February 28th 2007

Introduction

When I started writing A Tale of Elrond and Celebrían nearly five years ago I didn’t know what it was going to mean for me on the whole. I began writing it because at the time, with the exception of one or two short stories, there wasn’t much about them to be found as far as fanfiction went. To many authors Celebrían was an obscure footnote of no real importance, more dead than alive, and more in the way of other things than an interesting character to explore. I wanted to know what the history of Elrond and Celebrían was like, and since it didn’t seem likely anyone else was going to write it for me, I decided to do it myself. The story is open to interpretation, a lot of interpretation, as is typical of Tolkien, and so I called it A Tale, rather than The Tale, in this world in which one of the marvellously wonderful things is that everyone has the opportunity to interpret matters the way they want. It’s my interpretation of a great number of small nuggets Tolkien scattered over his books. It’s the way I decided to piece together a history which has far too many gaps for comfort.

I have to admit I didn’t know what I was in for when I began. That’s probably why the first three chapters of the story don’t quite feel right, even for me after having reread them quite a few times. I’m not certain whether I should go back and rewrite them entirely, for fear something might get lost that I did manage to get in there initially. Strangely enough, it’s a scene in which Gil-galad, Glorfindel, Erestor and Celeborn are standing in front of a window at Imladris, looking at Elrond and Celebrían who have just walked off to spend time together, which really made things feel right. I’ve always loved Elrond, but it’s through the character of Gil-galad that I really got to know him. As authors, we like torturing our characters, putting through the most terrible things merely to see how they’ll react. I have to admit that I did too, but then again, I always had the certainty that I was writing towards a happy ending somewhere in the back of my mind, because I couldn’t quite imagine it to be anything else. I’m still immensely proud I’ve been able to give Elrond and Celebrían their happy ending.

For me, writing fanfiction taught me a lot of things, and not just grammar and almost proper English (though my ill-fatedly placed commas will probably remain the bane of my existence): I’ve met people I wouldn’t want to have missed in my life, and through their encouragement and guidance I discovered some things about myself that I probably wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. Most importantly, it taught me writing was something I enjoyed, and something which could be a worthwhile thing to do. I’ve gone on to write a great many other things, some Tolkien, and more recently my own original fiction, but whether or not that ever comes to anything, this story is what stands at the beginning of all of that for me. From a personal perspective that makes it priceless, and to find that people still enjoy reading it is encouragement for me to write more, even if it isn’t fanfiction.

It tells me that once upon a time I did something right, and that some day, maybe, just maybe, I can do it again.

After already going through it in 2005, I’ve revised the story again in early 2007, mostly reducing my abusive use of ellipses, deleting and moving wrongly placed commas, and rewriting unintended ambiguous sentences. I’ve long planned for a proper rewrite, but I fear it’ll never come to that. It was once described as “canonically uneven” by an anonymous Mithril Awards judge and as such it probably still retains many faults, but as it is, I think it can go into the annals of fanfiction with my blessing, and I hope nearly everyone else’s.

Nemis