Soledad's Journal

or, to be more accurate, the Elvenking of Mirkwood. My first, never-ending love, since I read The Hobbit. He managed to protect his realm against Dol Guldur, and that without any magic trinkets, he's gone native among the Silvan folk, rediscovering the very Elven trait to be one with the forest, and he helped the Men of Laketown rebuild their town. The best Elven ruler in all three Ages and some. Not to mention a handsome beast. *g*

I have to agree with you there, although I don't write much of the Silvan Elves, because there are people who do it much better for one thing, ( lol, like you ) and my stories just have not really lead me there. He was the character who first got me interested in the Elves in the Hobbit, after that I just finished it to see if there was more! :)

I agree rather a lot about Boromir and Aragorn also. Tolkien did continually shove Aragorn's ancestry into readers faces. All I was concerned about was what would happen to the Elves if Sauron won. ( one track mind )

I'm not a native English speaker, and it's very hard to find a beta reader who'd dig through the amount of stuff I write. So I have to post a lot of my stuff un-betaed, which sometimes leads to nasty nitpicking. I'm trying to improve my English with lots of reading, but it doesn't always help.

Well, I am in the UK. I am not marvelous, but I don't mind looking, I always hesitate to offer my services such as they are, to good authors, because I can't find any-one willing to look at all my stuff either, which I am almost always going back to faff around with. I did have a wonderful beta for some of my last story, and learned a great deal, ( resulting in even more edit-faffing ) but he beta's for so many people, and works, and cares for some-one.I did not want to add to his workload, or wait four to six weeks, as sometimes I do write pretty fast and don't like hanging about. My fault for asking a very popular - and excellent - beta! He is a lovely person.

I have looked at some people's work, for whom English is not their first language. Quite honestly, most of them need very little editing.

I no longer hope to have a future in this fandom. I just lack the special gene that makes an author popular. I've given up... writing is something I do because I can't not write, but that's the only reason I'm still going on.

You're kidding, right? The first time I saw some of your writing ( and I am not even sure where ) I thought every-one wrote that well and that was the benchmark for all fanfiction and I was as impressed as hell that there were people who were ' expanding ' on Tolkien. Actually there is only a very small amount whom I consider the upper echelon in the fandom. I'm not even sure who the popular authors are as I mainly read on LOTR FF.com, ( which is quite a small site ) not ff.net, and on the SWG, and even though I voted for authors there who did win in the MEFA's, in some cases, it was Silmarillion fic, which does not have a massive fanbase in any case. They are almost all ' niche writers '

I have heard your name mentioned so many times on forums on ff.net as a superb writer and the idea of actually communicating with you scared me witless! And the only reason, the onlyIn short, I like the kind of stories I write. Which is the reason why I write them: because I don't find them so often as I'd like. Think of it as some sort of self-servicing. *g*

That is what CS Lewis said, that no-one wrote the stories he liked to read, so he had to write them himself.