kanetellstales
Virgin
- Joined
- Apr 22, 2025
- Posts
- 1
I put up two stories 4-5 days back, but they are stuck in pending. I don't know if there is an issue or any other problem. Please help!
Story not published.
- Thread starter kanetellstales
- Start date
StillStunned
Scruffy word herder
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2023
- Posts
- 8,849
Sorry to hear that, and it must be very frustrating. Especially if it's your first time.
But the fact of the matter is that the story approval process can take days, sometimes even weeks if you're unlucky. There are theories that newer writers and specific categories are scrutinised more closely, and stories are also checked for possible use of AI.
The usual course of action is to wait as long as you can stand it, but at least a week, and send a DM to Laurel, the site owner. Apparently if you open the link to your story in the Pending folder you can copy it into your message to save her time and trouble. She won't reply, but it generally gets things going.
Some people have advocated deleting the story from your Pending folder after about five days and just resubmitting it. That could work, but I don't have any experience with it myself.
Either way, good luck!
But the fact of the matter is that the story approval process can take days, sometimes even weeks if you're unlucky. There are theories that newer writers and specific categories are scrutinised more closely, and stories are also checked for possible use of AI.
The usual course of action is to wait as long as you can stand it, but at least a week, and send a DM to Laurel, the site owner. Apparently if you open the link to your story in the Pending folder you can copy it into your message to save her time and trouble. She won't reply, but it generally gets things going.
Some people have advocated deleting the story from your Pending folder after about five days and just resubmitting it. That could work, but I don't have any experience with it myself.
Either way, good luck!
RejectReality
Errant Smut Slinger
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2009
- Posts
- 4,992
First, make sure they're in the "pending" folder and not the "drafts" folder. That's far less likely nowadays than it used to be, but it's still worth covering the base.
Is it a brand new submission? Edits of already published work are on a "when we get around to it" schedule.
Is it simply text? Audio, story games, and anything illustrated don't get processed at the same rate as purely text stories.
Beyond that, I would only start worrying after a week. If it goes past a week, and you have two in the queue both sitting, you're probably getting flagged as AI. There's a bug that sometimes causes stories to not show up in the vetting dashboard, but the odds of two from the same author at nearly the same time falling into that crack are so miniscule as to be nearly impossible.
If you're using spell/grammar checking, do some research and find out if the program utilizes AI, and whether you can turn that shit off. If you're letting some AI rewrite chunks of your story for you, it's not likely to get through.
Is it a brand new submission? Edits of already published work are on a "when we get around to it" schedule.
Is it simply text? Audio, story games, and anything illustrated don't get processed at the same rate as purely text stories.
Beyond that, I would only start worrying after a week. If it goes past a week, and you have two in the queue both sitting, you're probably getting flagged as AI. There's a bug that sometimes causes stories to not show up in the vetting dashboard, but the odds of two from the same author at nearly the same time falling into that crack are so miniscule as to be nearly impossible.
If you're using spell/grammar checking, do some research and find out if the program utilizes AI, and whether you can turn that shit off. If you're letting some AI rewrite chunks of your story for you, it's not likely to get through.
