"Self-indulgent twaddle," mutters the struggling scribbler to herself, though she only uses words like "twaddle" when earnestly endeavoring to write top-notch Tolkien fan fiction.
"I love birthday cake!" she muses, "Wonder if chocolate cake with rum buttercream frosting is mentioned in canon?" She shakes her head. "But I never developed a taste for wine. And pipe-weed? Ugh!"
"Concentrate!" she admonishes herself. "Make it Tolkienesque! And canonical!"
Adding up word counts nervously — must have exactly 111! Cut ten here, two there. Counting and re-counting, getting different totals each time.... What an impractical obsession!
"Fireworks! I forgot fireworks! How odd... I've always loved Gandalf's fireworks...."
"There!" she yells triumphantly. "Finished! One hundred and"
The challenge, in honor of Bilbo Baggins' birthday, was to write exactly eleventy-one words featuring: a bottle of wine, a birthday cake, the number 111, fireworks and pipe-weed.
Middle Earth Fanfiction Awards (MEFA 2005):
The Barliman Butterbur Award: 3rd Place, Humor: Metafics