Pending Stories

[TakeItOrLeaveIt]

Er… Well this is strange.

My pending story has gone live here,

https://literotica.com/s/paying-for-it-5

Except it’s not my story. It’s part 2 of someone else’s story that seems to have been substituted for mine.

Which concerns me for two reasons,

• I don’t have another copy of my story. I write directly into the text box and so, if it’s been lost, it’s gone. And I will be fairly pissed. It took a fair amount of work to write that one.
• I’m concerned for the actual author of the work that has been substituted for mine. Do they know and will action be taken to fix the situation.

Additionally, I’m worried about concerns of plagiarism. What do people think I should do? Pull it down - but will that lose the other person’s work irretrievably?

I’ve messaged Laurel again, but given that I didn’t get a response to the first message, I’m not holding my breath.

Is this normal around here? It all seems a little strange.

[Edit - I think I’ve tracked down the original author and have tried to contact her directly through her contact page. I can’t see that she’s active on the forum and so presume I’m unable to DM her directly. If I’ve got that wrong, please do let me know.]

 

[STrent]

Er… Well this is strange.

My pending story has gone live here,

https://literotica.com/s/paying-for-it-5

Except it’s not my story. It’s part 2 of someone else’s story that seems to have been substituted for mine.

Which concerns me for two reasons,

• I don’t have another copy of my story. I write directly into the text box and so, if it’s been lost, it’s gone. And I will be fairly pissed. It took a fair amount of work to write that one.
• I’m concerned for the actual author of the work that has been substituted for mine. Do they know and will action be taken to fix the situation.

Additionally, I’m worried about concerns of plagiarism. What do people think I should do? Pull it down - but will that lose the other person’s work irretrievably?

I’ve messaged Laurel again, but given that I didn’t get a response to the first message, I’m not holding my breath.

Is this normal around here? It all seems a little strange.

That’s bonkers. A new one too!

 

[TakeItOrLeaveIt]

That’s bonkers. A new one too!

Totally baffled as to what to do about it. And, if I’ve lost the text for my original story, I might well shit a lung. I’ve no backup at all… Which is a lesson learned, I guess.

The true author, I believe, is @Rollerchick28 - I can’t see she is active here… But if she is, drop me a DM.

I’m going to start a separate thread just to draw more attention to it. Stuff stuck in pending is bad, authors losing their work is potentially a bigger risk - particularly where people are not keeping a back up locally.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I’m going to start a separate thread just to draw more attention to it. Stuff stuck in pending is bad, authors losing their work is potentially a bigger risk - particularly where people are not keeping a back up locally.

That's on the author, not the site. If someone is silly enough to draft in the text box and not have their own back-up, that's on them.

The rest of it sounds like a publishing glitch, which I'm sure will get sorted out. @Laurel

 

[TakeItOrLeaveIt]

That's on the author, not the site. If someone is silly enough to draft in the text box and not have their own back-up, that's on them.

Glad to see that the milk of human kindness runs abundantly here.

I’d suggest it’s both on the author and the website. Yep, if the story is valuable enough to the author, it’s better to maintain a backup. But, equally, it’s not an unreasonable expectation that the site provide basic functionality, is it not?

I wrote directly into the text box because I don’t particularly want reams of erotica stored locally on my PC. And, secondarily, given the issues people seem to me having with AI, I assumed that writing directly into the field would avoid inadvertently including artifacts into the text that might skew results.

But lesson learnt. As you say, that’s on me. And I do appreciate you rubbing my face in the fact.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Glad to see that the milk of human kindness runs abundantly here.

I’d suggest it’s both on the author and the website. Yep, if the story is valuable enough to the author, it’s better to maintain a backup. But, equally, it’s not an unreasonable expectation that the site provide basic functionality, is it not?

I wrote directly into the text box because I don’t particularly want reams of erotica stored locally on my PC. And, secondarily, given the issues people seem to me having with AI, I assumed that writing directly into the field would avoid inadvertently including artifacts into the text that might skew results.

But lesson learnt. As you say, that’s on me. And I do appreciate you rubbing my face in the fact.

Just pointing out reality. Don't jump down my throat because you made a basic mistake, not keeping your own copy offline.

It's a story submission form - the fact that it gives you the option of submitting in various other formats makes that pretty obvious, surely?

