A Different Pending Question

[Jay142]

I was wondering if the occasional long pending times have changed your writing habits.

The last two of my stories that included a subsequent chapter have experienced long publishing delays, while the one-off stories or the first chapters are published within 2 days. This has made me reluctant even to write multiple-chapter stories.

I have two chapters of Blindfolded, Bound, and Shared stuck in Pending, then I wrote How I Became a Bull For My Friends, which got published in two days. If my latest had gotten stuck, I wasn't sure I'd even write another story. I have a second chapter in mind, but it seems futile to write it, given my recent experience with subsequent chapters.

I was wondering how other authors were feeling. Does the pending problem affect your motivation to write?

Let's consider this group therapy.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

It hasn't changed my writing habits, and in fact, it has only reinforced them for me.

I'll use my soon to be published next story as an example:

It will have twenty chapters and total out at around 105,000 words. When I do publish it as a single submission, I will have only that one submission to worry about getting stuck in pending, rather than having to deal with the possibility of doing so twenty times.

The more pieces that a story gets broken into, the more individual submissions, and thus, the potential for more delays. This is a positive aspect of submitting complete works that can't be dismissed easily.

 

[Stanfield2025]

I've never experienced it firsthand, but I've read many horror stories about it. Yeah, that has changed my writing habits.

 

[StillStunned]

I was wondering how other authors were feeling. Does the pending problem affect your motivation to write?

Nope. It might have been different a few years ago when I started writing, but now I'd keep writing regardless, simply because I love writing and I have stories in my head.

Then again, I've rarely had to wait more than a day or two for my stories to be approved. If publishing here were a struggle, I might see about putting more effort into publishing my writing elsewhere, maybe somewhere where I could make money. I hope it never reaches that point.

 

[norafares]

I will write regardless of what happens here. If it takes 2 days or 2 weeks or even 2 months, that's not stopping me from writing, because while I enjoy entertaining readers, I first and foremost write for myself.

 

[SmilingLez]

It hasn’t changed what I write, just how unpredictable the system is.