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Author: Tracey Dyck

The Silmarillion Awards 2016: Riddling and Poetry Nominations

Tracey Dyck 129 Comments

Hey questers, welcome to the first ever Silmarillion Awards! This has been in the works for a while, so I’m quite excited to finally get to share it with you.

The Silmarillion Awards have been created by DJ Edwardson and Jenelle Schmidt as a way to honor J.R.R. Tolkien as the Father of Modern Fantasy, open up a discussion about some of our other favorite fantasy works, and to have a ton of fun this summer.

When we started thinking about creating a sort of “Fantasy Oscars,” we found it difficult to fathom any award that wouldn’t be won by a character or item from The Lord of the Rings . . . so to make things a bit more interesting, we decided to call them “The Silmarillion Awards” and have characters from LOTR and The Hobbit present the awards as examples of the ultimate standard for each award. Hopefully that will even the playing field a bit.

Joining the team are myself and seven other bloggers and authors who will each be hosting one of these awards, called Silmarils, on our blogs towards the end of July.

But before we get there, we need YOUR help! Starting today, June 20th, and proceeding through July 1st, the nomination period for each award will be open. Please visit the participating bloggers (found in the list below), read the descriptions of the awards, and make your nominations!

So the way this works is you’ll be nominating characters and whatnot in the comments of each blog post. If someone has already nominated the character you would’ve nominated, you may second (or third, fourth, fifth, etc.) that nomination. We will be picking the 5 characters with the most “seconds” for the final voting period that will take place between July 4th – 13th.

It’s not as complicated as it might sound at first. Basically, an individual can make as many nominations and “seconds” as they desire, but you can’t second your own nomination. That would be like you nominating the same character twice, which is *gasp* cheating.

Fine print

  1. Please do not nominate anything from one of your OWN books!
  2. You may nominate a character AND second, third, fourth a character . . . but please only vote once. (i.e. You cannot nominate a character and then also second that same character. Basically I’m just repeating everything.)
  3. Please share about the Silmarillion Awards on social media to spread the excitement far and wide across Middle Earth. Use the hashtag: #silmawards2016 wherever possible!
  4. Don’t nominate a Tolkien character for the awards, as the characters presenting the awards are already the standard for each award.
  5. Don’t stress if a character you nominate doesn’t win this year. We are hoping to make this an annual tradition, and these awards are LIFETIME AWARDS, meaning that they cannot be won by the same character more than once!

Official Schedule

Phase 1 – June 20-July 1: Award nominations open

Phase 2 – July 4: the final nominees will be announced and voting will open and last through July 14th

Phase 3 – July 16-28: Presentation of the awards, one per day, each award will be hosted on a different blog each day

Phase 4 – Celebration! July 29th was the official publication date of the Lord of the Rings back in 1954. We invite you all to celebrate with us the 62nd birthday of this masterpiece of Fantasy Fiction. Congratulate the winners, take and post a photo of yourselves with LOTR paraphernalia, write a blog post about your favorite LOTR moment, scene, character, quote, or memory . . . get creative and have fun!

List of Participating Blogs

Tracey Dyck Hosting the Riddling and Poetry Silmaril

As you can see, I will be hosting the Riddling and Poetry Silmaril here on Adventure Awaits. Below are the criteria for the sort of character or riddle/poem that ought to be nominated for such an award. Keep in mind that LOTR characters, as the ultimate standard of fantasy fiction, will be presenting these awards (so don’t nominate any Middle Earthians, please!).

The Riddling and Poetry Silmaril should go to either:

  • A piece of poetry so beautiful and fantastic that it stirs the soul to action, awakens the imagination, or whispers to the heart . . .
  • A riddle so riddlesome, so clever and epic, that it turns your brain inside out . . .
  • A character who wields words with utmost skill, be they a bard, singer, or riddle-maker. This character should stick in your memory as someone whose riddles/poems bring depth, creativity, humor, or a sense of foreboding to the book.

That’s the sort of riddle/poem/character I want you to nominate, questers!

Near the end of July, this award will be presented to the winner YOU vote for by the one who comes from under the hill . . . the one known as Ring-winner and Luck-wearer and Barrel-rider; he who walks unseen; who came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over him. I shan’t name him now, but I’m sure you can easily guess who it is.

I know I just threw a lot of details at you, so feel free to ask questions! (There are no stupid ones, remember.)

Now go forth into the comments section and nominate away! The world is waiting to applaud the very best riddling and poetry fantasy has to offer!

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Is Our Writing Needed? (a response post)

Tracey Dyck 23 Comments

I’ve never written a response post before, so today will be a first. The lovely, spitfire authoress Jenny Freitag (who penned Plenilune, a book I want to read one day) over at The Penslayer wrote a post the other day called Why NOT Being a Prolific Writer is a Godsend. Now, I agree with/am inspired by a number of Jenny’s posts, but something she said in this one burrowed under my skin and stuck there. So I’m pondering it in the form of a blog post.

