Men of Middle-earth Awards

Hello, everyone. Once again I find myself having to apologize to all of you. I've made promises I couldn't keep and made commitments I haven't been able to live up to. I am truly sorry for this year's awards not getting off the ground, all of which is entirely my fault.

Any other year I'd probably say that we could begin again; create a new timeline and still get the awards done for 2012. However, my life right now doesn't afford me any mental capacity to handle much of anything beyond the basics of breathing, eating and sleeping. It's not even that the work itself is unreasonable; it's that I don't have the energy, confidence or passion to see it through.

Back in April, before things got too bad, someone kindly volunteered to help me pull everything together. I seriously considered the offer because I could feel things were sliding, but even then to just think about e-mailing all the files and forwarding all the nominations was too much. I know that sounds ridiculous (it is pretty ridiculous) but it was, and is, still true. Therefore, I'm afraid I'm going to have to say that the awards will not happen this year, and unless something seriously changes over the next few months, they will not happen again.

First, I would like to thank everyone who sent in nominations or promoted the awards this year. And to anyone who ever participated in any form over the past few years - whether through nominating, reading, commenting, voting, you name it - all of my sincerest gratitude. This has truly been such a wonderful fandom project to take on, and it is something I've absolutely enjoyed. It's been an honor to meet all of you, and you've solidified my belief that this fandom is filled with the kindest, most inviting and fun people I've ever had the privilege to know. I'm sorry this is going out on such a whimper, but I hope the past few months haven't irreparably altered how you'll remember the MOMEs. It will always be something in which I hold fond memories.

What I am going to do over the next few weeks is put together a list of all the stories and authors who were nominated this year and post it here as a way to celebrate them and their work, to give them some of the recognition they deserve. The kind person who volunteered to lend a hand earlier this year has agreed to help get that together, so keep an eye out for it around the end of the month.

Once again, I'm sorry for not getting this off the ground this year and for bringing it to a close. It's been great fun and I hope you've enjoyed yourself as well. Thank you for all of the kindness and generosity you've shown me over the years. I truly appreciate it and all of you.

To give everyone enough time to find their favorite fics and get their nominations in, the deadline for submitting nominations has been extended until the end of the month. Everyone now has four more weeks to go through their memories and bookmarks and find those stories you can't get enough of.

Voting will now begin on May 15, but the rest of the schedule should remain the same. If you have any questions, just let me know.

I know it seemed like this was never going to happen, but in a weeks time we will begin to accept nominations for this years MOME awards. I want to thank everyone for your encouragement and support over the past few years, and your willingness to shift the schedule. Because of the change, this year stories are eligible that have been written during an 18-month-period: July 1, 2010 through December 31, 2011. (In the future eligibility will be the previous calendar year, so next year stories written anytime in 2012 will be eligible.) Classic fics must have been completed by December 31, 2009.

Nominations will be accepted between February 12 and April 7, so start sifting through your bookmarks, memories, and favorite comms and get your list of fics together. There will be a post available for pointing readers to your fic or recommendation lists; it should be up in about a couple of weeks.

I received a suggestion last year about acknowledging nominees earlier in the process, which is a very good idea. I am going to attempt to contact everyone within a week of a story being nominated to alert them to the recognition before the ballots have been finalized. I will also continue to post a full nomination list at the end of the awards.

Another change we're implementing this year is to eliminate categories where all the stories on the ballot were written by the same author. (An exception would be if one story was co-written.) In order for a pairing to have its own category in any of the four fic-size divisions, it must have at least three stories nominated written by at least two different authors. So, for example, if there are three Dom/Elijah ficlets eligible but they were all written by RingsWriter1 there wouldn't be a separate Dom/Elijah ficlet category. However, if one of the ficlets were written by another author (or by RingsWriter1 and a co-author), there could be a Dom/Elijah ficlet category on the ballot.

More detailed information about the awards, including a full schedule, is currently posted on the profile page. If you have any questions about the categories, the process, eligibility, etc., please leave a comment here or send me an e-mail.

