Is this why we are here, just to suffer?

[Djmac1031]

I can't sleep, my body aches, and nothing is scratching the itch. After years of internal debate, the stars have aligned: I'm going to write my own smut.

For the next 10 hours, I'm consumed in horny-induced writing frenzy.

As the haze lifts, consciousness returning, I bear witness: a 6.5k word fetish-laden masterpiece lies before me. I create my account, (since I of course hadn't thought that far ahead) realize I have to wait to be admitted, and, with no other recourse, finally go to bed.

I wake up 12 hours later to the alert of my account being accepted. I hastily submit my work, before realizing there's *another* period of waiting; the work must be manually reviewed. I sigh, and go about my life.

In only 12 short hours, the work is reviewed, accepted, and set to publish at midnight, much to my pleasant surprise.

As the day turns, early views hitting, I sit down to enjoy the work in its shiny new published format.

I'm horrified.

My work is on life-support. It is positively BURSTING at the seams with amateur writing mistakes. Tense slop at every turn. Jarring pacing interrupting flows. Meaningless repetition. The only thing keeping it from flatlining is its powerful core, and strong understanding of the fetish. I grab my keyboard, furious at past me, who allowed this travesty to occur. You fucking idiot.

Another 7 hours pass as I perform a triple-bypass open heart surgery, touching almost every single paragraph of the work, correcting the sins of my past. Slowly but surely, I dissect and reconstruct my piece, and finally... it is done. Despite everything, the story is able to stand on it's own legs. A single tear runs down my eye as I resubmit the now 8k edit, knowing I've saved a life today.

That was three days ago.

Views and ratings continue to pour in own my original piece, ignorant that it's true beauty lies in Pending Prison. I refresh the page every hour, but its always the same. Pending. Pending. Always Pending.

Friends, I may not make it. I feel my life ebbing with every f5. I just want you all to know, as my consciousness fades: I love you all.

(Also, before you say it, I know 3 days is a perfectly normal amount of time for a work to be pending. This post is just a light-hearted outlet for me to be a big baby and vent my frustration that I can't have everything I want as soon as I want it. Feel free to join in and do the same, and we can all wail and bemoan at life's great injustices.)

Maybe if you wrote your story as well as you did this post you wouldn't be in this predicament

Hey, trust me, we've all been there.

 

[Djmac1031]

I just submitted a story last night, still "pending" approval.

Several hours after submitting, I realized a line reworked a few times already still had room for improvement.

the line as written:

With a simple, elegant gesture from her, the bartender appeared. He refilled her drink, then inquired what I would like.


The tweak I think works better :

With a simple, elegant gesture, she summoned the bartender. He refilled her drink, then inquired what I would like.

But to change it means resubmiiting and putting it back at the end of the que, delaying publishing by who knows how long.

Is it worth it for such a minor change?

We'll see if I can resist

 

[TheLobster]

Is it worth it for such a minor change?

Obviously, it's not. But that only means you now have to scour the story for the umpteenth time, looking for a sufficient number of other things you could improve, so that in the end it is worth it to send it to the back of the queue

 

[gunhilltrain]

I wasn't a Marine, but I know a bunch and they don't fuck around with Chesty.

They attribute everything to him. I know Marine vets that insist every quote about the USMC was said by him, even the ones with ironclad attribution to someone else. It's sorta amusing, but pretty harmless too; Puller's a useful hero for the Corps to rally around, if they need someone.

And, to the point of the thread, Chesty Puller was a man that really knew how to suffer.

So what do they think of another, somewhat older Marine general, Smedley Butler (he passed in 1940)? He certainly saw plenty of action and won the Medal of Honor. Yet he eventually became extremely skeptical of American foreign policy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

 

[Voboy]

So what do they think of another, somewhat older Marine general, Smedley Butler (he passed in 1940)? He certainly saw plenty of action and won the Medal of Honor. Yet he eventually became extremely skeptical of American foreign policy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

Again, I wasn't a Marine. So I'm not sure. What I do know is that Puller is the end-all/be-all of USMC life. He's almost a mystical, King Arthur-type figure to whom they attribute everything.

Butler was a fascinating man who didn't just earn the Medal of Honor; he earned two, though to be fair the criteria were somewhat different at that time. I imagine the Marines don't care for him as much, probably because he critiqued the defense establishment later. Hackworth gets the same treatment on the Army side, where everyone knows he was a wicked brave guy, but... I'm told the same thing happens among the SEAL community with that dude who killed Bin Laden and then wrote a book about it. Lindbergh and Mitchell dealt with the same kind of prejudice.