The Lord doesn’t need you + you don’t know what you’re talking about. If you possibly think you know enough to “write” for the Lord, you know nothing of the smallness of man nor the immensity of God. Do as Job did, and put your hand over your mouth. Be humble. God has left his written witness. My fiction – your fiction – none of it is necessary.

I confess, I blinked at my screen and did a double take at that first phrase: the Lord doesn’t need you. I won’t presume to know all the thoughts and intentions behind Jenny’s statement, but I’m bothered enough to want to unpackage and sift this for myself. Cool?

God is infinite. Infinitely complete, infinitely self-sufficient. So of course He doesn’t need me. Need is felt only by finite beings. He has and is everything. The creation of the world and of mankind was not done out of a vacancy of God’s. It was not because He was somehow lacking. No, He spoke creation into being because He wanted to. It was what He desired, and it brought Him pleasure.

But the Lord I’m spending my life getting to know does want me. After all, He brought me into existence. And every page of the Bible is evidence that He wants to love me, wants me to love Him back, and basically wants to have every piece of myself. And He shows me the way to live a life that builds His Kingdom. One way I can do that is through my writing.

If you possibly think you know enough to “write” for the Lord, you know nothing of the smallness of man nor the immensity of God.

Maybe this is just arguing semantics, but by “writing for the Lord” do you mean “writing in service of the Lord” or “writing because He can’t speak loud enough on His own?”

“For the Lord” in the sense of a lesser being serving a higher one–or in the sense of fulfilling someone’s lack? I can bake muffins for you because I like you and want to give you something that will bring you pleasure, or I can bake muffins for you because you can’t/are too busy/don’t know how/don’t want to.

All it takes is for me to look up at the stars on a dark night to recognize the smallness of man and the immensity of God–only a scrap of it, you understand, because my finite mind cannot truly comprehend the infinite. But if I say that I write for the Lord, I don’t say so under any delusion that He somehow needs me to. As if His plan would fall apart if I didn’t.

And yet! And yet . . . one of the greatest mysteries of all is how a God so indescribably powerful would choose to give such a measure of authority to earthen vessels, human beings. How He would choose to do His work not with a bang and a flash of lightning and an instantaneous solution, but through the slow, painful process of moving in and through mankind. Through flawed, limited people. Yes, through me.

Does He need me? Isn’t He capable of accomplishing whatever He wants no matter what I do? Yes. And also no.

This mystery confounds me. It’s like prayer. He doesn’t need us to tell Him what we’re thinking and what we need, because He already knows. But for the purpose of relationship and the maturing of our faith, He wants us to pray. There’s a big difference between needing and wanting. I don’t think we realize the full extent of our prayers’ impact. Prayer is needed.

None of it is necessary.

 I see where you’re coming from–you’re speaking to those of us whose heads have gotten too big, those of us who pressure ourselves to write, write, write, because there are SOULS TO SAVE. Those of us who stagger under the unrealistic pressure we’ve heaped upon our own shoulders. I get that.

But every mile of road has two miles of ditch. The opposite swing of the pendulum is one which causes us to throw up our hands and weigh our writing too lightly. If my writing is not necessary, then why do it? It’s too much work and pain and bloodshed to press on if it doesn’t matter anyway. (But there’s the rub–maybe it really is unnecessary, and yet it still matters. Maybe it’s something I don’t have to do, but when I do it, it makes a difference. Or maybe it is necessary. I’m not 100% sure.)

This post is all over the place . . . But that’s the shape of my pondering, so I won’t apologize.

I think this has become more of a spinoff than a response post, because Jenny’s aim was one thing and my thoughts have veered off on another that’s rather tangential. She was speaking to relieve the pressure we place on ourselves to produce copious amounts of story, and here I am talking about the necessity-or-not of writing and whether God needs it or wants it of us. (Sorry, Jenny.)

For me, writing falls under the umbrella of living well, of making use of everything God has given me. For me, writing is one means of discovering Him and in the process, sharing His light with those who may read my words. Do I feel worthy of such a task? Not at all. But God seems to have a penchant for using the unworthy. If I can be an instrument in His hands, that’s incredibly humbling and brings me such joy. If He can shine through the chinks in my stories, then I will keep penning those tales.

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777 Writing Challenge Strikes Again

Tracey Dyck 26 Comments
[source]

Deborah O’Carroll long ago (back in September 2015–yikes!) tagged me for the 777 Writing Challenge. And I’m finally getting around to participating. Some of you might be scratching your heads and thinking, “Wait, didn’t Tracey already do the 777? Like, twice?”

You are correct. The first time can be found here, the second time here. I just realized that Deborah was the one who tagged me the first time, too–and that it was my very first tag ever. All the warm, fuzzy memories . . .

Anyway. The rules are as follows:

The 777 challenge requires you go to Page 7 of your work-in-progress, scroll down to Line 7 and share the next 7 lines in a blog post. Once you have done this, you can tag 7 other bloggers to do the same with their work-in-progress.

