The midpoint of the year always brings multiple big events and challenges in the Tolkien fandom, and it can feel like a juggling act to get everything done that you want to do! As we prepare to announce our new challenge in this newsletter in exactly a week, it seems a good time to remind our creators who may be mid-juggling-act how our challenges work alongside other fandom events.

First and most importantly, our challenges can always be incorporated into fanworks created for other events. The purpose of the challenges is not to produce only fanworks created exclusively for the challenge. The purpose is not to "scoop" fanworks by being the first (much less only!) place they are posted. The purpose is to encourage the creation of Tolkien-inspired fanworks and to encourage archiving those works with us. That's really it!

That means that you can post your challenge fanworks somewhere else first. (You do need to eventually post with us if you want the stamp; the challenge guidelines spell everything out.) You can add to a work-in-progress using a challenge prompt or weave a challenge prompt into a fanwork you're creating for another fandom event. You can include prompts from multiple challenges into a single fanwork. (On the 15th of the month, the outgoing and new challenges are both active for that one day, and of course you can use past challenge prompts whenever you want; you just won't receive the stamp.)

What if you're creating for an event that has a reveal date past the challenge due date? Just let us know! (You can reply to one of these newsletters to quickly get the mods!) We always appreciate a heads-up ahead of time, but if you forget this part and let us know after the fact, we'll still make sure you get your stamp.

In general, we are glad to work with creators who have extenuating circumstances and miss the deadline to ensure they get their stamp. We need to keep a deadline on challenges because 1) the deadline is part of what makes it challenging and 2) stamps are awarded by people, not computer programs (thanks, Grundy!), so we need to keep that task manageable. But withholding stamps from people who met the challenge but were waylaid by illnesses, emergencies, sudden loss of power or internet, and other unforeseen crises is not the point of a deadline.

About half of the fanworks posted to our archive are challenge responses, so we appreciate our challenge participants' ongoing efforts to keep our archive alive and wish fruitful muses for everyone experiencing event juggling season!