One thing I know is while our fandom may be smaller we are definitely still going strong. I'm looking forward to this year and sharing my love of all things Lord of the Rings with all of you.

Hello, everyone! I hope you're all doing well, enjoying the season (whether it's hot or cold where you are) and our wonderful fandom.

First an apology. I'm sorry that I haven't posted the list of all nominated stories yet. No excuses other than my own scattered brain. I wanted to get it done before writing this message, and the only thing that served was delaying this post for a month. I am going to finish it and it will be posted before the end of the month.

The main thing I wanted to talk about is the schedule for the next awards season. When I started the MOMEs, I chose to begin in the middle of the year because the slashy_oscars started in January. It made sense not to split people's attention between them. But it's become painfully obvious that the end of the year is a difficult time for me. I inevitably let things slide, which hasn't proved to be a death knell for the MOMEs thanks to all of you, but things could have been better had I been giving them the right attention. Plus at the end of the year there are a lot of fic exchanges and festivals, NaNoWriMo is right in the middle of it, holidays and vacations are prevalent. It feels like there are a lot of things vying for everyone's attention and perhaps it would be easier for everyone if we shifted the timetable so everything begins in January (possibly with nominations starting in December just to give a little extra time).

What would this mean for this year? Technically there wouldn't be any awards given out in 2011. Nominations would likely be open beginning late in December and running through January or mid-February, voting would be another 4 - 6 weeks (so ending around the end of March) with awards given out in April. Eligibility dates would shift accordingly.

What do you think?

[Poll #1757853]

In addition, I'd like to hear your feedback and/or suggestions about the awards in general. What do you think works, what do you think is totally borked, what might you tweak to get better results, places you would try and promote. Anything and everything you have to say, I'd love to hear it. If things move to a January timetable, there's plenty of time to revamp processes and get some templates in place so we can start fresh in 2012. You can always be forthright and straightforward with me, but to help facilitate things I've turned off IP logging and allowed anonymous comments.

Thanks for always being so supportive and for keeping this thing going even when I didn't have the energy to keep it afloat myself. The MOMEs would be nothing without you, and I'm incredibly appreciative of everyone.

to cast your votes for the MOME Awards. Voting will close tomorrow at 11:59 pm eastern time. So check out the ballot and make those final selections.

At long last the 2010 MOME Award voting has begun. This year there are 73 different pairs over 71 categories. The general categories have the greatest mix and may include up to five different pairs in one group. You'll find a variety of stories (fluff, angst, romance, dark, etc.) so make note of headers when reading. Vote in as many categories as you can, and in each group please read every story before making your choice. You might discover a new favorite writer and be surprised by a previously unknown gem. Voting closes on Wednesday, December 15 at 11:59 pm EDT.

The ballot is comprised of a series of polls, one poll for each category. It's important to click the "submit poll" button underneath the text box when you enter a selection for each category to ensure your vote is registered. Poll results will not be viewable and once you've submitted a vote, the text box will disappear. You do not have to vote for each category at one time. To review or change your vote, click on the poll number, select "fill out poll" and your previous response will be displayed.

Only members of the awards community will be able to vote by filling in the polls. (If you are "watching" the comm, you may need to go back and join in order to vote.) If you do not wish to join the community, please send an e-mail to mome.awards@gmail.com to receive a ballot. E-mail ballots will only be accepted from those addresses where ballots were sent. Each year a good percentage of the votes come by e-mail so please don't hesitate to request a ballot if you prefer this method of voting.

Have fun and enjoy the stories!

