Pending??

[Racoonteur]

It means that she was 17 before her birthday, which is underage by site rules, and chapter 2 does not clarify when the previous sexy Rand/Abby interactions were happening. In isolation, it reads like they are sneaking around an underage character, which is what I said.

Again, bullshit. She is not mentioned in Chapter 2 before that act. Also, do you start every chapter with a date and time stamp? You're arguing to try to win, not to try to help.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Again, bullshit. She is not mentioned in Chapter 2 before that act. Also, do you start every chapter with a date and time stamp? You're arguing to try to win, not to try to help.

What would "winning" even look like? Your story being published or not affects me not at all.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Again, bullshit. She is not mentioned in Chapter 2 before that act. Also, do you start every chapter with a date and time stamp? You're arguing to try to win, not to try to help.

Okay.

 

[Racoonteur]

It means that she was 17 before her birthday, which is underage by site rules, and chapter 2 does not clarify when the previous sexy Rand/Abby interactions were happening. In isolation, it reads like they are sneaking around an underage character, which is what I said.

Pure and utter nonsense. What a ridiculous reach to try to defend your argument.
The statement, "Fall was approaching. Live had turned 18 in June..." coupled with the disclaimer at the very beginning of the story that says that all characters are at least 18, is more than adequate to let the reader know that Liv is 18.

To continue with this argument tells me that you're just making up arguments up to not have to admit the obvious.

 

[Racoonteur]

Okay.

Answer the question. Do you begin every chapter you write with a date and time stamp? Also, do you verify that every character is above the age of 18?

 

[Racoonteur]

What would "winning" even look like? Your story being published or not affects me not at all.

You know, I don't know what you hope to gain from this, but you're sure working hard to try to get there.

 

[alohadave]

Shot through the heart and you're to blame,
You give editors a bad name...

Actually, that's me being a dick. If the editor is doing the work for free, it's always the author's responsibility to do the final check: spellcheck and Read Aloud. (I'd say it's also the author's responsibility to do that before sending the story to the editor.)

Shouldn't the author do that anyway, free or paid?

 

[Racoonteur]

T

Shouldn't the author do that anyway, free or paid?

This is not about grammar.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Right. Not sure why I involved myself in all of this. I guess the two pages of bickering stirred my curiosity. The story of my life.

Anyway, after reading/skimming through chapter one and reading chapter two that @Racoonteur emailed to me, I can only say that there's no underage content in chapter two. There's absolutely zero indication that Liv, the sister in question, has ever seen, heard, or been in the same room as the MC and his mother while they were involved in anything that looks like sexual activity.

The only sentence that might be left open to interpretation is at the beginning of chapter one. But even that is totally in accordance with Lit's practices so far. I can only say that I believe that @Racoonteur's situation, the same as with many other authors, is merely a consequence of the fact that no human is actually reading the submissions.
The story got flagged by some software, and I suspect that Laurel, not having time to actually read the chapter herself, decided to err on the side of safety.

Try to submit the chapter with a note or something. I'm not sure how much that'll help, but it's something, at least. Being on Lit requires taking the pros with all the cons that come with the way the submission process works, and the way the site generally works. It is what it is, that's what I'm saying.

 

[StillStunned]

Shouldn't the author do that anyway, free or paid?

In theory. But if a client is paying me, I'll make sure the text I deliver is fit for purpose. Of course, the client should still check my changes.

Here on Lit, with a volunteer editor? You don't know what the standard of their work is. You don't know whether their changes suit what you want your story to do. The story is going up under your name, and any poor editing will reflect on you. You can't hand the blame off to a volunteer.

 

[Racoonteur]

Right. Not sure why I involved myself in all of this. I guess the two pages of bickering stirred my curiosity. The story of my life.

Anyway, after reading/skimming through chapter one and reading chapter two that @Racoonteur emailed to me, I can only say that there's no underage content in chapter two. There's absolutely zero indication that Liv, the sister in question, has ever seen, heard, or been in the same room as the MC and his mother while they were involved in anything that looks like sexual activity.

The only sentence that might be left open to interpretation is at the beginning of chapter one. But even that is totally in accordance with Lit's practices so far. I can only say that I believe that @Racoonteur's situation, the same as with many other authors, is merely a consequence of the fact that no human is actually reading the submissions.
The story got flagged by some software, and I suspect that Laurel, not having time to actually read the chapter herself, decided to err on the side of safety.

Try to submit the chapter with a note or something. I'm not sure how much that'll help, but it's something, at least. Being on Lit requires taking the pros with all the cons that come with the way the submission process works, and the way the site generally works. It is what it is, that's what I'm saying.

