Request: Include the details of your request here. For example, if you'd like an illustration of one of your SoWD stories, you should include a link to the story or the passage you'd like illustrated here. If you'd like a story or an icon set, describe what you'd like (e.g., "A story about Maedhros as a child" or "A set of banners and icons for my story" or "A series of drabbles about Losgar but with no graphic violence"). You can be as specific as you'd like, but remember that very particular requests are going to be harder to fill.

If you'd like the person who claims your request to contact you before beginning, you may include your contact information or a request to send a LiveJournal PM here. If you'd rather not reveal your contact information, you can request the person contact the SWG mods, and we will send your contact information to them. (Just don't forget to email us first at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org so that we have your email address! :)

Does my prize request have to be Silmarillion-based?
No. This challenge was open to all Tolkien authors and artists. However, your request should be based on one of Tolkien's works.

---

Creating Prizes for Winners (Anyone Can Participate!)

We also need volunteers to help us create the stories and art hard-won by this year's winners.

Who can claim requests?
Anyone!

While we welcome SoWD participants who want to help their fellow participants celebrate, SoWD participants are not required to claim a request, even if they made one. And authors and artists who did not participate in the SoWD are welcome to claim requests as well.

To claim a request, please do the following:

1. Comment on the request you want to claim it. (Anonymous comments are welcome but won't show up right away until a moderator approves the comment. If you comment anonymously, please include your fandom name and a way we can get in touch with you, such as an email or a website where we can PM you or leave you a comment.)


2. Complete the request and post it somewhere where your recipient can see it (i.e., not on a f-locked LiveJournal or a password-protected site). We encourage you to post Silmarillion-based art and stories here on silwritersguild but this is not required.


3. Comment again on the request with a link so that your recipient can go forth and enjoy their prize!

Stories and art created for prizes must be posted before November 1! We will check in with anyone who has not posted their story or art by mid-October to make sure that the request is still being completed.

If for some reason you cannot complete your request, please email us as soon as possible at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org so that we can find a replacement. Likewise, if you have any questions, need help, or need to get in touch with your recipient, please email us.

You may claim more than one request. Please do not claim a request that has been claimed already. Once all requests have been claimed, then we will allow multiple claims, but first we have to ensure that all winners receive a prize.

Please don't claim a request unless you are reasonably sure that you can complete it. Yes, Real Life^TM has a disturbing tendency to derail a person at inopportune moments, and we understand that unforeseen circumstances and emergencies arise, but these should be truly unforeseen.

Recipients, please remember to thank those who create your prizes for you.

All questions, difficulties, or concerns should be addressed to the mods at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org or in a comment to this post.

"Fantasy remains a human right ..."
-J.R.R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories"

The 2013 Season of Writing Dangerously is a mere five days from ending. Some of us have cause to celebrate already; others of us (myself included!) aren't there yet and aren't sure if we will be. But I hope the last three months--whether you met your precise goal or not--resulted in something to be proud of, whether a story finished or a new friendship forged or something else entirely. I am personally of the opinion that any art made or any kindness shown in a world often sorely lacking in both is something special and to be proud of.

I am rereading Tolkien's letters for a research project I am working on. As I read the earliest letters, I am often struck by how similar to many of us he sounds. He worried that he wouldn't be taken seriously. He worried that his work wasn't good enough for an audience beyond those biased toward favoring him. He seized onto words of kindness offered by friends and publishers as motivation to keep writing during a time when his personal life left almost no room for creativity and it was much easier to quit than go on.

Like many of us, he also doubted at times if he would finish. He wondered where he was going with the massive and seemingly directionless story that would become The Lord of the Rings. And he worried that he didn't really have anything worth saying.

Sound familiar?

Tolkien's assertion that fantasy, of all things, is a human right may seem a little overblown in an era that had known tremendous sacrifice during two World Wars and witnessed one of the worst genocides in modern history. But that's part of the point. The essay from which this well-known quote comes, "On Fairy-Stories," argues in part for the power of and right to escapism through fantasy: When the world is dark, make your own light. Over the last three months, I have seen fans of Tolkien's fantasy world reach out to encourage friends and strangers alike. I have seen stories and art come into being that might not have been otherwise (and which will, in turn, bring enjoyment others). What a bright light Tolkien carried forth when he followed through on his right to fantasy! How grateful I am that he felt as strongly as he did that he had something worth saying.

I hope, in the next five days, that all of you will likewise believe you have something worth saying and find a way (whether with words or art) to say it, and keep carrying that light forth into the world.

SoWD participants should feel free to use the comments on this post as they please. I know some of you have reasons to celebrate! Please do! But if you need encouragement or need some last-minute help, don't be shy. Best of luck to all on the last leg of this journey!

Believe it or not, we have less than a month left in the Season of Writing Dangerously. (Am I the only person who went "Eeeeeeek!" upon thinking on that? Where does time go??) As promised, we are going to repeat the assistance swap meet in the second third of the event in order to, hopefully, give the last little nudge needed to realize our goals!

If you need help with anything in order to meet your goals, please ask away! Whether you have a specific question, need beta-reading help, or could use some personalized motivation and cheerleading, this is the place to ask. Although you're welcome to help someone out in return, it's not necessary in order to participate.

As always, these posts are for SoWD participants to share their progress, cheer, rant, and whatever else they need, so even if you don't need to ask for specific assistance this week, feel free to comment.

"A book is a sneeze."
-E.B. White

When asked why he wrote Charlotte's Web, author E.B. White replied with the metaphor above. I love this metaphor and think it will make sense to more than a few others participating in this year's Season of Writing Dangerously. A sneeze is spontaneous, it feels really good, it clears your head, and it can get messy, just like the stories we write and the art we create. It is involuntary too--it's not like you can make yourself sneeze, and I suspect quite a few of us would say the same of our writing and art. It's not like you can force yourself into the right mode to do your best creative work.

