If you are having a lengthy delay in publishing, please add the name of your story and when submitted here.

[PennyThompson]

I guess all the stories about how Em was besties with Laurel, knows who the mod is and has 'intimate' knowledge of how the site works were just stories.

That's the downfall of people who keep telling tales, they keep talking until they contradict themselves.

They and their crew attacked anyone here who complained about delays and other site issues, including very recently in @AwkwardlySet thread about what's wrong with lit. But as soon as they had an issue, they began attacking the site and spreading division among posters. Everything is a joke until they have the problem, then its dire and wrong and they're a victim. This thread was never meant to help anyone but to harass and shame the site. Its sad they do that, but even worse when the members of the clique follow along. "Don't pick on lit!" Oh, wait, Em is having trouble, this is awful, awful I tell you!

There's not a thread here that can exist without them making it about themselves, they high jacked a contest thread from the people who usually start them and made the entire thing about them and the end of it a drama riddled joke because they didn't like how the story was treated. Notice there are already Nude day and April Fool's threads started months in advance? That's people who don't want to see them ruined by the OP.

Then the drama fueled "I'll never post a story here again" thread and coming out with one a week later and thing is that thread was yet another passive aggressive game hoping they'd get other people to say how awful, we won't post again either.

We all know the other games played through PM as we've all been on one side or the other or both when it comes to it.

I've been here a long time, and this is not anything knew. Story bombing and trolling to that degree is a direct result of behavior here.

We all come here initially to post stories and see how they go. People come to the forum to either try to improve as writers or just have some fun and make some friends.

But every so often someone comes along who wants to take over the forum and this is how its gone for all of them.

I don't like to see people's work trashed or see anyone deal with any of the problems lit is having

But in the case of @EmilyMiller this is a self inflicted wound.

The lesson here is if you really care about your work, then focus on your work and not try to create a forum version of Animal Farm.

it seems like the wolf is losing sleep over the opinions of sheep

 

[lovecraft68]

it seems like the wolf is losing sleep over the opinions of sheep

Speaking of cliques, victimhood and wagon circling.

 

[DEFCOM5]

Lovecraft68 .... I love the ignore button!

 

[EmilyMiller]

Hey,

Everyone just chill. Nothing important going on here. Nothing that requires an iota of attention or concern.

Unlike the issues with the site, which appear to be all too real. Let’s focus on those.

Not worth fussing over craziness, life is too short.

Emily

 

[Dark_Logan_]

Nobody knows what the issue is, but seeing a hundred or so stories are still getting posted everyday points to it being a glitch rather than the site is screwing with people. The solution is simply to pull your story from pending and resubmitting. That has worked for a lot of people and its been brought up by myself and others for people to give it a try

FWIW within the passive aggressive, this course of action in my experience makes absolutely no difference whatsoever

If I were allowed a personal opinion I’d say that glitch must really have it in for me

 

[Nightaelf]

FWIW within the passive aggressive, this course of action in my experience makes absolutely no difference whatsoever

If I were allowed a personal opinion I’d say that glitch must really have it in for me

I think that glitch messed with my name too. I’ve tried this several times already, and then earlier this week I finally got a message saying my story was rejected because they claim I used AI. Which is absolutely not true. But aside from that, at least that message came quickly after resubmiting again.

My frustration isn’t about things taking time. Things take as long as they take, that’s life. It’s the fact that you don’t get any message explaining why it’s taking so long. And honestly, you can say a lot about the whole process, but if they don’t tell you that it might take much longer or what you’re supposed to do, then we’re all just guessing how to deal with it.

That’s why it helps to talk about it a bit, to think it through together, or at least to let off some frustration. I don’t see a problem with that. And it’s not like anyone said: you shouldn’t publish here anymore, this site is terrible. I think anyone can come to that conclusion on their own if they ever want to.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

FWIW within the passive aggressive, this course of action in my experience makes absolutely no difference whatsoever

If I were allowed a personal opinion I’d say that glitch must really have it in for me

I suspect there is some combination of factors in your process that trigger the glitch.

Just based on what we know it isn't a truly random event. Computers don't really do random.

 

[EmilyMiller]

That’s why it helps to talk about it a bit, to think it through together, or at least to let off some frustration.

This was always the intent. We can’t fix stuff, but we can commiserate and support and disusss what might help. But most of all we don’t have to feel that it’s just happening to us and no one else.

 

[Aoife_from_Ulster]

This was always the intent. We can’t fix stuff, but we can commiserate and support and disusss what might help. But most of all we don’t have to feel that it’s just happening to us and no one else.

Collaboration and communication

 

[EmilyMiller]

Collaboration and communication

And community - for those who want that.

 

[Aoife_from_Ulster]

And community - for those who want that.

