Back to Middle-earth Month 2008: The Circles of the World

Why did you fall in love with Middle-earth?

Every March, we seek to answer that very question. March is Back to Middle-earth Month (B2MeM), a chance to remember what inspired us to become involved in this fandom in the first place. Whether a recent addition to our online community, one of the many who were compelled by Jackson's movies, or a fan of multiple decades, B2MeM gives fans a chance to rekindle those first heady months of fandom participation. At SWG, we have observed B2MeM for three years now as a testament for our enduring passion for creativity and scholarship inspired by the stories of J.R.R. Tolkien, particularly The Silmarillion and its related works.

So why did you fall in love with Tolkien's stories? Ask one thousand fans and you will get one thousand different answers. This year for B2MeM, we seek just a few of those answers, presented alongside the creative achievements that define our love for Tolkien's works.

This year's theme is The Circles of the World, and we look at our creative endeavors that explore beginnings and relationships, conflicts and endings, and, of course, fate. Three times a week for the month of March, we present a different topic alongside stories and artwork illustrating that topic. The responses come from all parts of The Silmarillion but share one important things in common: These are the events, people, and places in Tolkien's world that inspire, challenge, and intrigue us. Each author's interpretation of the topic includes part of the answer to the question we ask and begin to answer each March: Why did you fall in love with The Silmarillion?

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Submission Guidelines

Deadline for Submissions: Monday, 25 February 2008

This year's B2MeM involves two components, and we welcome everyone--both SWG members and non-members--to share their work.

Step 1. First, please browse the list of topics listed below. Do you have a story, poem, or artwork that fits one or more of those topics? Would you be inspired to write a piece about one of them?

If the answer is yes then you're halfway there!

What sorts of pieces are eligible?

• Ficlets, story excerpts, poems, and artwork are all eligible. Prose submissions should be less than 300 words; poetry should be less than 30 lines. If the submission is an excerpt of a longer piece, we will link to the longer piece on the archive of your choosing. Excerpts of longer works should be able to stand on their own relatively well. Please feel free to ask us for help with excerpts if you're not sure.
• Artwork should not exceed 700 pixels on its longest side. We prefer .jpg or .png files; please contact us if you prefer another format, and we'll make every effort to work with you.
• The submission should fit one of the subtopics listed below. The submission may be any genre; about any character, race, place, or event in The Silmarillion; and may be alternate universe (AU).
• The submission should have some connection to The Silmarillion. We have always been flexible in our definition of Silmarillion-based writing in the past; generally, if the piece involves characters, events, or settings present in The Silmarillion, then we're willing to consider it Silmarillion writing. The same applies to artwork: Artwork focusing on characters, events, and settings from The Silmarillion is appropriate for this project. If you're unsure, please feel free to contact us, and we'll try to help you the best that we can!
• As B2MeM is a project intended for all audiences eligible for SWG membership, then submissions must be rated General or Teens according to our ratings guide. Excerpts from works rated Adult are acceptable so long as the excerpts do not contain Adult-rated content. Please note that links to Adult-rated work will be marked as such in the final project.
  
  Artwork should not contain graphic sexuality or violence containing a lot of blood and gore. Again, please feel free to contact us if you have questions; we will do our best to work with you.

Step 2. B2MeM is all about remembering why we fell in love with Tolkien's works. What was it that first intrigued you? Which character stole your heart? What places did you imagine visiting? What chapters do you never tire of reading?

In addition to your submissions, we would like to know something of why you wrote the piece, why you love Tolkien's works, or whatever you choose to share about what intrigues and inspires you. This narrative could be very general ("I first fell in love with Tolkien because ...") or very specific ("I love writing about Maedhros and Fingon because ..."), but it should tell us something of why you joined and continue to participate in this fandom. We encourage contributors to send submissions that have strong personal meaning for them and to express this in their narratives.

We will present these narratives alongside your submissions. Narratives should be rated General or Teens according to our ratings guide and should be no longer than 500 words.