Thank you.

Honestly, feeling heard helps tremendously.
Trust me, I've written a note with each submission as well as giving a friendly nudge via PM after the story sat for about 10 days each time. The disconnect has been deafening. Just having someone say they hear what I'm saying is a relief, whether they like the story or not.

I'm a decent writer. The sad thing is that, while I've found at least a small audience here of people who appreciated the initial offering I made, the story is stopped dead here. Whether it's because of a dismissive and condescending whim, or a technical glitch, this story, and others I wanted to tell, will not be published here. Like any good writer, I've dealt with rejection but, believe me, I've also stepped away from my share of dysfunctional and mismanaged publishers as well.

I have no problem doing it again. "That's just the way it is," isn't the enticing recruitment tool that some people seem to think it is. I'm around here until Chapter 1 gets removed then I'm gone.

 

[acguy]

Yes they are form letters. It would be great if the site would give detailed information as to what was wrong. It's one of the (rational) things Laurel does to improve her throughput, which I think we all applaud.

I can only imagine how very frustrating it is to be falsely accused of using AI. I know you mentioned in another thread that you only use short sentences. To me, a repetitive sentence structure, even in otherwise well written text, reads like AI. This is juts my completely uneducated observation, having never read any of your stories (that I'm aware of at least). But I am expected to differentiate AI generated from human written in student work all the time.

I had 3 stories rejected for being AI generated and 2 were old stories I had updated and were written long before AI generation was something I had even heard about. There was no explanation given of what was AI. I just decided not to post here anymore. If they don’t have the courtesy to explain then I won’t bother. The other site accepted all 3 stories as is.

 

[MissTerriRuss]

I had 3 stories rejected for being AI generated and 2 were old stories I had updated and were written long before AI generation was something I had even heard about. There was no explanation given of what was AI. I just decided not to post here anymore. If they don’t have the courtesy to explain then I won’t bother. The other site accepted all 3 stories as is.

Giving up was what I did. I don't think Erotica is the genre for me. Was nice while literotica worked...

 

[IWroteThis]

The story I originally submitted on 2025-09-21 was published today, so there's still hope.

It took 8 days after my latest re-submission, but that was a lot better than the 42 days I left it sit untouched at one point. It was never sent back. It just sat in perpetual Pending.

I don't know if this is relevant or coincidence, but one thing I noticed with my next to last re-submission was that when the page first loaded, it would briefly show a submission from a previous submission. If I had just pulled it back to drafts and resubmitted it, I probably wouldn't have thought much of it. However, I had deleted the previous submission and used the New Story process. This made me wonder how deleted the previous one actually was, so I changed the story title. Again, I don't know if that helped or it was just a coincidence, but that submission was approved 8 days later and posted today.

 

[old_prof]

The story I originally submitted on 2025-09-21 was published today, so there's still hope.

It took 8 days after my latest re-submission, but that was a lot better than the 42 days I left it sit untouched at one point. It was never sent back. It just sat in perpetual Pending.

I don't know if this is relevant or coincidence, but one thing I noticed with my next to last re-submission was that when the page first loaded, it would briefly show a submission from a previous submission. If I had just pulled it back to drafts and resubmitted it, I probably wouldn't have thought much of it. However, I had deleted the previous submission and used the New Story process. This made me wonder how deleted the previous one actually was, so I changed the story title. Again, I don't know if that helped or it was just a coincidence, but that submission was approved 8 days later and posted today.

Congratulations on it finally getting through.

That does sound weird with the old version briefly appearing. Maybe something cached in your browser?

Hopefully, your stories will go through smoothly now.

 

[IWroteThis]

Congratulations on it finally getting through.

That does sound weird with the old version briefly appearing. Maybe something cached in your browser?

Hopefully, your stories will go through smoothly now.

I don't think it was a local cache issue because it didn't happen every time, but I can't know for sure.

I've had two others get approved with days, while that one languished in Pending, so it was an issue specifically with that story, or at least the original version of it. After reading other threads on the issue, I went back and found a couple of references that could have been flagged for manual review due to potential age issues, as I mentioned shorts from junior high and used "young ladies" to refer to twenty-something women. I did a fairly large rewrite of the story to clean that kind of stuff up, but it didn't seem to help. At one point, I even rewrote the opening line simply to make sure it couldn't pattern match on the opening paragraph.

On the other hand, my Pending queue looks so empty now… I have one I should be wrapping up the editing on, but I'm posting in AH instead.