My stories are stuck in pending. Maybe there's something I did wrong?

[Mezu]

As I mentioned in a previous forum post here, my submissions for my series have been ignored since December.

They weren't sent back, but is there any possibility that there are some issues that the mods didn't like and they just didn't tell me because they weren't enough big to require a message?

I was thinking about things like formatting or sentence structure. I'd really appreciate any help. It's just so frustrating that I can't continue my series and have, at the time of writing, 3 chapters in my pending folder while the writers I follow had almost twice as many works published since that time.

 

[PennyThompson]

So, in your previous post you said one of your pending stories had a Published tag and a date on it, right?
Usually what that means is, Laurel and the mods have reviewed a story, approved it, and put it on the publishing schedule. Sometimes that's just the very next day, sometimes it's a little farther in the future. Especially if you're submitting more than one story at a time, they'll often spread their publishing dates out.

BUT if a story is given a publishing date, and then you go in and make any changes to the story, or even just open it and click "Save Draft" or "Preview & Publish," it's going to pull the story out of the publishing schedule and put it all the way back at the end of the queue

I think nine times out of ten, when someone says their story is "stuck" in the queue, what they really mean is that they've been clicking on it or tinkering with it, and each time it "resets the clock" so to speak.

So! If a story is still in your "Pending" list, but has a "Published" tag and a date in the future, leave it alone. It'll get published on that date! (Usually a little after midnight US East Coast time).

If it's got a published tag and a date in the past (more than one day, you don't want to bump your story mere hours before it was going to publish because you got turned around with the time zones!), but is still in Pending and not available to read, then something went wrong and you should message Laurel.

 

[Mezu]

So, in your previous post you said one of your pending stories had a Published tag and a date on it, right?

I think I worded it wrongly back then or maybe just didn't provide enough context.

I submitted two chapters and one of them got a publishing date and also got published within the 1-2 days time period as you said. But when this happened to the first one, the other just got the date of submission reset even though I hadn't opened it since the submission. When I submit two chapters for my series, they always get approved enough quickly to be placed close to each other in the order of publication, sometimes they get approved at the same time. But this time the first one got published while the other remained in pending.

And no I didn't click on them. If something like that would have happened, I'd need to resubmit them since if I do anything with a submission and save it then it will be placed back from the pending to the draft folder.

 

[PennyThompson]

Gotcha, could have just been a manual error by the moderator, we don't really know what the submission process looks like on the admin side.

You could intentionally put the stuck story into Draft and then put it back into the queue, and see if that knocks it loose? Or message Laurel and ask about its status. I've never done that, apparently she will rarely respond directly, but will usually get the story back on track!

 

[Mezu]

Gotcha, could have just been a manual error by the moderator, we don't really know what the submission process looks like on the admin side.

You could intentionally put the stuck story into Draft and then put it back into the queue, and see if that knocks it loose? Or message Laurel and ask about its status. I've never done that, apparently she will rarely respond directly, but will usually get the story back on track!

Months ago, I had a similar issue with a chapter. It was the third chapter and was pending for like 3 weeks before I got published. I sent Laurel a PM on the forums and got no replies, as you mentioned. At the same time, I was writing the 4th chapter and once I finished it (it happened approx a week after I messaged Laurel) I resubmitted the third and submitted the 4th a minute later. Weirdly, I saw both having announced for publication within 12 hours. And I actually changed a few things in the third chapter. The problem is that I can't decide what did the trick: the resubmitting, the changes, or the PM to Laurel.

Since then, I began submitting two chapters at the same time and they always got similarly quickly approved without issues until December.

 

[PennyThompson]

The process is a bit of a black box, for sure!

 

[TruthSeeker12345]

I do not know if this is what you are seeing, but just FYI, if you see a "Published" tag on one of your stories during the day; it can take until midnight Pacific time that night for the story to go from Pending status to Published. The servers do not update until midnight Pacific time.

 

[Mezu]

I do not know if this is what you are seeing, but just FYI, if you see a "Published" tag on one of your stories during the day; it can take until midnight Pacific time that night for the story to go from Pending status to Published. The servers do not update until midnight Pacific time.

No there's no Published tag, just Pending.

 

[TruthSeeker12345]

I see. So for that story you see Pending, 0 stars, and 0 views under the story description, and it says Pending in the Pending Stories section. Is that correct?

 

[Mezu]

I see. So for that story you see Pending, 0 stars, and 0 views under the story description, and it says Pending in the Pending Stories section. Is that correct?

Yes. If they (I have 3 chapters in pending right now) would have been approved they would have "New" as a tag with the future publication date above them.

 

[Dreamerman77]

Yes. If they (I have 3 chapters in pending right now) would have been approved they would have "New" as a tag with the future publication date above them.

