Submission Lost because title too long?

I once posted a story here titled "The Sweetest Husband in the World". I recently revised it, taking into consideration some of the comments the story received.

According to the instructions I read about revising old submissions, I tried to give the new edition of the story the title "The Sweetest Husband in the World (Revised)".

But while the instruction seemed to me clearly to require submission with the exact original title followed by the word "revised", the software is ALSO programmed to prevent titles longer than approx. 35 characters.

I've heard nothing back in 2 weeks or so after my resubmission with the truncated title "The Sweetest Husband in the World (R

What to do?

Does the edited submission still appear within the "Pending" tab of your Works page?

Did you put a note in the moderator notes section of the submission form, saying it is an updated version of an existing story?

For future reference, what I always say with regards to the title on a submission meant to edit an existing one is "Use the original title ( or as much as will fit ) plus something such as *EDIT*"

It's "as much as will fit" that's important. What I would have done was title the submission "The Sweetest Husband in the.. *EDIT*

I would then use the moderator notes section to say that I want to retain the original title, ( because you have to use a truncated title for the edit submission) and note the URL of the story being edited. Then describe the nature of what you want edited, which seems to be the story text according to your description here. The easier you make it for Laurel, the more likely you are to see a quick and accurate turnaround.

Since it has been two weeks, what I would suggest is to go to the pending tab, click on the pending submission, make those changes to the title and moderator notes section, and save the changes. ( may require previewing first. I haven't edited a story in the new control panel yet ) While that will put the story back at the bottom of the approval queue, the extra time is more or less irrelevant on a story that's already two years old.

Resetting its position in the queue should eliminate the glitch that's caused your story to sit in the queue for long than is generally expected for an edit, and have it process in 3-5 days, which seems to be the norm right now.