1st Fanfiction Anniversary

Today is my 1st Fanfiction Anniversary.

Today, exactly one year ago, I wrote the first chapter of my first version of “The Tides of Time and the Bones of the Earth” and posted it to FFNet

Today, exactly one year later, I am almost done with rewriting that story.

How time flies…

I wrote the first version of the “Tides” all of its 111,333 words in exactly four weeks. It seems silly that I need more than a year to get it rewritten. I have to remind myself of all the other words I have written during that last year.

So many words!

FFNet tells me that I posted 670,480 words during that year. If I add the ten chapters of my original story to that, my degree paper and all the rewritten chapters of “Lothíriel” and the “Tides”… I think I can safely assume that I have written 800,000 words during the last year.

I have counted the words on an average page of a paperback novel. Round about 400, give or take.

That means, I have filled some 2,000 paperback pages with words during the last twelve months, just with my stories and texts (not counting excerpts, posts, announcements, LJ entries…).

But what does that mean?

More measuring: two of my Diana Gabaldon novels come up to 2,000 pages together. They weigh 1,285 g, a bit more than two pounds. They are 12 cm or 4.72 inches high. They are 18.3 cm or 7.20 inches long.

But what does that mean?

I’m sitting here and staring at the screen, wondering what to think and what to write.

As we read and write, we create our own “mythology” – lifelines – dreampaths.

What we read, what we write, when we do it, how we do it – it shapes our lives, our identity. Our thoughts, our ideas, our feelings… invariably certain books and for the writers among us, certain kinds of stories/poems, accompany and outline certain periods of our lives.

What is your “mythology”? What is the “mythology” of your reading and your writing?

When you have… a tribble from Middle-earth

When you have watched the waves washing up against the crumbling walls of the harbour of Mithlond,

when you have had shepherd’s pie in the Prancing Pony and burned your tongue,

when your weary feet have trudged the lonely miles between the Weathertop and the Last Bridge, all one hundred and twenty of them,

when you have listened to songs and stories in Rivendell and learned how to say meleth nîn and the words of an ancient Quenyan hymn,

when you have picked a snow drop at Cerin Amroth and thought it to be a niphredil,

when you have stood on the terrace in front of the Golden Hall of Meduseld and shivered in the cold wind blowing down from the snowy peaks of the Irensaga,

when you have learned the names of all the Gondorian beacon hills and can sing them to an old teaching song,

when you have had a pint in the Laughing Oliphaunt and tried to spot Iorlas in the crowd,

when you have set sail from Dol Amroth to find the Straight Way,

when you have heard tales about the kine of Rhûn on the shores of the Eastern Sea, drinking red wine from Dorwinion,

when you have haggled for sweet dates and sesame bread with street-merchants in Umbar and barely kept the shirt on your back,

when you have danced with the hobbits around the mallorn tree on the Party Field,

when you have celebrated New Year’s Day in Osgiliath, breathless in the arms of a dark-haired, grey-eyed ranger of the South,

when you have seen the floods of the River Carnen flow down from the Iron Hills in bright red floods over black sands,

when you have wandered farther still, where the stars are strange…

…then you are a fanfiction writer of Middle-earth.

Many thanks to my friends (especially Aranel, Aeneid, Aliana and EL) whose writings inspired some of the lines above!

The tribble also contains references to most of my stories, of course.