Countdown to deadline - final reminder

[briarwood.livejournal.com]

Firstly - a huge thank you to everyone who has sent in their Summergen submissions. I'm seeing some really great works this year.

This post is your final reminder that the deadline for Summegen stories, art and vids is 31st July - that is, Saturday this week.

Submission guidelines are here and some additional info here.

I am doing my best to quality-assure and reply to submissions within 24 hours, but I will not be able to do this on Saturday as I'll be away for most of the day (I know, crappy timing). Anyone who submits on the last day should get their reply by Monday (August 2nd) at the latest. If you've already sent your story/art/vid and have not received a reply, please contact me either by replying to this post or by PM.

For those who like to work right down to the wire, the actual deadline will be approximately 6am British Summer Time on 1st August - that's when I'll be starting to work out the final numbers and posting schedule.

You MUST either send in your submission or contact us to request an extension by then.

About extensions:

Please understand that while I'll do my best to agree extensions, I can't just give you as long as you like. I have to balance trusting you to get your submission in against the risk of someone not getting their Summergen "gift". We have a really great record on this with Summergen: rarely have we ended up with participants not receiving their gifts, even if we've had a few very rushed (and heroic!) pinch-hitters. I plan to keep it that way.

So I will not be agreeing to any extensions for original assignments later than 6th August. Only pinch-hitters can get an extension longer than that.

However, if your work is finished and you're only waiting on a beta before sending it in, please contact me so we can talk about it. You'll still have to submit your work by the deadline, but I can agree extra time for you to send in a new, revised version if necessary.

Quality assurance:

I had a couple of questions about this last year, so I want to explain here how submissions are checked when they come in.

Headers: I check all headers carefully for the required info and for spelling. I won't reject submissions for spelling errors in headers - I just correct them myself. But if the headers for a fic have errors, I'll check the fic more carefully and that I will reject if I find too many problems.

Art and Vids: These are easy, really. I just have to check that they meet the minimum requirements and are not signed. My biggest issue here is vids that aren't watchable on my PC, either because I'm missing a codec or more often because of download/upload issues. Any problems, I'll contact the creator to work it out.

Fic: I check for word count, and skim through it to make sure it's a complete story and if multi-part that I can tell where the breaks need to go. I check a few parts at random for spelling and grammar but I don't read the whole thing. If I find issues, I go back to the author. If I've found just one or two minor errors, I'll suggest the author re-check it, but she can refuse and I'll still accept the story. I'm more likely to be lenient about this if I know the author isn't a native English speaker. If it's horribly full of errors, I will reject it completely. (This, BTW, is why I'm being so strict about deadlines this time: last year I was forced to accept a story I would normally have rejected because it came in too late for me to find a pinch-hitter.)

I do not check for things like characterisation, Britishisms, or quality of the story itself. Nor am I likely to spot things like switching between tenses because I only check parts of the story, not the whole thing. If parts of a vid are poor quality, I assume the vidder intended it that way. Same with artworks. Summergen is a gift exchange; I trust every participant to respect that and to submit the best work they can.

As always, if you have any questions/worries, please ask. I'm available via PM or email summergen10 at googlemail dot com