Monday, 6 July 2009

R.I.P Lowewood

Yesterday marked the end of an era. The wonderful Lowewood Academy blog came to an end.
I've left comments on the final page of the blog, but I just wanted here to show my admiration once more.
I first stumbled across Lowewood via the Informed Consent website. That was probably in about March 2008. I quickly realised that there was already a year and a half's worth of postings on there. I tried starting to read from the beginning but I realised that to catch up would take days out of my life that I just didn't have, so I just started reading from March last year. I was amazed by the quality of the writing. At that time, I hadn't even thought about starting a blog, and hadn't written fiction since I had to for GSCE, more years ago than I care to remember. Writing was something that I'd always found very difficult, and yet here were these people building and maintaining this fictional world over months and months, posting every day, and all of it engaging and quality content. I was blown away. It was also obvious that there were multiple writers involved, and I marvelled at the amount of effort the logistical organisation of that must take, getting everyone writing to the same time line, about the same events. Seriously impressive. So I carried on reading, and eventually started commenting, and by a slightly strange series of events, got to know some of the people involved in the blog, and then realised even more quite what an undertaking it was.
It was inevitable this day would come. There is only so much of your life you can give to something like Lowewood when it does take up so much time. There is only so much you can write under the constraints of school-type fiction. There are areas where you can't really go, and you are also for a large proportion of the time constrained by your surroundings, i.e. the majority of the action must take place within the school. So yes, it was inevitable, but still, for me, as a fan, a sad day.
I've loved reading Lowewood for the past 18 months. I've loved learning about the lives of the characters, and being immersed in their worlds. I'm also glad that I have 18 months worth of posts still sitting out there waiting for me to go back and read, to stop me from having immediate withdrawal symptoms!
So here's to the Lowewood writers. Thank you all so much for being generous enough to share your creation and your wonderful writing with us!

5 comments:

Jessica said...

You've been one of my favourite commentators sweetie. It's you guys that made it you know!

Graham said...

It really is the end of an era. Sadly, I only have three weeks of posts to catch up on... I'm jealous of you and your eighteen months, grr!

Paul said...

Eliane, Hear, Hear.
Warm hugs,
Paul.

Ashley J said...

I will miss them as well. The quality of the stories was unmatched in my travels on the net and it was a highlight of my day to read. Unfortunately, I found Lowewood in very nearly the beginning and therefore have nothing to catch up on.

Rebecca said...

We heart all of your comments - but yes it is sad :( Lowewood will in a bizarre way live on through it's writers and commentators though :)