Holy Toledo Batman, I think I won!

This morning I jumped the gun. I posted a blog entry about how I had lost out on the Maggie Alderson manuscript assessment as part of the Authors for Queensland flood relief auction.

Turns out I actually won. Maybe.

Confused? So was I. You see, at first I thought I’d won. I had the highest bid amount entered, even with my paltry budget. I felt euphoric – my heart was racing with more adrenalin than when I went sky diving (honest to god – strange I know). Then fifteen minutes later I was on the floor kicking my legs and throwing my toys. Because my bid was time stamped 11pm. A note was posted to their Facebook site shortly after bidding closed to say that all bids had to be in before 11pm, and any received after 11pm would be discounted. Now, technically speaking, 11pm is in the no-man’s land in-between, neither before nor after. I thought I could foresee what was going to happen – 11:00:01pm being considered past 11pm. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

I went to bed morosely humming “I’m a loser baby. Now why don’t you kill me.” It was on repeat in my head and I couldn’t sleep.

Now it might be slightly melodramatic to be humming about death. But I was very disappointed. You know what they say about not knowing quite how much you want something until you don’t get it (graduate marketing position with Telstra circa 1999 springs to mind as well – five rounds of interviews then nada. Never used Telstra since, I am a woman on a payback mission).

In between choruses I was cursing Dell. I had hit the submit button at 30 seconds to 11pm. It took so bloody long to load it by the time it did, it was 11pm.  I was sure if I had a nice, shiny Mac, this never would have happened. I could of course have blamed myself and the failure of my tactical strategy, but blaming Dell made me feel better. Less responsible.

I awoke this morning and in my depressed state wrote a blog entry about being a loser. Only after I had posted it did I see the note on the auction page saying that 11pm bids were A-OK, it was only those sneaky 11:01pm ones that were on the nose. So I deleted my loser blog faster than you can say “Holy Toledo Batman”. Because I realised I might have actually won.

I will wait for the email to confirm this 110% before I get too excited. But I am already freaking out. And hoping that Maggie Alderson herself doesn’t stumble across any of my blog posts because she might think I’m a stalker.  Which would not be a good start since she already things I’m a cheapskate – on Twitter this morning she wrote something about the final bid amount being ‘slightly humiliating’. How embarrassing. That’s the problem with an auction targeted at writers, we’re all cheaper than a McDonald’s cheeseburger meal deal.

The good thing is that I have already been spurred into action. If ever I needed motivation to get this book written, it appears that knowing I might actually have the opportunity to put part of it in front of Maggie Alderson might be just what the procrastination doctor ordered.  Hallelujah.