Founded in 2005, the Silmarillion Writers' Guild exists for discussions of and creative fanworks based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion and related texts. We are a positive-focused and open-minded space that welcomes fans from all over the world and with all levels of experience with Tolkien's works. Whether you are picking up Tolkien's books for the first time or have been a fan for decades, we welcome you to join us!
New Challenge: Title Track Tolkien's titles range from epic to lyrical to metaphorical. This month's challenge selected 125 of them as prompts for fanworks.
Our Annual Amnesty Challenge: New Year's Resolution Start 2026 off with creativity! If you missed a challenge or didn't get to finish or post a challenge fanwork, complete any 2025 challenge before 15 February to receive the stamp.
He was going to die. The molten rocks would burn him just like the cursed gem in his palm did. Maybe less painfully but still being burnt hurt and Maedhros knew it. He intimately knew it from his time in Angband where Þauron burnt him often in frustration and to toy with him and his master…
“Come on.” Maedhros grabbed his hand and pulled him along down the path, both of them quickening their pace now, until the trees opened up into a wide meadow filled with flowers, bright yellow celandine and dandelions and sweet-scented pale chamomile mingling with cornflowers and irises. On…
Aldarion storms off towards Middle-earth. For the Title Track challenge.
Current Challenge
Title Track
Create a fanwork using our collection of 125 titles from Tolkien's books, chapters, essays, poems, and fragments as inspiration. Read more ...
Random Challenge
Festival of Lights Fest
This is a fun and low-key event meant to encourage works about or inspired by Hanukkah, running this year in conjunction with the Potluck Bingo challenge. Read more ...
This presentation for Mereth Aderthad 2025 discusses the parallels between the concept of abnegation in the scientific work surrounding the atomic bomb and in The Silmarillion. The relinquishment of self-interest in favor of the interests of others, abnegation was identified by Tolkien as a powerful act of spirit and reason. The legendarium has many examples of the complexities of abnegation, which parallel similar discussions held by physicists during and after World War II.
This presentation for Mereth Aderthad 2025 discusses the many similarities between Tolkien's three "twilight children," Tinúviel, Lómion, and Undómiel (Luthien, Maeglin, and Arwen) in terms of appearance, plot, and cultural background. Yet these three characters play very different roles in the text.
Presented at Mereth Aderthad 2025, this paper makes the case thata, although the term "aromantic" had not yet been coined in Tolkien's day, many of his characters can be read as aromantic. The paper takes a closer look at Aredhel, Bilbo, and Boromir as three examples of characters who can be read as aromantic.
“There’s a goblin hiding in the taters, Dad!” Pippin hefted the pan, which was much too big for him to carry, let alone wield.
Around the World and Web
March Challenge - Tolkien Short Fanworks
Tolkien Short Fanworks is running a challenge for the month of March to create a Back to Middle-earth Month themed challenge.
Tolkien Fashion Week 2026
This two-week-long Tumblr event is dedicated to honoring the world of fashion and textiles Tolkien wrote about in his books.
Celegorm and Curufin Week 2026
Celegorm and Curufin Week is a Tumblr week celebrating the relationship between Celegorm and Curufin Feanorion
Back to Middle-earth Month 2026
Back to Middle-earth Month is returning for it's 20th year with many prompts and archival efforts.
The Silmarillion Writers' Guild is more than just an archive--we are a community! If you enjoy a fanwork or enjoy a creator's work, please consider letting them know in a comment.
This is lovely, if bleak, as you said: the increasing lack of humanity in both Earendil and Elwing, and the loneliness of their fates. It's so easy to make the Valar into familiar, human(ish) figures, and thereby diminish them, but you set them at such a remote distance as Powers and that works very well. Earendil and Elwing, somewhere between, seem to take on some of the same pitiless distance. Thank you!
Thank you, I'm glad you thought my writing of the Valar worked, they really are very difficult. And Earendil's fate does seem to me terribly lonely, I really wanted a reason *why* he had to sail the skies and came up with this.
In many ways I'd like to think Earendil's life was happier, but this story just got hold of me, in part because of how bleak Earendil sounds when talking to Elwing in canon just before she choses immortality, and now I find I can't see him any other way, sad though it is.
I really enjoyed this! Bleak is a good description of it, but I can't see how else a mortal Man doomed to eternity could feel. I've always seen Earendil as a tragic figure, wanting to be mortal but remaining out of love. Your picture of him and Elwing growing farther and farther apart is even more sad, but I can see how it could happen. This is a great piece; I don't think I'll ever see Earendil the same way after reading it. Thanks!
Thank you for that. Earendil is a figure who seems unavoidably tragic to me, even though we're not really told how he feels about his fate. His fate does seem lonely, even if the Valar didn't intend it that way (whether Tolkien intended it that way I'm not quite sure)
Comments on No Regrets
The Silmarillion Writers' Guild is more than just an archive--we are a community! If you enjoy a fanwork or enjoy a creator's work, please consider letting them know in a comment.