( 2010 MOME Awards Ballot )

I believe we're on track for the ballot to be posted on Monday, November 1 *fingers crossed*. But I need some help reaching a few of the nominated authors. I just sent follow-up messages, but if you know any of the following people and have a way of getting in touch with them, could you please ask them to get in touch with me either here or at mome.awards AT gmail DOT com

Thanks for your help!

camesawconquerd
dr_mccoy1701
elmathelas
iamascavanger
jhobbit
lemonade_lady
melle
northatlantic
pikasafire
your_own_path

So that's two years in a row I've had difficulty getting online at almost the exact same time of year and unfortunately both times has meant the awards schedule has fallen to pieces. I am very sorry that yet again the MOMEs has been on hold for so long. I promise you that nothing has been lost; I just wasn't able to access it and keep things rolling.

For those that are wondering: This is a solo project because for this kind of awards set up I firmly believe it's better that anyone "behind the scenes" should not be allowed to nominate, vote or have a story in the running, and I don't want anyone I know to be forced not to participate because they're helping me. (I really like the set up of the MEFAs, which I think eliminates those potential conflicts of interest through a really great process, but one I wouldn't be able to manage, unfortunately.) This is why it only takes one person to have a problem for the whole thing to fall behind. I do need to consider the timing of the awards for next year, as clearly this time of year is proving to be difficult for me and I don't want this radio silence and resulting delays to become a regular "feature."

With that said, I hope I haven't lost a lot of you and that you're willing to hang in there while I pull the proposed ballot together and contact the authors for their approval. At the latest (and if everything goes as planned) I hope to begin e-mailing everyone by the end of the weekend which could mean the ballot would be finalized and posted in anywhere from one to two weeks. (To help speed things along I may post a list of authors here and/or at my journal so others can help me get in touch with people from the beginning; I haven't decided if that would seem like overkill or put too much pressure on people to participate but we'll see.) That would mean things would be up for reading and voting by the end of the month, voting would take place through November ending around mid-December, and the results would be posted shortly thereafter. Not exactly the timetable we started with, and we're bumping into NanoWrimo participation time which is a little troublesome. If you think this timing really won't work, please let me know. I am *very* open to suggestions; perhaps it would be best to keep voting open until the end of the year to ensure everyone who will be busy writing in November and won't have time to read and vote can still participate.

I'll keep you updated as we go along. I believe we're good to go as far as contacting the authors in the next few days and hopefully we'll hear back from everyone quickly. Once again, I apologize for this huge delay; thank you for your understanding and patience.

As the nomination period has just started, I wanted to address the issue of word counts. The categories are divided by pairing and length of fic, so part of the nomination requirement is including how many words are in a story.

I know this can be a tedious task. But while I'm sure many people are able to look at a web page or a series of chapters and make a pretty good guesstimate as to the number of words, believe me when I say that many people cannot. Every year I do random checks and every year I find multiple errors. One wrong count can mean several categories get rearranged. Instead of having both long and novel-length categories, we may now have only a long fiction category; instead of a pairing having its own short fiction category it may now have to be melded into a general category. And that's just the possible impact from one mistake. There's never only one wrong count so imagine at the end of the nomination period before I can contact authors to let them know they're on the ballot I have to categorize and recategorize because several counts are off.

I'm not saying this so people feel sorry for me; I love doing the awards because I feel it keeps the LotR fandom love alive and it puts a bunch of great fics in one place for people to enjoy throughout the year. But while I appreciate that getting a count for ten long stories is time consuming, imagine having to get counts for over a hundred. It's not a pretty sight. :-)

One thing I often suggest (if someone is finding it difficult) is that people contact the author and ask them for the count. On the plus side you may make their day to learn that someone feels their story is worthy of a nomination. Conversely if they'd rather not participate you know in advance and haven't taken any additional time getting a count. And to the writers out there, it would be great if you considered adding the word count to your posts and the total word count from a multi-chapter fic to the final chapter. These are just suggestions; clearly no one is required to contact an author or to add counts to their stories. But I wanted to bring it up in hopes that if even a handful of people do, it may make the nomination period a little easier.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please let me know. You can leave a comment here or send me an e-mail. Thanks for listening and have fun finding those great stories!

Edit: Firefox users may have a really easy option available through the Word Count Plus add-on. Thanks to vamp_ress for the tip!