well, okay - no way at all I can get all the reading done to nominate fairly.

What I have always done in the past is to go through the list, make sure I've read all the vignettes, read the first several pages of all fics, then read all the stories whose first several pages hooked me, then reread some I'd read earlier in the year to compare. Then decide on 4 or 5 in each category.

Well, can't be done this year.

So, what to do? Not nominate? That would be the fairest thing, but not too personally satisfying.

Or just go with the stories I have read (mostly in the first couple of months last year, and in the last few months) and the stories of the authors I've read in the past and really liked?

So what do others do? Are any of you in the same situation as I am? In that case will you nominate? If you do decide to, how will you make your decision? Or will you just wait for the nominees list and then vote on those? Or...?

c.

This year I think I'm going to wait till noms come out. There's way too much I haven't read [see my quiz attempts ].

Carol

Doesn't the "legend" go that LabRat uses a pin? You could try that. *lol*

Seriously... You might want to look at the quizzes and the stories that people have recommended in each categories (listed with the quiz answers) -- that might help you out a bit. I find the quizzes very helpful myself in figuring out which stories might fit in what category.

ETA: just a thought... Or will you just wait for the nominees list and then vote on those? -- if everyone were to do that, then we wouldn't have a list of noms anyway. So IMHO, it's better that people send in nominations - no matter how you look at it, the process is subjective anyway, since the things you read and enjoy might not be the same as someone else's... and, obviously, the more people sending in noms, the better chance there is of the shortlist being representative of the majority of readers.

I thought Labby only used her pin to vote... .

I have thought about that Lara, and I may still send in a nom or two, but I really haven't read enough this year to do much.

Carol

you know, you don't even have to send a list that has nominations for stories in all the categories... If you've read even a couple things that stood out and you feel they're worthy of a nom, I'd say go for it.

my 2 Canadian pennies.

One should know better than to ask a silly question from an anal person like me. (Grammar nazis, beware of this post. I'm bound to hyphenate and add parentheses like crazy!)

Some years, I don't nominate at all. Like Carol, there are years I haven't read enough to make it worthwhile, so I wait until others who are more faithful nominate.

Other years, I nominate only the categories where I can do a good job. I begin by making an Excel spreadsheet which is broken down by size. (I finally finished, so I'll e-mail it to you if you want. PM me if you're interested in the list.) My next step is to eliminate all of the stories which I, for whatever reason, wouldn't consider nominating.

Then I start reading across categories, beginning with the shortest stories and working my way up. I almost always have a nomination for super short and short. As I read, I start plugging in contenders for other categories. If I have a dozen or so contenders for a category, I'll whittle it down to my favorite handful and nominate for that category, as well. I rarely nominate for the epic length stories (Although I'm familiar enough with about ten of them that I probably will this year.)--I know they don't have enough for their own category this year, but they seem to dominate the list of contenders for best overall.

I also make plenty of notes. I remember the stories without remembering the titles, so I have to re-skim nine billion times throughout the Kerth process. In fact, when an award is announced I'll usually ask James, "Is that the one where...?"


Hope that helps.


Elisabeth

I've always found the quizzes helpful. They're great motivators. (and fun!) But they're not complete lists of all the potentials in a category, so some stories would get overlooked were I to go by the quizzes.

As well, I'm not sure that deciding how good a story is on the basis of an excerpt in a quiz does a story justice. I'm uncomfortable doing that.

c.

edit: Elisabeth posted at the same time as I was in process. But LOL, Elisabeth, and thanks for the offer. But... that's how I've done it the past. And a very satisfying method it is, too. Don't let anyone be telling you it's anal.

Oh, no, no, I wasn't saying that quizzes are a sure way to help you figure things out -- only it's a starting point. (eg: it can help out a bit.)

And I second what Carol said about your process, Elisabeth: it's definitely not anal!

I agree with the others, Elisabeth, not anal at all. I've been keeping an Access database for years listing the stories, year that they're eligible for Kerths etc., and every year I query out the eligible stories for that year and then tweak it when the official K-Comm list is posted. That's always helped me a lot during quiz and nomination time.

And Carol, I would think that if you read a story this year and think it's worthy of nomination, then nominate it. It doesn't matter for nominations if you haven't read every story eligible. For voting, I think it's more important in order to compare Story "A" with the others in its category, but not everyone is able to do that, either. This isn't a paying job for any of us, it's a labor of love, so we do what we can.

Kathy

Well, it may be because I haven't hardly got any time to read anything anymore, but my theory is, even if I've read only one story for the whole year, if it's a really good story I should nominate it. Nominating isn't "which story is better than the others" it's "which stories are good." I figure I can recognize a good story, no matter how many others I read (or don't). Sadly, I may only nominate a few stories this year, but I intend to do what I can.

PJ

I'm down to the last 31 stories from last year--8 of them I'm re-reading. Of course, they're all big cahoonas at this point so I'm mostly skimming.

I think I can. I think I can.

Elisabeth

Hey, I beat the deadline by over an hour! And now I'm sitting here thinking, dang, I should have nominated myself! But really, there were *so* many good stories this year... I'd read more of them than I'd have expected. I got at least one story for every category (except Original/Supporting, I couldn't think of anything for that, possibly because I only read the shorter stories, in general).

I'll be fascinated to see the ballot

PJ
who always thought hashing out the nominations was the funnest part of being on the K-Com...

That's funny, Pam, because I had a HUGE list of characters for Original/Supporting and almost all of them were from Super Shorts & Short Stories.


Elisabeth
who is looking forward to reading the ballot as well

Yeah, I guess my mind just wasn't working in that direction... which is not surprising considering how little it's been working in *any* direction lately...

PJ