Has anyone wrote Tolkien related stories.

[mark12_30]

Aragorn,

I never did answer your original questions.

What got me started? A friend said, "You've got a good imagination; you should write stories." Huh, I thought. Sounds like fun.

My motivation was simply to write something good. I sat down and started writing. My first effort ended up being about a man, an elf, and eventually a hobbit (all male) out on the North downs someplace, but it never went anywhere and I had no clear idea if it ever would so I tabled it.

Then I started writing about a hobbit lost in the suburbs of Boston, and that went somewhere. I have five sections about his suburban experience (about 300k of text) and then a huge time-gap which I will have to fill in later, because at that point, I started seeing what would happen when he returned to The Shire, so I wrote that. I have almost 400kb of text of his Shire experience.

How long did it take? I've been writing it since February sometime, I think.

I've had two friends read it, both giving very enthusiastic responses, but it may not be the kind of thing that "flies" on the net. I don't know. It's pretty heavily influenced by George MacDonald. Maturation of soul and spirit is the main theme. Some people love that stuff. MacDonald doesn't have a huge following, though.

Do I show up in the story at all? Yes, as a precocious and bossy four-year-old girl who likes to play tag and eat strawberries. I don't know where the tag came in. Never liked it myself. But the strawberries, now...

--Helen