 

[TakeItOrLeaveIt]

Just pointing out reality. Don't jump down my throat because you made a basic mistake, not keeping your own copy offline.

It's a story submission form - the fact that it gives you the option of submitting in various other formats makes that pretty obvious, surely?

My point is this: an error has happened with contributing factors on both sides. Yep, with hindsight, a backup would have mitigated this. Similarly, the website should operate more reliably - particularly given that its business model relies on the good will of authors.

But that’s by-the-by. I posted here so that Rollerchick is aware, that other authors are aware, and to seek advice/support as to how to remedy the situation. My original post is pretty clear on all of that.

You then jump in, your sole contribution being, ‘This is all on you, chump.’ Which, stunning as that contribution may well be, doesn’t really speak to my original post, does it?

Anyway, if that’s the extent of what you have to offer, probably not much point in corresponding further.

Have a good day.

 

[STrent]

I mean we have an absolute litany of errors here.

The big one being, it’s not the right story that has been published to the right author - regardless of the author’s backup, that’s a pretty substantial error in terms of publishing to the site, and raises a lot of questions as to the process of submitting and then publishing.

It shouldn’t be possible to change the submitted story that fundamentally without manual intervention, which this clearly had to be. That’s on the site, not the author.

Yes, not ideal to have no backup for a story - hardly the crime of the century and, crucially, not the biggest issue here.

 

[TakeItOrLeaveIt]

Yes, not ideal to have no backup for a story - hardly the crime of the century and, crucially, not the biggest issue here.

I totally own that: and don't have any issue with people kindly reminding others (and me) of the risk of not having a local backup. The issue was the dickish response that contributed nothing beyond, 'this is totally on you,' when clearly it is not. Like you say, there has obviously been a fuck up behind the scenes. When measured in the context of natural disasters, war, famine, pestilence, it is a minor fuck up, but a fuck up nonetheless.

And in terms of backing up my work. Others may feel differently, but when I'm on here I'm writing spankbank material. It's erotica and much of what I write is silly. In short, it's hardly Proust. And so, whilst I'm within my rights to be irked that I've lost work, if I had to choose to lose anything, it'd be the stuff I'm writing here.

Because of the nature of what I am writing, there is - to my mind - a risk of backing up locally and even via a cloud solution (and I know there are ways around that). The assessment I need to make (clearly) is whether the risk of losing short-form, disposable, silly writing is worth the the risk and faff of backing everything up elsewhere.

As I've said on the other thread, should I continue to write here, I may well think on a solution.

 

[STrent]

So I’ve now added an eighth chapter for review, having written this one quite differently, not sent it through Grammarly, just edited in documents on my iPad, and now submitted. Let’s see if that goes through compared to the others.

If it doesn’t, I give up. A month on and no closer to publishing any of my work.

 

[STrent]

Right, made a few small changes to sentence structure and resubmitted. We'll find out in a week, I guess xD

See you on the other side Doctor Venkman Penguin

 

[STrent]

7 stories sent back within a 5 minute block this evening. All rejected for AI. One, submitted today, still “pending”.

I think I’m coming to the end of my journey on Literotica. It’s just too much faffing around with editing, too much second guessing my own writing, and the forum’s, to keep going at this rate.

It has taken a week to have them reviewed again, and it’s very clear, given how quickly all of them were rejected, that neither the notes I have provided, nor the stories, have actually been read, they’ve been put through some form of software and have been spat out as “AI”.

This feels like an absolute waste of my time.

 

[luv2custrip]

7 stories sent back within a 5 minute block this evening. All rejected for AI. One, submitted today, still “pending”.

I think I’m coming to the end of my journey on Literotica. It’s just too much faffing around with editing, too much second guessing my own writing, and the forum’s, to keep going at this rate.

It has taken a week to have them reviewed again, and it’s very clear, given how quickly all of them were rejected, that neither the notes I have provided, nor the stories, have actually been read, they’ve been put through some form of software and have been spat out as “AI”.

This feels like an absolute waste of my time.

I’ve only been rejected for mentioning when characters were underage and for formatting dialogue. My stories must be too goofy to be mistaken for AI.

 

[PenumbralVision]

7 stories sent back within a 5 minute block this evening. All rejected for AI. One, submitted today, still “pending”.

I think I’m coming to the end of my journey on Literotica. It’s just too much faffing around with editing, too much second guessing my own writing, and the forum’s, to keep going at this rate.