In general, soldiers value keeping your piehole shut if you're going to write controversial stuff later, even if you're a bona-fide hero.

 

[lovecraft68]

Want to add that according to some readers we're here to make them suffer.

 

[MisterWindDong]

I just submitted a story last night, still "pending" approval.

Several hours after submitting, I realized a line reworked a few times already still had room for improvement.

the line as written:

With a simple, elegant gesture from her, the bartender appeared. He refilled her drink, then inquired what I would like.


The tweak I think works better :

With a simple, elegant gesture, she summoned the bartender. He refilled her drink, then inquired what I would like.

But to change it means resubmiiting and putting it back at the end of the que, delaying publishing by who knows how long.

Is it worth it for such a minor change?

We'll see if I can resist

I swear hitting publish instantly turns you into a better writer.

And as you know, tiny improvements like this are not worth agonizing over. It’s not like the sentence as-is will silently hang over your conscious, taunting you for being weak, driving you to madness.

Surely not. It’s probably fine.

And since you’re gonna be strong, I’ll give you some feedback on the line too!

Your tweaked version is better. The original version pauses cadence a bit too much as written, creating sluggishness in the scene. The second version feels more natural.

Personally, I’d break that scene with dialog. Like this:
With a single, elegant gesture, she summoned the bartender. He tended to her glass, then inquired, “For you, sir?”

It helps the scene not feel too “this, and then this, and then this,” even though it’s functionally the same.

The one thing the original does better is physically place the bartender in the scene. “She gestured, he appeared.” She acts, he responds.

“She gestured, summoning him” she acts, then . So he kinda “teleports” to her glass in the next line.

You can go for something like this to combine it all:
She gave a single, elegant gesture, and the bartender appeared. He tended her glass, then inquired, “For you, sir?”

that’s my personal take of course, we’re firmly in style land now, not objective right or wrong. Your tweaked version reads well too

 

[Voboy]

You can go for something like this to combine it all:
She gave a single, elegant gesture, and the bartender appeared. He tended her glass, then inquired, “For you, sir?”

that’s my personal take of course, we’re firmly in style land now, not objective right or wrong. Your tweaked version reads well too

I'd see that as an opportunity to use a great verb.

If she's using an elegant gesture and the barkeep is expected to appear, there are a lot of fun verbs that could bubble into that gap: summoned, lured, something like that.

Her single, elegant gesture chummed the waters, and she was not terribly surprised when the sexier of the two bartenders glided over to bang on her cage. Never failed. His gaze wriggled into her cleavage and stayed there as he poured. "For you, sir?" That was an afterthought, and all three of them knew it.

 

[MisterWindDong]

I'd see that as an opportunity to use a great verb.

If she's using an elegant gesture and the barkeep is expected to appear, there are a lot of fun verbs that could bubble into that gap: summoned, lured, something like that.

Her single, elegant gesture chummed the waters, and she was not terribly surprised when the sexier of the two bartenders glided over to bang on her cage. Never failed. His gaze wriggled into her cleavage and stayed there as he poured. "For you, sir?" That was an afterthought, and all three of them knew it.

This is certainly a more sexually exciting, but we don't know where the story is from the excerpt alone, so its hard for me to recommend that level of change. It might not fit the story's pacing. So I try to recommend the most comfortable way to 'say the same thing' so to speak

 

[Djmac1031]

I swear hitting publish instantly turns you into a better writer.

And as you know, tiny improvements like this are not worth agonizing over. It’s not like the sentence as-is will silently hang over your conscious, taunting you for being weak, driving you to madness.

Surely not. It’s probably fine.

And since you’re gonna be strong, I’ll give you some feedback on the line too!

Your tweaked version is better. The original version pauses cadence a bit too much as written, creating sluggishness in the scene. The second version feels more natural.

Personally, I’d break that scene with dialog. Like this:
With a single, elegant gesture, she summoned the bartender. He tended to her glass, then inquired, “For you, sir?”

It helps the scene not feel too “this, and then this, and then this,” even though it’s functionally the same.

The one thing the original does better is physically place the bartender in the scene. “She gestured, he appeared.” She acts, he responds.

“She gestured, summoning him” she acts, then . So he kinda “teleports” to her glass in the next line.

You can go for something like this to combine it all:
She gave a single, elegant gesture, and the bartender appeared. He tended her glass, then inquired, “For you, sir?”

that’s my personal take of course, we’re firmly in style land now, not objective right or wrong. Your tweaked version reads well too

Its kinda crazy (in a good way) how many different ways there are to convey one simple idea.

