I’m back!
…kind of.
This has been a very slow year for the blog. Since January, I’ve only managed to write four posts, and one of those was a post explaining the lack of posts, which does feel like a bit of a cheat.
I have been writing this blog since 2020. I started it in the first place because I wanted to be writing more, and every year since I started it, I have indeed found myself writing more and more. Every year, I have possessed greater motivation, found more time, generally done more. In short, the blog’s absolutely achieved what I always wanted it to achieve for me, and I couldn’t be happier about it.
In 2022, I even put together a short series of posts, which were published through the month of September, on Tolkien’s The Hobbit. The following year, I found that I had so enjoyed the process of preparing and considering those linked essays that I did it again, with a series of articles on Tolkien’s Lesser Tales. And last year, I wrote a series of posts that considered Tolkien’s hobbits and their peculiar relationship with Faerie.
The September Series has thus become one of the few regular and recurrent elements of what has always been a pretty haphazard project. Yet, given the year that I’ve had thus far, I’ve been seriously considering whether I would return to another September Series at all.
Because, in contrast to every year since 2020, I’ve written strikingly little thus far this year…at least on the blog itself. I’ve already alluded to this elsewhere — suffice it to say, my writing time has been fairly crammed, and this blog was always intended to be my “leisure” writing, as it were. I simply haven’t had time or mental space to write much up here, given my own work commitments and…well, given The Project.
And as September’s drawn nearer, I’ve truly found myself bereft of ideas and angles to take. The previous three Series have all been concerned with Tolkien in some way — and, to be frank, inspiration just hasn’t struck this time around. I haven’t been thinking about such things enough, and haven’t been building toward anything suitable for a series of articles.
So, I have seriously considered drawing a curtain over the September Series. After all, why continue with a self-imposed task if it holds no appeal for me? Why enforce that I start and complete something that nobody has asked me to do, simply for my own edification.
But I don’t want to stop blogging, either (though I suspect I might not recapture the heights of 2023/24 any time soon). I really enjoy having this space, and really value that it allows me to write, well, whatever the heck I feel like writing. And, well, what is the blog for at all, if not for that self-imposed edification?
And I have been writing. A lot.
And so, I’ve decided to challenge myself a little this year.
Rather than writing a series of quasi-academic articles, I will write (at least) three short stories over the month, with each of them being bound in some way to Faerie. Specifically, I’d love to root each of them in an aspect, if you will, of Faerie that I am interested in.
As to what those aspects of Faerie will be? Well…I’m still narrowing that down somewhat. But I’m interested in Tolkien, of course. I’m interested in RP and in games. And while I’m tossing up between something Arthurian and something concerned with the nature of Faerie itself, I think that I’ve narrowed my choice down to being between one of those two ideas (unless, of course, I end up doing both of them).
And as usual? There may well be a short postscript at the end of the month. A postscript that is…well, relevant, but “other” from the main series of posts. A postscript that lends itself rather neatly to justifying the complete lack of activity on this small blog over the past months.
So, welcome to an ever so slightly different September Series 2025. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I will enjoy writing it…because I suspect that I’m really going to enjoy writing these stories this month.
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