Buuut it’s fun to play around with the rules. I’m changing lines to paragraphs, and rather than isolating paragraph seven of page seven, I’ll give you a couple paragraphs of context as well. Just because I’m sweet like that.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention that this snippet is coming from book 2, The Prophet’s Key. None of this is edited, so you get behold the raw, uncut glory (or mess) before I take a chisel to it. In this scene, Josiah is supposed to be waiting while his family has a meeting with his psychiatrist, Dr. Teagan. You see, the events of the first book have had big ramifications on the home lives of the protagonists. Particularly Josiah’s.
Everyone thinks he’s schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur, let’s just put it that way.
Anyway, Josiah is listening in to this family meeting from outside Dr. Teagan’s office.

~*~
“I just want my son back,” Dad snapped. “If that means giving him his meds myself, I’ll do it.”
An image of Dad forcing his jaws open and shaking a pill bottle down his throat ramped up Josiah’s inner heat to boiling.
“Monitor him, yes, but don’t antagonize him. Patients fare best when home life is stable. If he refuses to take the pills, we may consider switching him to a daily injection.”
Josiah gripped the doorknob, then paused. What would it help to barge in? To protest? Resisting would only worsen the situation.
He spun on his heel and marched down the hallway and out the front door. A blast of early summer heat washed over him. Though the very thought rankled him down to his bones, the solution was clear: play along.



~*~

In keeping with my generous (ahem, lazy) method of leaving this particular tag open, I am again saying that if you want it, take it! Share your 777 snippet on your blog, here in the comments, whatever floats your boat. Or even just share a snippet of your work-in-progress, all tag rules aside. Give me all the yummy words!

p.s. On an unrelated note, keep an eye out for a very special bloggy happening coming later this month! It involves fantasy novels, an Oscar Awards sort of idea, and YOUR participation!


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A Monument of Praise

Tracey Dyck 23 Comments

Times of high emotion imprint us with our strongest memories, good or bad. I don’t know about you, but the hard times of life leave a lingering aftertaste. Perhaps it’s an unfortunate human tendency to gravitate toward the negative, and so we have to work at focusing on the positive.

Remember Old Testament stories of how God came through for His people? Whenever He delivered them, they would build an altar to commemorate that place and time.

So Joshua called together the twelve men he had chosen–one from each of the tribes of Israel. He told them, “Go into the middle of the Jordan, in front of the Ark of the Lord your God. Each of you must pick up one stone and carry it out on your shoulder–twelve stones in all, one for each of the twelve tribes of Israel. We will use these stones to build a memorial. In the future your children will ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ Then you can tell them, ‘They remind us that the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant went across.’ These stones will stand as a memorial among the people of Israel forever.” (Joshua 4:4-7, NLT)

This is just one of many examples of God’s people doing something to celebrate, honor, and remember miracles He had done.

What do I do when He comes through for me?

When light bursts into my dark valley, do I merely gasp in relief and proceed to move on with life, or do I pause to thank my Father?

I know He has answered prayers. I know He has pulled me through storms. But if someone were to ask me what God has done for me, I would have to stop and think.

What if I were to consciously celebrate those times? What if I were to play them over in my mind as my soul sang its gratitude? What if I did that daily?

It’s so important to encourage ourselves in the Lord, as David did. Life presents us with many difficult times. There’s no way to sugarcoat that. But in those rocky places, we can proclaim our Father’s faithfulness by remembering how He has delivered us in times before. We can build altars, not with stones but with thoughts. Not in religious recitation, not out of bondage. It’s taking the time to pull out those memories and smile at them again the way we smile at the knickknack on the dresser that reminds us of that wonderful vacation or the letter that reminds us of a dear friend. The edges are frayed from handling; it is a frequent gesture.

What if I made this a habit? A habit of praise–how beautiful would that be? How much peace would that bring? It would build faith and confidence like nothing else. “I know I’m facing something hard right now, but look what God did for me last time and all the times before. I was never abandoned, I never went hungry, He was always on time.”

Every time we ponder His faithfulness, it’s like adding another stone to the altar. The more we rejoice, the higher it builds, and the more naturally our thoughts will turn to this goodness again. This way of life is one of overflowing peace. I want that.

What we habitually think about affects our entire perception, which in turn determines how we experience life. I know that when I start a day mulling over the problems and negative things going on, my day will follow suit. But how wonderful would it be to enlarge our experience of God’s greatness and love? To focus on that instead, and begin to recognize it at every turn?

Let’s begin today. Let’s begin right here. If you feel comfortable doing so, please share something God has done in your life. There’s nothing so encouraging as realizing that what He did for someone else, He can do for me. For you. For any one of His beloved children. I’ll be adding a few comments of my own.

And let’s not stop here. Let’s begin to form a habit of thankfulness and praise. Let’s build altars and return to them again and again.

Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together. (Psalm 34:3, NKJV)

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