Absolutely!!!

 

[Baztrachian]

I posted a collaboration with my friend Candace a couple weeks ago and it hasn't been posted. I've tried resubmitting it but no bueno.

I suspect it's too good compared to my usual writing. I'm likely just going to post it elsewhere.

If anyone is interested the story is posted on Tumblr. Myself and a friend put too much effort into it just to let it get shitcanned.

[If a story hasn't been published here, please don't link to it on another site unless in the sticky thread for pay published work. Or, you can pass the link via private message. -AH Mod]

 

[boytoyjoy]

If anyone is interested the story is posted on Tumblr. Myself and a friend put too much effort into it just to let it get shitcanned.

I can't see it without logging into some corpo site.

 

[Dark_Logan_]

After 33 days at least I know the queue is slowly shuffling forwards

First of three pending stories rejected overnight for the perceived use of Grammarly or similar tools - big fat no from me in reply FWIW and an instant resubmission

Comes to something though when a rejection notice is actually seen as a positive

 

[Nellie60]

@Laurel and @Manu we should quantify this current problem, which seems to be impacting many authors and impinging on Event / Competition submissions.

My ones more to do with requesting a volunteer editor to help me improve the readability of my published story but have not had any success for about 3 weeks no reply back from two editors I have chosen.

 

[lovecraft68]

Hey,

Everyone just chill. Nothing important going on here. Nothing that requires an iota of attention or concern.

Unlike the issues with the site, which appear to be all too real. Let’s focus on those.

Not worth fussing over craziness, life is too short.

Emily

The irony here is tangible.

 

[lovecraft68]

FWIW within the passive aggressive, this course of action in my experience makes absolutely no difference whatsoever

If I were allowed a personal opinion I’d say that glitch must really have it in for me

Its worked for others Glitch within a glitch maybe.

Personal opinions are all we have here, we're not going to get an answer from the only two people who have the facts.

FWIW, I'm being direct, the passive aggressive is the tool of the mega poster here.

 

[Dark_Logan_]

@lovecraft68 in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king

 

[EmilyMiller]

My ones more to do with requesting a volunteer editor to help me improve the readability of my published story but have not had any success for about 3 weeks no reply back from two editors I have chosen.

When I submitted my first story here, it got rejected. I naively followed the rejection note advice and tried to find a VE - *crickets*

Here is a better place to try. So long as your story isn’t in non-con, mind control (non-con by any other name), incest, or the racist version of interacial, I’ll take a look. I’m not going to edit the whole thing, but I can try to give you pointers with examples.

If you are interested, please send me a message.

UPDATE: and it won’t be until tonight EST.

 

[ChloeTzang]

ChloeTzang​

Literotica Guru​

JoinedApr 2015Posts19,075LocationNope, ain't telling..., USA

Same - and have also asked if they need any help twice. Nothing.

Well, at this pount I think where we are is

(1) The site is not on cruise control - Laurel IS there - she replied to me over that glitch with stories in the Winter Holidays comp at the start as well as on the 2026 events - so key asks are being addressed

(2) Back in April 2025, Manu posted that "Literotica's community has continued to grow into 2025! There have been several days in recent weeks where we've seen over 400 Stories submitted for publication. These are incredible numbers for our community and we're working hard behind the scenes to make sure that the increase in submissions doesn't lead to a longer wait time for Authors."
- A LOT of stories are going thru way faster now, in some cases in a few hours, so it looks like the whole process of story approvals and moving from pending to publishing has been automated, and where it's sucessful, it's really working well to speed up the flow.
- this would be a fairly major change and I imagine would have taken up a lot of Laurel's time
- the end result tho is if you story goes thru, it goes thru much faster than in the past

(3) The kicker is, where a story is NOT processed, it's taking a lot longer. Laurel mentioned in her 72 hours post that "...if your story is in your Pending Stories folder and has been pending for fewer than 15 days, please do not click on or alter the submission in any way as that may further delay its publication***. We are working to get caught up as soon as possible."
- this would cover the stories stuck in pending as well as the AI Rejections
- again, I can only guess at the numbers of PM's Laurel has received over the issues here but I imagine her inboxis backlogged out the ying-yang and it's going to take a while to work through
- I imagine there are also a raft of bug reports to go thru - I know I submitted a few myself
- I also suspect what is happening is that the auto rejects have created a big backlog for Laurel to do her manual check and for whatever reason it's taking her a while to get thru - and we all know edits are processed after new submissions, and story deletions come after that....so edits and deletion requests may well take quite a while to work thru as all this settles down.

So what's likely happened is that the elapsed time for story submissions has speeded up,esp the ones that used to take up to a week, but at the "needs a serious look" end of the bell curve, the long tail got worse.

