in light of this post by @incomingalbatross saying that we should write like ourselves:
... if we really want to write like Tolkien ... we shouldn’t specifically be trying to write like linguists, or historical experts, or veterans, or or or... We should try to write like people who’ve gathered all their favorite and most important things together, and are playing with the stuff those things are made of just for the joy of it. We need to write like ourselves.
let's make a little list of what makes our writing ours:
what's your Shire? as in: what's a place you remember fondly and love? (or: some place you hated, some place vivid to you, etc.)
what is your Hobbit culture? as in: values were you brought up in, culture you grew up with, etc.
who is your Tom Bombadil? as in: a character you loved as a child, in existence or from your imagination, a figure that took place in a lot of your play, etc.
what are your elves and dwarves? as in: something you studied or know a lot about, something you can geek out about, etc.
what are your middle earth languages? as in: something you have expertise in due to a career, a hobby, something you love, etc.
what are your themes? as in: something you've grown up knowing, like loss, something you know intimately, something you know because of your area/history/time/era, etc.
what is your moral of the story? as in: a guiding value, a life motto, faith/spirituality, etc.
To close, a quote from that same post:
What makes [Middle-Earth] good is that every element that went into it was an element J. R. R. Tolkien knew and loved and understood. He brought it out of his scholarship and hobbies and life experience and ideals, and he wrote the story no one else could have written... And did it so well that other people have been trying to write it ever since.