Oh and if anyone cares, the new story drops tomorrow.

And I did wind up editing that sentence

 

[PrincessArianrhod]

Its kinda crazy (in a good way) how many different ways there are to convey one simple idea.

Oh and if anyone cares, the new story drops tomorrow.

And I did wind up editing that sentence

I can't believe you even considered not editing. Someone of your experience must recognise the joy of delayed gratification. Honestly...

 

[Djmac1031]

I can't believe you even considered not editing. Someone of your experience must recognise the joy of delayed gratification. Honestly...

hey, I held out almost 24 hours...

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

Is it worth it for such a minor change?

No. Fucking. Way.

LOL. You leave that story alone!

There comes a time when more tinkering will simply undo the good you've already done. One of the most important things to learn as a new writer is when to say "this is done."

Otherwise, you'll be tinkering forever.

 

[Djmac1031]

No. Fucking. Way.

LOL. You leave that story alone!

There comes a time when more tinkering will simply undo the good you've already done. One of the most important things to learn as a new writer is when to say "this is done."

Otherwise, you'll be tinkering forever.

I did wind up tweaking that sentence only because I realized that it was just gonna sit in Pending all Sunday til Monday anyway.

But it published this morning.

https://www.literotica.com/s/when-cozbi-met-amy-lit-con-2025

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

Damn it. I'm never going to finish editing this last chapter when I get so many good excuses to procrastinate handed to me on a silver platter, lol.

 

[PrincessArianrhod]

No. Fucking. Way.

LOL. You leave that story alone!

There comes a time when more tinkering will simply undo the good you've already done. One of the most important things to learn as a new writer is when to say "this is done."

Otherwise, you'll be tinkering forever.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/15/f3/42/15f342a904a0151390799751b388b182.jpg
Not all beginner lessons are equal...

 

[Actingup]

I can't sleep, my body aches, and nothing is scratching the itch. After years of internal debate, the stars have aligned: I'm going to write my own smut.

For the next 10 hours, I'm consumed in horny-induced writing frenzy.

As the haze lifts, consciousness returning, I bear witness: a 6.5k word fetish-laden masterpiece lies before me. I create my account, (since I of course hadn't thought that far ahead) realize I have to wait to be admitted, and, with no other recourse, finally go to bed.

I wake up 12 hours later to the alert of my account being accepted. I hastily submit my work, before realizing there's *another* period of waiting; the work must be manually reviewed. I sigh, and go about my life.

In only 12 short hours, the work is reviewed, accepted, and set to publish at midnight, much to my pleasant surprise.

As the day turns, early views hitting, I sit down to enjoy the work in its shiny new published format.

I'm horrified.

My work is on life-support. It is positively BURSTING at the seams with amateur writing mistakes. Tense slop at every turn. Jarring pacing interrupting flows. Meaningless repetition. The only thing keeping it from flatlining is its powerful core, and strong understanding of the fetish. I grab my keyboard, furious at past me, who allowed this travesty to occur. You fucking idiot.

Another 7 hours pass as I perform a triple-bypass open heart surgery, touching almost every single paragraph of the work, correcting the sins of my past. Slowly but surely, I dissect and reconstruct my piece, and finally... it is done. Despite everything, the story is able to stand on it's own legs. A single tear runs down my eye as I resubmit the now 8k edit, knowing I've saved a life today.

That was three days ago.

Views and ratings continue to pour in own my original piece, ignorant that it's true beauty lies in Pending Prison. I refresh the page every hour, but its always the same. Pending. Pending. Always Pending.

Friends, I may not make it. I feel my life ebbing with every f5. I just want you all to know, as my consciousness fades: I love you all.

(Also, before you say it, I know 3 days is a perfectly normal amount of time for a work to be pending. This post is just a light-hearted outlet for me to be a big baby and vent my frustration that I can't have everything I want as soon as I want it. Feel free to join in and do the same, and we can all wail and bemoan at life's great injustices.)

When the revised story is finally posted, could you please link to it here so that we can exclaim at its shimmering beauty (or bury the rotting corpse)?

 

[jehoram]

We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life.

Well, if it weren't for suffering, there wouldn't be many country-western songs.

 

[Djmac1031]

We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Well, if it weren't for suffering, there wouldn't be many country-western songs.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Well, if it weren't for suffering, there wouldn't be many country-western songs.

And vice versa.