Linaewen's Lake of Small Birds

Here is my first story for the 2019 Back to Middle-earth Bingo Challenge!

B2MeM Prompt, Card and Number: G48: "a character who's the same age you were when you first discovered Tolkien's Middle-earth" (Write What You Know), a mountain or mountains (Person vs. Nature); N42: a river (Person vs. Nature)
Format: Short Story
Genre: Childhood
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: Frodo, Bilbo
Pairings: None
Creator’s Notes (optional): I was 12 when I met Frodo and Bilbo for the first time, and once I started reading their stories, I couldn't stop -- and I was never the same again!
Summary: Young Frodo loves listening to Cousin Bilbo's stories, especially when they are about mountains.

( Read more... )

Back in April, I shared in my journal that I had decided to take part in a Finish-a-thon, to help push me towards finishing some of the stories I had begun writing or to complete a story based on one of the plot bunnies that had been plaguing me.  People voted on which of my tales or plot bunnies should be the one I concentrate on, and one of the plot bunnies was chosen.

For the past month and a half, I've been working on the following bunny:

Fandom:  Lord of the Rings
Rating:  all-ages
Type:  gen
Description:  Plot bunny -- Boromir somehow recognizes Aragorn as being Thorongil, who spent time in Minas Tirith when Boromir was a young child. How does this affect their relationship and goals?

The deadline for finishing my Finish-a-thon story is today!  I actually finished a week or two early, and posted the story in some of the archives I frequent -- but I waited to post the story here at LJ until today.

( Reforged )

 

It was really fun writing this one!  I actually think I might have to write a sequel to it sometime -- but not yet.  First I have to see about working on -- even finishing -- some of those other stories that have been waiting for me to pay attention to them.  ;-)

I recently signed up for what is known as a Finish-a-thon -- the goal of which is to help a writer finish one of those long-neglected blot bunnies or already begun tales that are kicking around the place.

It is set up as a LiveJournal poll, and that means any of you who wish to can vote, to help me decide which of my stories gets finished -- or at least worked on to the point of 10,000 more words written, in the case of an impossibly long epic that could in no way be finished by the deadline!  ;-)

I have proposed the following tales as candidates for finishing -- two are multiple chapter works, and two are plot bunnies that I WILL write, but it looks like I need help in getting them started.  They are all in the LotR fandom:

( Click here for Lin's stalled fics )


And my poll is here, so please go vote and help me choose which one to concentrate on this summer!  I think the polls are open until Friday, so don't hesitate, go vote!  :-D

HERE

I'm feeling quite stirred to finish all of them at this point, so the Finish-a-thon is already having a good effect!!

We had a lovely 10 day visit up to Wisconsin that included the Mother's Day weekend.  We worked hard, though!  We had the interesting situation of being without running water in our house for a number of days, as the DH was reworking the water pipes in preparation placing a new furnace and finishing the basement so DS can have a bigger room for himself.  But it was kind of fun to be dipping water out of buckets and heating it on the stove -- it brought back fond memories of life in Pakistan.  We had to do that plenty often in the summers when the city ran out of water because it hadn't rained enough.  At least this time we didn't have to haul it from a spring -- we just collected as much as we could in as many containers as we could scrape together, and it was enough.

The visit to my dad over Mother's Day was excellent.  He is doing well, in all ways.  We visited my mom, too -- and it was lovely day to be in the cemetery, placing flowers.

We are back in Chicago now, and the weather is finally beginning to be springlike, instead of threatening to go back to winter.  Looks like we might even have summer this week, for a change.  I imagine we'll be wishing for that cool breeze to return before long, but for now, the warm one is very pleasant.  I really like being able to have the windows open!  We get such a lovely breeze through our apartment that it's as good as being outside.

So after a good year of really not being very inclined to write, no matter how much I tried, my Muse has returned with a vengeance.  The other day I took out an old thing I had worked on a couple of years ago, and decided I wanted to finish it.  I had actually finished it when I first wrote it up way back when, but I decided I wanted to redo the last two chapters -- and it took me years to get around to that!

It's Boromir, of course!  I see it as a bit of a companion piece to Lords of Gondor, but it also can stand on its own, I think.  I am posting it chapter by chapter in other places, but here it is all together:

( A Blade for the Battle )

~*~*~*~

Thanks for reading!  Hopefully, this isn't the extent of my Muse prodding.  I'd like to see progress on some of my other stalled tales as well.  It's quite embarrassing to look and see what the date was when I last update on some of those stories...  ;-)

I spent most of the day writing, in order to submit a tale to a HASA challenge before it closed.  The challenge was X Takes the Ring, and had the following description:

I have seen a few stories over the years where for instance Galadriel takes the Ring when Frodo offers it to her. But what would happen if others were to take it, for any reason, good or evil? Aragorn? Boromir, Gandalf, or Pippin perhaps? Or Sam abandons Frodo at Cirith Ungol and goes on alone to try to destroy the Ring...

It wouldn't have to be a member of the Fellowship; maybe Barliman Butterbur finds a golden ring in the room the Hobbits used… or Bilbo loses it on one of his walking trips in the Shire…

These could be anything, serious, funny, dark; from drabbles to multi-chapter AUs, and anything in between.

My own idea had been plaguing me for months, and changed daily -- recently I managed to wrestle it into submission long enough to keep it from becoming another mult-chapter AU.  In any case, it still took me all day to write -- but here it is, and it's still March 25 where I am.

A fitting day for a story about the Ring going to Mount Doom.  ;-)  Read on...

I have never been able to manage a drabble except once, ages ago, because I just could never say what I wanted to in so few words! But in trying to write something special for a friend's birthday awhile back, I up with this. When I originally wrote it, it counted out as exactly 400 words, so I called it a Quaddrabble, but now when I recount it, it doesn't seem to come out right!  Oh, well.  I shall just have to rewrite it some day, in a longer version, because the idea of this "might have been" intrigues me greatly.

( Hope Stirs )

 

It's February 26, and that brings Boromir to mind, of course -- it being the day upon which the Fellowship was broken and Boromir was lost.  In honor of the day, I prepared a series of found poems that seem to fit together; though they are from different parts of the trilogy, they carry a common theme.

1.  

Thanks for reading!  I shall be back later to do some reading of my own in the journals of my friends.  Later, my dears!

ETA:  I had trouble with the cut text today, and that 1 in the middle there offends me, but I can't get rid of it without messing things up royally -- or deleting and starting over.  I think I'll just ignore it and go have lunch.

I was going to post about my List of Doom, but I'll save that for another day -- suffice it to say, I am busy being busy and trying to accomplish things in a productive way that makes best use of the time that is given me.

What made me decide not to talk about all tasks that are worrying me and making me feel a bit thin and stretched is a poem I found this morning, when looking for something else. It is by Karin Boye, a Swedish writer, and it is beautiful. It seems to apply somehow, in these days -- I hope you all will find it as encouraging as I have!