Any progress? Mine are still pending

 

[Mezu]

Any progress? Mine are still pending

No. I rewrote the chapter where things stopped and resubmitted all three of them yesterday. Now I wait until I finish writing the next two chapters and if the current 3 are still pending, I'll write a PM to Laurel, although I did it 2 weeks ago as well and nothing happened back then.

 

[Dreamerman77]

I wrote to her too, but nothing yet. Posted a third story three days ago and all are pending.

 

[Mezu]

I wrote to her too, but nothing yet. Posted a third story three days ago and all are pending.

They are in a series or standalone?
The last time I had a similar issue with my series (you can see a few posts above in this thread) it helped when I resubmitted the still-pending one before submitting the new one.

 

[Dreamerman77]

Two that have been pending for 3 weeks were posted on same day and are part of a yet unpublished series.
Third one is independent story posted three days ago.

 

[ElectricBlue]

No. I rewrote the chapter where things stopped and resubmitted all three of them yesterday. Now I wait until I finish writing the next two chapters and if the current 3 are still pending, I'll write a PM to Laurel, although I did it 2 weeks ago as well and nothing happened back then.

If you submitted them all yesterday, that's the new start of your clock. Your patience starts now, not two weeks ago.

Once you've submitted something, don't touch it, don't panic. You're in the same queue as every other writer, but stories progress at their own rate. I submitted a 750 word thing two days ago, it shows as New, so I should see it live tomorrow. My next story might take ten days. Shrug.

 

[Greyfall1277]

Any progress? Mine are still pending

My story is also stuck in pending since the 13th of January. Contacting support via the feedback option hasn't yielded results. Has yours been published? Should I just give up?

 

[Dreamerman77]

My story is also stuck in pending since the 13th of January. Contacting support via the feedback option hasn't yielded results. Has yours been published? Should I just give up?

It took three weeks, and one of my submission got published. The other one was sent back because AI suspicion, which is kind of funny cause the story is originally in Finnish language and translated manually and spell checked with word.

 

[crazyness1]

To everyone worried about pending works, I imagine it's because the staff are currently swamped with getting in the Valentine contest submissions on time as well as the January/February monthly submissions. That is just my guess, as three of my works have been pending for over a week now, but my contest submission was submitted within a day. I hope this helps.

 

[HairFucker]

I had two chapters stuck in pending for ten days. I then read on here that sometimes resubmitting them helps if there's been a glitch...so I did and regretted it as apparently you lose your place in the queue, assuming there even is one.

I think for standalone stories it doesn't perhaps matter too much but I only had one chapter of one story published and who's even going to remember reading it weeks later? It's sort of killed my enthusiasm for writing any more as it seems impossible to publish anything with any regularity.

 

[crazyness1]

I think for standalone stories it doesn't perhaps matter too much but I only had one chapter of one story published and who's even going to remember reading it weeks later? It's sort of killed my enthusiasm for writing any more as it seems impossible to publish anything with any regularity.

Honestly, I wouldn't be too worried about people not remembering. I checked your work-- super solid rating. Way better than my first work, when I initially published. First thing people do when they see a work in a series they haven't read is to check the rating for pt 1 (at least that's what I do). If it's high, they'll give it a shot. In fact, I've even seen people on here with only part one of a series published, from years ago. People still leave comments 6 years later, cursing out the author in all manner of colorful slurs demanding part 2. lol

 

[Adam_Sephenson]

hello! i'm somewhat having a similar problem as well, I've had a story in pending since late December but on my own volition had edited the story and send it to pending twice (therefor going to the back of the queue), after 2 weeks i decided to heed the advice of those on this forum to put it back into draft and send to pending once more, in that time i had also written and submitted 2x 750 word stories (one got sent back and i deleted it after i realized it didn't follow the rules and regulations, while the other is published) i'm taking that i've had a bit of bad luck in regards of posting stories that aren't part of the Jan/feb story competitions and i should be patient while waiting for said story to publish? how long has anyone waited before contacting the admins regarding long submission wait times?

 

[TruthSeeker12345]

Under the description of your story in your list of stories in "My Stories" in your Control Panel, do you see the tag "PUBLISHED"? If you see "PUBLISHED", there should be a date right above the "PUBLISHED" tag. That would be the date that you can expect the story to be officially published to the world. It did take and additional day for my recent story to be officially published. That story was submitted and accepted without being returned.

 

[Adam_Sephenson]

as of now (02.12.2025) it's like this, i had resubmitted it a few times due to edits and other things, but again it's been like this since,as i said i'm chalking it up due to the multiple competitions and events that are happening recently.

 

[TruthSeeker12345]

Maybe it is the competitions that they are having. I guess you will just have to wait for publication.