Some other things you will need to know:

• Contributors may send submissions for as many topics as they would like. If you have a piece that fits every topic, then feel free to send them all! However, we ask that contributors send only one piece per topic.
• Likewise, all pieces must include narratives as described in Step Two above. If you submit multiple pieces, then each piece must have a different narrative.
• We will make our best effort to publish everything that we receive. However, if we receive too many entries for a single topic, then we may not be able to publish them all. We will, however, publish something from every contributor who sends us a submission.
• We will copyedit all submissions that we receive for glaring errors. If we need to change anything about your submission, we will contact you for approval before we do so. If you would like us to proofread your submission for you and offer suggestions, we will gladly do so; simply indicate this in your email to us. However, please send these entries as early as possible since we anticipate that the most entries will be submitted in the final days before the deadline. We will be able to offer a better-quality response if we have adequate time to do so.

Terms of Use and Publication Rights Acquired

Sending your work to us gives us non-exclusive one-time rights to publish your work on our sites, including our LiveJournal community and our Yahoo! group. What does this mean in plain English? You retain all copyrights and control of your work. The piece may be published already, and you may publish it elsewhere, as many times as you'd like and wherever you'd like. We ask permission only to use it this one time on sites under our direct control, as well as on future sites under our direct control.

Contributors may withdraw their submissions until their work is published. Once a piece is published, we will not be able to remove the work from our site except under special circumstances. Please be sure that you are happy with your work and happy with having it on our site before sending in your submission(s).

While unfinished pieces are welcome, we will not be making any edits or changes to submissions that have been published. If you have any corrections, changes, or updates, you are welcome to send them up to two days before the scheduled publication date. After that, we will do our best to honor your request but cannot make any guarantees.

In sending your work to us, you are asserting that the work is yours and does not use copyrighted material in a way that violates fair use. We will include disclaimers on our sites about Tolkien's work remaining the property of his estate. Artists using the work of other artists in their creations are asserting that they have permission from all original artists or that the pieces used were available for open use when acquired.

Artists: by sending your work to us, you are also granting us permission to resize your work in order to fit our pages. Whenever possible, we will link to a full-sized version elsewhere on the site.

How to Submit Your Work

Please send your entries to us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org. One of the moderators will reply to your email as soon as your submission is received. If you do not receive a reply after two days, please email us again, as your submission or our reply may have been lost in a spam filter somewhere.

You may send submissions as a URL to the work on an online archive, in the body of an email, or as an attachment: .doc, .rtf, .txt, and .html are acceptable file formats for writing; .jpg and .png are acceptable formats for artwork. Please contact us if you need or prefer to use another format, and we will do our best to work with you. If you use .txt or send the submission in an email, please indicate special formatting using HTML tags or *asterisks for bold* and _underscores for italics_.

We like to link our contributors' names to their homepages so that interested readers may find out more about them or find more of their work. If you'd like us to link to your homepage, simply provide a full URL on the form below; if not, leave it blank. Please provide only one homepage; we can only attach one link to your name! Also, we reserve the right not to link to certain sites, e.g., for-profit sites or pornography. But this is a great place to link your blog, your personal website, or even your profile at the archive of your choice.

Please copy and paste the form below for each submission that you send. Be careful to spell everything (your name, the title of your piece) exactly as you would like it to appear on our site.

Subtopic:
Author/Artist Name:
Title of Submission:
Is the submission an excerpt of a longer work? (Y or N)
If YES, if you would like us to link to the full work, please provide a complete URL:
Is the longer work adult-rated? (Y or N)
Homepage URL (optional):

I have read the Terms of Use and Publication Rights Acquired available at http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/b2mem2008.php/#terms_of_use. I understand that I am granting SWG one-time, non-exclusive rights to use my work on their sites and that I will not be able to have my work removed or changed after it is published. (Y or N)

Submission:

Themes for B2MeM 2008: The Circles of the World

Each week has a new theme, and within each theme are three subtopics. Remember, you are welcome to send submissions for as many subtopics as inspire you! (But only one submission per subtopic, please!)

Week 1
March 3. Beginnings: birth
March 5. Beginnings: creation
March 7. Beginnings: discovery

Week 2
March 10. Conflict: war
March 12. Conflict: betrayal
March 14. Conflict: rivalry

Week 3
March 17. Relationships: love
March 19. Relationships: friendship
March 21. Relationships: allegiance

Week 4
March 24. Endings: death
March 26. Endings: downfall
March 28. Endings: parting

Week 5
March 31. Fate

Please remember that we need to have all submissions no later than Monday 25 February 2008.

Are you participating in this year's Back to Middle-earth Month event? Show off your work and help us spread the word by choosing from our B2MeM 2008 banners and icons here!