It has taken a week to have them reviewed again, and it’s very clear, given how quickly all of them were rejected, that neither the notes I have provided, nor the stories, have actually been read, they’ve been put through some form of software and have been spat out as “AI”.

This feels like an absolute waste of my time.

Really sorry to hear that I wish I could help with some advice but frankly, I'm just as clueless about the factors leading to rejection as you... I'd tell to not give up, but I understand how frustrating this can be.

 

[grenefire]

7 stories sent back within a 5 minute block this evening. All rejected for AI. One, submitted today, still “pending”.

I think I’m coming to the end of my journey on Literotica. It’s just too much faffing around with editing, too much second guessing my own writing, and the forum’s, to keep going at this rate.

It has taken a week to have them reviewed again, and it’s very clear, given how quickly all of them were rejected, that neither the notes I have provided, nor the stories, have actually been read, they’ve been put through some form of software and have been spat out as “AI”.

This feels like an absolute waste of my time.

I feel ya. I am on my third rejected story. I am going to finish the story I am working on now and submit it, but if it gets rejected I think I am done posting on here. It is a shame because I really enjoy writing for this site.

 

[STrent]

I feel ya. I am on my third rejected story. I am going to finish the story I am working on now and submit it, but if it gets rejected I think I am done posting on here. It is a shame because I really enjoy writing for this site.

I too have enjoyed writing, but being thrown back three times - actually, if we do it story by story, it’s 7 stories x 3 times which is 21 rejections total in a month - it’s just not fun to not get to the point of feedback.

I want to be able to improve my craft. Hell, maybe even entertain a little with the stories.

I will sleep on it tonight and see how I feel in the morning, but right now I really don’t feel like a fourth round of rejections.

 

[O2]

Well, I got one of four that were pending published. The sad part is it's part three, not part two.

So, I pulled all four chapters, labeled them with part numbers, and tried to resubmit them.

Now, Lit isn't accepting any of them and they stay in the drafts section....Grrrrrr.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Well, I got one of four that were pending published. The sad part is it's part three, not part two.

So, I pulled all four chapters, labeled them with part numbers, and tried to resubmit them.

Now, Lit isn't accepting any of them and they stay in the drafts section....Grrrrrr.

Try again. If they're still in Drafts, make sure you are in fact ticking all the right boxes. You should be able to Preview, then Submit.

 

[O2]

I'm still trying, all the boxes are ticked. They were finally accepted, and now the wait begins again.

 

[STrent]

So I slept on it, took one of the early stories this morning, and did a long rewrite, and have resubmitted. If this one gets through, I’ll do the same work to the other stories.

If it doesn’t, then I have no idea what more I can do.

The one thing I noticed putting my sections through the AI checker website is that the AI checker picks up he/she sentences a lot. That may be what is scuppering me, I have a lot of those. So I have tried to reduce them.

We will see what happens!

 

[O2]

Someone opened the floodgates and published three of my four pending stories last night. The fourth is going to be out tomorrow!!!

I'm elated.

 

[PenumbralVision]

Someone opened the floodgates and published three of my four pending stories last night. The fourth is going to be out tomorrow!!!

I'm elated.

Oh nice, congrats I still have two in the pipeline. Fingers crossed

 

[STrent]

Someone opened the floodgates and published three of my four pending stories last night. The fourth is going to be out tomorrow!!!

I'm elated.

That’s great, congratulations!

 

[STrent]

Oh nice, congrats I still have two in the pipeline. Fingers crossed

Good luck! I have put a few in the pipeline too after some major rewriting. Fingers well and truly crossed.

 

[STrent]

So I wake up this morning and find another rejection in my inbox- but this time it’s for a story I wrote as a test, to see if it didn’t get caught for AI issues. This was the new reason for rejection:

• Please fix the formatting of your dialogue. The essay "How to Make Characters Talk" in our Writer's Resources section has more information on the formatting of dialogue if you have further questions: https://www.literotica.com/s/how-to-make-characters-talk

Now, I’ve checked the story and I’ve conformed to the guidelines.

So I am now at a loss as to why this rejected.

It is beginning to feel like any excuse to prevent any kind of publication right now. It started with “use of the word sample” in the title. Then it was AI. Now it’s about dialogue - except it wasn’t.