Silmarillion Writers' Guild

One of our first live events for our Block Party is the Fanfiction Book Club! This actualizes an idea, tossed around in many fannish spaces and specifically discussed on the SWG’s Discord, that fanfiction deserves to be discussed as literature, not just as something inherently (and only) enjoyable to fans of the original text. In the Fanfiction Book Club, we are going to try out this idea by reading and discussing fanfics as one would in ... well, a book club.

Here is how it will work: If you want your story discussed in the book club, you can sign it up. This is not a workshop! Please sign up stories that are finished and that you are proud of. You should sign up your story no later than Monday, April 20.

(One of the things you will be asked for on the sign-up is when you are available to discuss your story on April 26. This is because we have members in just about every habitable timezone and don't want to freeze out people from participating in, say, Tuvalu because a schedule built around Europe and the Americas means they'd be up in the middle of the night to have an equal shake at talking about their story.)

On April 21, I will put together a discussion schedule. Sign-ups will open to choose the stories you want to read and discuss. Anyone can sign up here, even if you don't have a story being discussed; however, if you have a story being discussed, you need to sign up to discuss at least two stories by someone else. This is simply to ensure that there are more people willing to talk about stories rather than just have theirs talked about. If you have a story on the list, you'll have till April 24 to choose what stories by other authors you want to discuss. Sign-ups will remain open until the event starts.

On Sunday, April 26, we will meet on the SWG Discord server to talk about stories in a text channel, following the schedule. There will be at least one moderator involved to keep time and keep the discussion on-topic. If you’ve never participated in a book club before, I will provide a list of potential discussion questions ahead of time, but discussions are in no way limited to this, and authors should also feel free to ask questions of readers!

The Fanfiction Book Club page has more information and the link to sign up a story, if you’d like your story discussed.

Questions?Leave a comment on this post or email the SWG mod team at [email protected]

It was suggested on the Discord server earlier in March that the SWG should do a read-along of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún. These poetic retellings of Old Norse poetry by Tolkien are not themselves part of Tolkien's Legendarium, but reflect his engagement with Scandinavian myths and legends, which is an important influence on the Legendarium. They also show him experimenting with Scandinavian poetic form.

We are planning to start the read-along on a dedicated channel of the SWG Discord on Saturday 6 April at 10 am (BST). We plan to read the whole book over the course of five weeks; see schedule below. As we expect to be a small friendly group that is also spread out over several time zones, we will not schedule set times for discussion but invite participants to comment at their leisure. We will keep an eye on the discussion in the channel and react as our availability permits. This is the first read-along we are leading, so please be tolerant of our failings and polite to fellow participants!

Bunn & Himring

Remember that Discord survey I asked people to take a few weeks ago? I want to share the results of that so that we can start the next steps!  The clear favorite was the recommendation club, which is a super low-key project to run from the admin side and so is something we can start right away. (And thank you, hhimring​, for suggesting this idea!) If you want to help brainstorm a name or have other opinions on this you'd like to share, head on over the the #town-hall channel on our Discord, comment here, or email us at [email protected].

The next favorite was the writers workshop, which is actually quite appropriate since I started the SWG to, in fact, be a writers workshop, a mission that was never realized because we decided to focus on building an archive instead. This is a project that will take a little more planning from the admin side, so I will start a draft of guidelines this weekend and open discussion with my comods.

Some of you were interested in volunteering and will likely get an email from me within the next week or so to see if either of these projects are something you might like to work on. Thank you to everyone who shared ideas and gave feedback as part of the survey!

• Writers workshop. A group that provides in-depth feedback and discussion on each other's stories. (Workshops for other types of fanworks, such as art, would be welcome too; I'm just probably not the best person to run these.)



• Fanfic book club. This group regularly reads a completed, published fanfic and discusses it.



• Reading group. A couple years ago, Lyra and Indy ran a Silmarillion reread on our LiveJournal. This group would choose a book or other text, read a bit each week, and discuss what they've read. Possibilities could be Tolkien's other works or texts that influenced him (such as the Kalevala--which I'm reading now--the Eddas, Beowulf, etc).



• Readings. A voice channel where we gather from time to time to read fanworks aloud. We could either plan a program ahead, have an open mic, or a bit of both.



• Meta presentations. Like the readings but an author/researcher presents a work of meta, takes questions from the audience, etc. Likewise, this could be entirely planned ahead with a program (like an online Tolkien conference! :D) or could be an informal rap session, or a bit of both.



• What else??

Now that the SWG is officially a teenager (and legally able to sign up for social media under the U.S. COPPA law), we have decided it is old enough to have its own Discord server. So, as a birthday gift to the Silmarillion fandom that has given us a reason to exist for 13 wonderful years now, we are thrilled to announce that the SWG is now on Discord!

We are hoping to use our Discord for collaborative and community events about our members and friends in the Tolkienfic fandom. For our first event, we’d like to invite Silmfic writers and fans to our 13th birthday party on Thursday, August 2, at 1 PM EST, on the SWG Discord for virtual cake, camaraderie, and instadrabbling.

What is instadrabbling? Instadrabbling is when a bunch of writers get together, someone chooses four words at random, and each writer creates and shares a drabble using those four words. (A traditional drabble is exactly 100 words, but as this is all in good fun, all flash fanworks are welcome, including art.) Repeat as many times as wanted with as many sets of words as wanted! Everyone is welcome, whether you want to write, make art, join in the discussion, or just listen in.

If you want to attend, please join our Discord server. (If you’re new to Discord, check out this starter guide, although I found it pretty intuitive to sign up and join my first server with zero experience.) We have a Common Room open for discussion, so please do feel free to start chatting with and saying hi to your fellow Silmarillion fans before the party! If you have an idea for a community event or project that you’d like to see us host or that you’d like to host yourself, please reach out--we welcome comments on this post or can be reached at [email protected].

Finally, a huge thank you to the Silmarillion fandom, who have given us 13 joyful years of living in Middle-earth among some of the coolest Tolkien fans on Arda.