But a lot of us try to do just that and eventually learn to trudge through stories that no longer inspire us or ideas long gone stale in order to get them done. As we head into the second half of Season of Writing Dangerously, I know quite a few of us are doing less sneezing than we are trudging.

But this week, I want to encourage our participants to try to recapture a little of that involuntary spontaneity that often marks the beginning of a new project. Stop. Drop what you're doing. And sneeze--or, put more plainly, work on your SoWD projects.

Now many of you will raise the point that it is a really bad time right this second ... fair enough. A sneeze is a quick action. Work for five minutes, write 20 words, edit a paragraph, post that story you've been putting off ... or if it's not so bad a time, pledge to stop surfing the Internet *stern look at self* and dedicate yourself to your project for the next hour. Or more. Perhaps without planning, dreading, and working up to making progress on our projects--by just sneezing--we will recapture some of the spontaneity that makes the first steps on a new piece so enjoyable.

As always, these motivational posts are for free use by SoWD participants. Feel free to share your progress, bemoan your struggles, or ask for help from your fellow participants. Now I have an hour-and-a-half and feel a sneeze coming on :)

I am two days late this week! This is ridiculous. My theory that my brain works worst on Wednesdays (Wednesdays have been my least favorite day of the week since I was a little kid) is being proven by my attempts to make motivational posts on Wednesdays! My apologies, everyone.

This week's quote is in honor of muses ... or whatever that crazy, fickle force is that makes us write like unstoppable superheroes one day and then fritter away the entire uninspired day on Tumblr the next. I also liked it because this is, after all, the Season of Writing Dangerously, i.e. taking creative chances that might sometimes feel a little like madness.

"The man who arrives at the doors of artistic creation with none of the madness of the Muses would be convinced that technical ability alone was enough to make an artist ... what that man creates by means of reason will pale before the art of inspired beings."
~Plato

As always, feel free to brag, rant, plead for help, whine, celebrate, cheer each other on, and anything else related to your SoWD projects!

If you have a quote, image, video, or other idea that you think would inspire your fellow participants in one of these motivational posts, please do let me know. Also, we're coming up on the halfway point of SoWD in about two weeks, and we have something special planned for that occasion. If you like making banners and such and would like to help us out, please let me know. (If you've volunteered generally to help with SoWD, no need to volunteer again; you're on the list of people I will contact.)

Here's to a week of madly productive muses! :)

Yes, yes, I forgot to post the weekly motivational post yesterday. I blame the fact that I was actually working on my SoWD project when I should have been making the motivational post! :D

First of all, congrats to our Impetuous Participants. Since I was late with the post, if you've started your project as of my posting this, then you can claim your prize!

This week's motivational post comes from fantasy author George R.R. Martin. Whether you love his books or hate them, the quote below, to me, expresses one of the reasons why the fantasy genre is such a wonderful playground for the imagination. Hopefully, the quote will inspire you to wing off to your own fantasyland in the next week and make some progress on your projects! :)

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.”

― George R.R. Martin

Please use the comments section of the weekly motivational posts as your own space. Whether you want to brag or blow off steam, feel free to share your progress and experiences so far. Links and snippets are most welcome. If you need help in any way, this is a good place to ask as well.

I meant to post these yesterday with the sign-ups and completely forgot. It was the last day of school, there is only one room in my school where I can access LiveJournal, and I was not going to have Internet access for the rest of the day, and in the rush to get done and get out and start my vacation, I forgot all about the banners! :^|

To use the banners below either ...

1) right-click to save the image to your computer and then upload it to your image host.

2) copy the HTML code beneath each image and paste it wherever HTML is acceptable.

Many thanks to Rhapsody for her help with making this year's banners!

( SoWD 2013 Participant Banners )

Two years ago, we ran a summer event called the Season of Writing Dangerously. The goal of this project is to commit ourselves, as writers and artists, to spend a whole season working toward goals that we set for ourselves. For some people, this takes the shape of putting a dent in their pile of WiPs. For others, it involves starting new pieces. No goal is too big or too small, and each participant decides what she or he wants to spend those three months working on.

We have received numerous requests to run the Season of Writing Dangerously again, so we will be doing so this year. Sign-ups with open on June 21, here on this community. (As always, you can email us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org if you can't or prefer not to use LJ.) Participants will declare their goal and hopefully celebrate their success (and claim a very special prize that we are working to put together) on September 23, when the Season officially ends.

Even though we are a Silmarillion group, all Tolkien-based projects are acceptable for the Season of Writing Dangerously, so if you know individuals or groups in the wider Tolkien fandom who might be interested in this, please do pass the word along. Full guidelines, more details, and sign-ups will be available on June 21!

The Season of Writing Dangerously has ended this weekend, and we'd like to congratulate all of our participants: writers, artists, and cheerleaders! Whether you made your goal or not, it was exciting to see so many people dusting off old projects or embarking on new over the past three months.

If you participated in the Season of Writing Dangerously, we welcome you to commemorate your participation with a banner or icon. You can either upload one of the images below to your own storage space, or copy the code beside the image you want to use and paste it wherever HTML is acceptable.

If you made your goal--a special congratulations! Please let us know here, so that we can list the winners in our October newsletter. If you'd like to share a link to your project(s), please do, and we will include that as well.

Many thanks to rhapsody11 for her help with the banners! :)

( Participant Banners ) ( Cheerleader Banners ) ( Winner Banners )