'pending'

[AngelaSaxon]

I just read the thread about the pending bug having been fixed and making sure it's not in drafts and making sure it hasn't been sent back.

So if it HAS submitted and HASN'T been send back and I haven't edited the story to put it at the back of the queue - is it still a kind of a normal thing for it to be more than a month and counting?

I'm not asking to complain - if it's normal, it's normal. It FEELS like a long time but that's my subjective experience.

Anyway, should I just adapt to this as within the spectrum of normality?

 

[anthrodisiac]

If it's longer than 30 days, I'd send Laurel a DM to let her know. You should have heard back by now, but I know others have reported being stuck for long periods of time, and really the only thing you can do is send Laurel a DM and wait a few days to see if it kicks loose. From there, some people leave it alone if they still hear nothing and see no movement, while others delete and resubmit, but I couldn't tell you if one is better than the other.

 

[AngelaSaxon]

Thanks. I'm getting that it's not exactly usual but not unknown either. thanks for the advice.

And yes it's pending since the 22nd of September, so a bit over a month.

 

[anthrodisiac]

That sucks, I'm sorry. I hope you're able to get this cleared up and posted soon. Good luck!

 

[AngelaSaxon]

Thank you! I'm honestly more concerned with the much longer, much better in my opinion and potentially somewhat more controversial story I'm trying to finish now, and whether this is an experience that might repeat.

Maybe it's partly that not many people really read the texts submitted under 'essays'? I wouldn't have thought a few autobiographical reflections on involvement in sex-work economies would be considered controversial in terms of content, so I'm mostly assuming it's somehow fallen through the cracks or sits on the bottom of some pile...

 

[anthrodisiac]

It's hard to say if it'll repeat. There's probably a commonality in the stories that get stuck in pending, but we really don't know what that is, assuming one exists at all. My personal guess based on what some people have said, and what Laurel has said about this in the past, is that this might be part of some larger backlog of manual review of stories that require more thorough review than others for some reason or another, and Laurel is the only person who is reviewing these stories to our knowledge. Given the flood of AI submissions on top of legit submissions, it might be a really big backlog, and things that can't easily be verified might be in a large queue. But this is just me speculating based on what has been said about this, and nobody but Laurel knows for sure. I do hope you're able to get it published, it sounds like it could be very interesting and enlightening for a lot of people.

It's possible your essay might've triggered a deeper review due to talking about real-life sex work, and Lit has a guideline saying no stories can promote real-life sex services. I'm not saying your essay is promoting any service, but given it's autobiographical and discussing these things, it could require close scrutiny to make sure everything is above board. Again, total guess on my part, so take that with a huge bag of salt.

 

[AngelaSaxon]

Fair enough, I hadn't even considered that possibility. The essay is talking about experiences from quite a long time ago and couldn't really be confused for advertising any commercial services. It's kind of the opposite of doing that, but then again you'd have to read it to know that and maybe read it with some care, so holding up the process until someone actually has time to do that might make sense for the site.

Anyway, we'll see. A couple of times I've been tempted to rewrite or expand parts of what I wrote but this process has taken so long since I submitted the current version that I'm hesitant to do anything that would put it back at the start of the process...

Thanks very much for replying, in any case.

 

[TheLobster]

If you don't hear anything from Laurel and the story doesn't move, then, when you do resubmit it, definitely do include a note that you're describing past experiences and not advertising anything. Should at least clear that up, showing that you're aware of the rule.

 

[Britva415]

I just read the thread about the pending bug having been fixed and making sure it's not in drafts and making sure it hasn't been sent back.

So if it HAS submitted and HASN'T been send back and I haven't edited the story to put it at the back of the queue - is it still a kind of a normal thing for it to be more than a month and counting?

I'm not asking to complain - if it's normal, it's normal. It FEELS like a long time but that's my subjective experience.

Anyway, should I just adapt to this as within the spectrum of normality?

They didn't say a bug got fixed. They said there wasn't a bug at all.

But, they didn't say what you should do after 30 days. All they said was what not to do before 30 days: Don't change or resubmit it.

They're very aware that some stories are taking longer than 30 days, bug or no bug, and that affected authors are working around that by deleting the story and resubmitting. Ideally with a statement in the Notes field saying what you're doing and why.