The Silmarillion Writers' Guild--An Online Community for Silmarillion Study and Fan Fiction

Happy Birthday, SWG!

Update! We have decided to extend the deadlines for turning in work for themes by two weeks. The birthday event will begin on August 10. We will have a revised schedule of due dates posted shortly.

The SWG is turning five at the end of the month and, of course, we have planned a celebration! We need help creating themes and prizes--and, of course, stories, poems, essays, and artwork. Our current themes are

-Most Sinister Villain
-Who?? A Celebration of Minor and Original Characters
-Númenórean Queens
-Clash of the Titans
-Do Something That's Never Been Done
-Heroes and Antiheroes
-Perfect Matches
-Five Things
-Minstrelsy and Music
-Cuiviénen
-Through the Ages

Current tokens, to be awarded to the story or author of your choice, are

-Smells Like Teen Spirit
-Best Kiss
-Melian's Girdle
-Ilúvdiacritics
-The Splutter
-Funniest Feanorians!

And we are still looking for more theme and token ideas! Please visit our birthday page for more information on how to participate!

Current Challenges

Follow the Leader
The Silmarillion shows us many leaders who attain their status through different means and for different reasons. For this challenge, consider a leader in The Silmarillion and show a scene in which that character shows why he or she is a leader of his or her people.

Site News

Volunteer Needed!
We are posting a final request for a Yellow Pages Coordinator before we discontinue work on this section of the site. In this job, you would assist with maintaining and updating content in the Yellow Pages reference. Please contact us for more information or to express interest.

International Day of Femslash
The third annual IDoFs is July 18 and, once again, the SWG is a participating! We invite our writers to submit their femslash stories on that day.

Archive Update and Bugs
June's software update was successful! However, we have spotted a pair of mostly harmless bugs. When you preview a story you're adding, the preview will show the story belonging to a series. It does not actually belong to this series, and the version that displays on the site will be correct. Currently, authors cannot add more than one subseries to a parent series. We have located the cause of this problem and are working to resolve it.

July 2010 Newsletter
July's newsletter has been posted here!

Around the World and Web

LotR Genfic Community
Since it was so popular last year, for the July Challenge at the LOTR GenFic Community we are repeating our Fixed-Length-Ficlet Challenge! the Theme will be "Short and Sweet", and all the stories will be Fixed-Length Ficlets. The element will be a number between 101 and 400. Interested authors can reply to this announcement and claim a number. No one will be allowed to have a number previously claimed. Whatever number is chosen will be the word count for your ficlet-- if you choose 237 your story must have exactly 237 words! To request your elements, please leave a comment to this post with the number you pick!

Teitho
At Teitho, the challenge for July is Five Ingredients - Your Recipe: For the month of July, we have a delicious recipe for you to prepare. The ingredients are all listed below, but how you mix-n-spice them is completely up to you. Remember, all great chefs manage to make recipes of their own by adding their personal touch and flavor. The five ingridients are: Lame horse, Knocked-over candle, Person with a disability, Missing toy, Broken musical instrument. Each item on the list must appear in your story at least once, either physically or in dialogue. The deadline for this challenge is July 25th. If you want to know more and/or participate, please visit the website..

A Long-Expected Contest (ALEC)
The theme for July is Fighting to be Free -or- Freedom. In honor of July 4th, I thought it was appropriate to do something about fighting for our Independence. Entries don't have to be based on documented events or need to be based on an actual character in the books (can be an OC in Tolkien's world). Each writer has until July 31 by 11:59 PM PST to turn in the story. See the ALEC website for more information.

MEFA
Nominations for the 2010 MEFAs are closed and voting is underway! To learn more about participating in the MEFAs, see the Voting FAQ.

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