It may be a classic example of a change that is an objective improvement on paper -- i.e., the turnover time from submission to publication is shorter on average -- but at the same it looks to the users who areimpacted ny "pending"and rejections like the service has actually degraded, because the aforementioned long tail has gotten so much longer and the negative reports outweigh the relatively minor impact of the much-shortened waiting time of an average story.

My take on it is, I know if your story has been rejected or is in pending, it's a pain in the ass but
(1) try the delete and resubmit option - it seems to work for a few people, but if it doesn't, just wait while Laurel
works thru the backlog
(2) For AI Rejections, try resubmitting with a Note to Admin

And be patient - once all the glitches have been worked though, it will likely be a big improvement

__________________

 

[Kelliezgirl]

[/HEADING]
[HEADING=3]ChloeTzang​

Literotica Guru​

JoinedApr 2015Posts19,075LocationNope, ain't telling..., USA

Well, at this pount I think where we are is

(1) The site is not on cruise control - Laurel IS there - she replied to me over that glitch with stories in the Winter Holidays comp at the start as well as on the 2026 events - so key asks are being addressed

(2) Back in April 2025, Manu posted that "Literotica's community has continued to grow into 2025! There have been several days in recent weeks where we've seen over 400 Stories submitted for publication. These are incredible numbers for our community and we're working hard behind the scenes to make sure that the increase in submissions doesn't lead to a longer wait time for Authors."
- A LOT of stories are going thru way faster now, in some cases in a few hours, so it looks like the whole process of story approvals and moving from pending to publishing has been automated, and where it's sucessful, it's really working well to speed up the flow.
- this would be a fairly major change and I imagine would have taken up a lot of Laurel's time
- the end result tho is if you story goes thru, it goes thru much faster than in the past

(3) The kicker is, where a story is NOT processed, it's taking a lot longer. Laurel mentioned in her 72 hours post that "...if your story is in your Pending Stories folder and has been pending for fewer than 15 days, please do not click on or alter the submission in any way as that may further delay its publication***. We are working to get caught up as soon as possible."
- this would cover the stories stuck in pending as well as the AI Rejections
- again, I can only guess at the numbers of PM's Laurel has received over the issues here but I imagine her inboxis backlogged out the ying-yang and it's going to take a while to work through
- I imagine there are also a raft of bug reports to go thru - I know I submitted a few myself
- I also suspect what is happening is that the auto rejects have created a big backlog for Laurel to do her manual check and for whatever reason it's taking her a while to get thru - and we all know edits are processed after new submissions, and story deletions come after that....so edits and deletion requests may well take quite a while to work thru as all this settles down.

So what's likely happened is that the elapsed time for story submissions has speeded up,esp the ones that used to take up to a week, but at the "needs a serious look" end of the bell curve, the long tail got worse.

It may be a classic example of a change that is an objective improvement on paper -- i.e., the turnover time from submission to publication is shorter on average -- but at the same it looks to the users who areimpacted ny "pending"and rejections like the service has actually degraded, because the aforementioned long tail has gotten so much longer and the negative reports outweigh the relatively minor impact of the much-shortened waiting time of an average story.

My take on it is, I know if your story has been rejected or is in pending, it's a pain in the ass but
(1) try the delete and resubmit option - it seems to work for a few people, but if it doesn't, just wait while Laurel
works thru the backlog
(2) For AI Rejections, try resubmitting with a Note to Admin

And be patient - once all the glitches have been worked though, it will likely be a big improvement

__________________

It's almost like actual work is going on behind the scenes and all the overheated conspiracy theorists need to take a deep breath.
I'm looking forward to the revisionism in a few months when everything is back to normal and suddenly no one was really upset and criticizing lit...it was all just because they cared so much...

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Apropos of nothing, I just noticed that one FAQ entry is:

Why is my story be taking longer than usual to be published?

Can we add one for "Where do report typos in the Lit web site?"

--Annie

 

[Nightaelf]

Can we add one for "Where do report typos in the Lit web site?"

This reminds me of that Alanis Morissette song, Ironic.

Pointing out a typo while your own sentence shows up with two of its own.

 

[defuxusay]

You are allowed to be skeptical. It’s not a universal panacea, and some people have got caught a second time. But it worked for many people who had been waiting for multiple weeks.

It’s something worth trying, not a sure fire thing. Doing nothing after - say - four weeks is not a winning strategy.

Yeah, my story has been sitting in limbo now for four weeks. I just wish they would get their act together and post what the actual turnaround times are for everyone. If it is 6 weeks for newbies then just say so.

 

[EmilyMiller]

it is 6 weeks for newbies then just say so.

I don’t think it is, you have just been unlucky. Some very well-established authors have also gotten caught.