Choosing WInners: What The Final Stretch Looks Like

In case you're wondering why many days pass between the end of slush-reading and the emailing of winners:

1.  Jodi and I come to the end.  We cheer a little.  (Or a lot.)

2.  Usually, we schedule another meeting time, during which we go through all our maybes and add the best to our existing yeses.  (Note:  There are always more maybes than yeses.  ALWAYS.)

3.  This time, we actually finished our last reading round half an hour ahead of schedule, so we decided to go ahead and choose the rest of our yeses.

4.  During this process I accidentally deleted two of the maybes that were supposed to be yeses.  So I had to find them in the database and create new blog posts for them.

5.  Next, Jodi emails me the wondrous spreadsheet she's been filling out all along.  Color coded and everything.  I will use this to double check the winners against the entries in my Blogger.

6.  Over the next few days, I will find each entry in the database according to its original post number (this is the number that was emailed to the authors).  I fix each post (formatting, renumbering, post times), and then I add the title and author's email (found in the database) to a textedit file.

7.  Because this is tedious, I never do more than 5 at a time.  Which gives me plenty of time to get it done without going mad.  (It's not hard.  It's really not. I just HATE TEDIUM.)

8.  By some time on Thursday (or sooner), I will have my complete list of 35 winners--titles plus emails.  So it's each to swipe-and-copy that on Friday morning when I create the email.

That's it!  Just a lot of administration.

Please note that, during this time, I'm also doing things like adding "MG" or "YA" if it's missing (easy enough to determine by the age of the protag), placing the loglines in italics, etc.  I am not, however, fixing errors in the excerpts.  So if you're a winner, it's going to be up to you to proofread your entry the day it goes live, and email me if there are any typos you'd like me to fix.

And that's it, really!  It already feels like the herd-of-rhinos' share of the work is past me.  Of course, that'll all change in a heartbeat once the bids start rolling in.  But the reward at that point is the RAW ADRENALINE.  So much fun!

So there you have it.  And now I'll crawl back into my little hole and keeping digging my way through (25 to go!).