Story stuck in ‘pending’

[flatiron2]

Hi everyone.

I’ve got a chapter of a story stuck in ‘pending’. Usually, my submissions are published three or four days after submitting/uploading, but this one has been stuck for two months. In that time, I’ve tried resetting to draft and resubmitting, and I’ve also deleted the entire form twice and reuploaded it. There’s an FAQ for stories that are taking a long time to upload, and I’ve followed the directions there, asking three times what the problem might be. I’ve never received any response.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve had one or two stories rejected for a redraft, but that hasn’t happened here either. It’s just sitting there, seemingly ignored in purgatory, and I can’t seem to get it moved along or learn why it’s stuck.

A reader commented yesterday that the story was hot and they’d love to read the next chapter. I’d love for them to be able to read it too – it’s been ready to go for ages!

Has this ever happened to anyone else? Has anyone got any advice? Two months doesn’t feel normal.

Thanks for any advice anyone can provide

--flatiron2

 

[ElectricBlue]

Hi everyone.

I’ve got a chapter of a story stuck in ‘pending’. Usually, my submissions are published three or four days after submitting/uploading, but this one has been stuck for two months. In that time, I’ve tried resetting to draft and resubmitting, and I’ve also deleted the entire form twice and reuploaded it. There’s an FAQ for stories that are taking a long time to upload, and I’ve followed the directions there, asking three times what the problem might be. I’ve never received any response.

Every time you do this, the submission clock starts all over again.

Don't touch your story once it's been submitted. While it shows as Pending, that means no-one has looked at it yet.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve had one or two stories rejected for a redraft, but that hasn’t happened here either. It’s just sitting there, seemingly ignored in purgatory, and I can’t seem to get it moved along or learn why it’s stuck.

It's not stuck, it's on the back of the conveyor belt, because you keep resubmitting.

A reader commented yesterday that the story was hot and they’d love to read the next chapter. I’d love for them to be able to read it too – it’s been ready to go for ages!

Has this ever happened to anyone else? Has anyone got any advice? Two months doesn’t feel normal.

It's not two months because of the site, I'm afraid it's two months because of your actions. When did you submit it last?

 

[flatiron2]

Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it. I had a feeling that was what was happening. I've left it there for weeks at a time before resubmitting. I won't touch it again until (hopefully) it gets noticed.

Most of my submissions (more than 100) get published in 3-4 days, including the previous nine chapters in this particular tale in this particular category, which is why this feels very unusual.

 

[Writer61]

PM Laurel

 

[flatiron2]

I suspect I've found the problem - two versions of a submission from the same author with the same title, not sure how that happened! - but I can't fix it myself, because I can only see one submission in my 'pending' tab. I've PMed Laurel. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[flatiron2]

I suspect I've found the problem - two versions of a submission from the same author with the same title, not sure how that happened! - but I can't fix it myself, because I can only see one submission in my 'pending' tab. I've PMed Laurel. Thanks for the suggestion!

I PMed Laurel as suggested, but I didn't receive a response and the situation with my story stuck in limbo is unchanged. I'll try again. This is so frustrating - this has never happened to me before, and if I could fix it myself, I would!

 

[Bamagan]

I PMed Laurel as suggested, but I didn't receive a response and the situation with my story stuck in limbo is unchanged. I'll try again. This is so frustrating - this has never happened to me before, and if I could fix it myself, I would!

In my experience, she rarely responds to such messages, but if the delay is caused by a technical issue on their end, it has usually been resolved pretty quickly. My guess is that your story may have gotten flagged for some kind of content issue and was shunted into a separate queue for submissions that require more than a cursory skim. I'm not suggesting you actually did anything wrong, to be clear, just that something tripped a detector. As was mentioned above, futzing with pending submissions resets the clock. Judging from the volume of recent similar threads, I'd guess that the (hypothetical) review pile has a two-to-three week backlog, so each attempt has possibly added that much to your pending time.

My longest wait was about six weeks for a chapter that, according to the rejection notice, contained a fetish scene that was initially ruled to be a violation; it was eventually published with no significant edits (although I did amend later chapters to avoid a couple of keywords that seemed likely to be triggers). This was a couple of years ago, prior to the current delays that are (probably) AI-related. I sent one message here in the forums that was essentially a more detailed explanation of what I included in the re-submitted notes to the editor. I got no direct response, but I did get what I really wanted (publication).

If you've got other stories to tell, I suggest working on those to take your mind off the waiting game. "Be patient" is hardly satisfying advice, I know, but many of the authors here have been in a similar holding pattern, and if anyone has a secret weapon for getting things done fast, they're actually managing to keep it a secret.