Pending Purgatory

[MonaRivers]

Hello,

I am posting here as I've tried everything in the various forum posts on the subject.

I have a series (Saving My Daughter From BBC). I have tried posting new pieces. They get stuck in pending forever. I'm not being dramatic, they will get stuck for months with no update.

They aren't rejected. They just sit there forever.

I've been trying to load part 9 since May.

I've left it for weeks, messaged Laurel, checked it for anything that might get it flagged. Deleted it (after 8 weeks) and tried to resubmit it. It's at 13 days on the latest resubmission and I'm not confident anything has changed.

Nothing works it sits in pending (yes, definitely pending) forever.

The crazy thing is, literally every other story I post gets posted to the site in 3-4 days. None of them get caught in pending. It is just this series. I'm 9 pieces in and anything I try to load with this title is just getting stuck in a pending black hole.

I don't know why. I'd love to fix it. Any help would be appreciated.

It's got to the point where anything else I post gets flooded with comments about that series. Readers think I'm witholding it on purpose. I'm not. Please help.

 

[SmilingLez]

So sorry you are going through this and it has not been resolved

 

[metropolinational]

My readers are losing their minds because my chapters take 3 or 4 days to post. I came here to check if there was something going on with the site because chapter 10 of my story has been pending for over 4 days now. But what you are experiencing is horrific. I can only imagine how upsetting this much be!

 

[MonaRivers]

I have tried a new post after making some edits.

I realize that in this piece I haven't explicitly stated that the daughter is an adult (probably because I'm nine piece in and thought that was well understood).

It's possible an automatic filter or scan has determined that it has underage participants (which it absolutely does not).

Hopefully these clarifications make it clear and it gets posted like the others. Leaving this here in case it helps someone else.

It hasn't been solved yet, but fingers crossed this will help.

 

[NikkijMaadison]

As of today, I have no stories pending. At one time, I had up to 16 stories pending... and it was a moving target; I would submit a new story, and it would leapfrog the pending stories and get published in as little as 12 hours...

I became assertive ... kept pushing the 15-day window and kept resubmitting. I can not pinpoint one thing that helped push mine out. I am doing a happy dance.

 

[Writer61]

I realize that in this piece I haven't explicitly stated that the daughter is an adult (probably because I'm nine piece in and thought that was well understood).

It's possible an automatic filter or scan has determined that it has underage participants (which it absolutely does not).

If that was the problem, you would have received a message to that end.

 

[deathlynx]

I have been placing a story a day in a series I wrote. One of the interesting things I discovered is that it paused my series in order to drop my Halloween entry, rather than posting two stories in one day. Also, given that it sounds like you have posted a series, it's possible that something went wrong with one of your chapters and it won't post the rest of them until that one clears (readers would get frustrated with a gap in the story).

You mentioned making edits, and that explains some (if not all) the problems you're having. Whenever you make an edit to a pending submission it seems to bump the story to the back of the cue. And yes, that applies if you delete the submission entirely and try to submit it fresh. The site has a memory so it knows that the story has been attempted before and still treats it as a pending submission rather than a new one.

 

[Britva415]

kept pushing the 15-day window and kept resubmitting

This might have slowed you down, because it has officially been a 30-day window since July.

 

[MonaRivers]

If that was the problem, you would have received a message to that end.

I would like to think so.

I have been placing a story a day in a series I wrote. One of the interesting things I discovered is that it paused my series in order to drop my Halloween entry, rather than posting two stories in one day. Also, given that it sounds like you have posted a series, it's possible that something went wrong with one of your chapters and it won't post the rest of them until that one clears (readers would get frustrated with a gap in the story).

You mentioned making edits, and that explains some (if not all) the problems you're having. Whenever you make an edit to a pending submission it seems to bump the story to the back of the cue. And yes, that applies if you delete the submission entirely and try to submit it fresh. The site has a memory so it knows that the story has been attempted before and still treats it as a pending submission rather than a new one.

I'm aware, but after six weeks in pending I was willing to try anything. I guess I let the latest attempt sit there till the end times are upon us.

 

[Ivy_Veritas]

I've had a chapter update stuck in Pending for two and a half months now (closer to three months, since I left the first attempt up for nearly two weeks before trying to resubmit, thinking I'd done something wrong, but both attempts ended up in Pending, not Drafts). I've been posting here for seven years, and it's never taken longer than a day to be approved before. There's no questionable content, no feedback from the site admins, it's just stuck. Every single chapter in the series has a 'Hot' flag, so it's not a quality issue.

I have no idea what to do. My readers are unhappy, and I don't know what to tell them. It's like my account has been blackholed without explanation.

 

[MikePaulWrites]

Does anyone here know how to contact Laurel. Asking for a friend.

 

[Writer61]

Send a message to @Laurel.

 

[NikkijMaadison]

All stories that are pending in your profile have a 'stamp'. When you write Laurel, copy and paste that stamp. Don't expect a reply. There won't be one.

Everybody has had different success in getting stories out of pending. There is no formula. What worked for me may not work for you. At one time, I had 16 stories pending. Today I have none; all 16 stories, plus at least 10 more, were finally published. A new submission would leapfrog the ones stuck. Frustrating yes. I would submit and resubmit using multiple methods. I sent notes to Laurel, nicely asking for any help she could give. Some of the 16 dated back almost 10 months from the original submission.

Finally, the 16 were published. It took 45+ days to clear the backlog. It took persistence... stay with it. Do whatever works. And if that's not working, try something else. I will never know why. I am just happy they were published.

Nikki Madison’s Stories

 

[MillieDynamite]

I am an exception to the rule of Laurel not responding. I sent a private message, rather upset that I'd been rejected for possibly AI-generated content in my story. She sent back, read it again, it isn't flagged for AI content, it's flagged for underage. You've transposed the numbers again: 12, not 21.

 

[Britva415]

There's no reason to ever wait any longer than 30 days. That is the stated service level. The instruction is to not interrupt the submission process before then, but they don't say what to do after that.

Nevertheless, at the time they wrote that policy, they knew authors were working around the "permanently pending" problem by deleting the original submission and re-submitting it as a whole new story. Ideally with a statement in the Notes field saying what you're doing and why. So, I regard the workaround as having unofficial support since they didn't say not to do that after 30 days and they didn't offer any alternative. We also know that it works. Maybe not every time, but, a lot of the time.

 

[MillieDynamite]

The delay isn't a bottleneck; it's a full-blown glitch in the system. This can be very frustrating. Let's not delve into any speculation about the site owners. I'm certain they're working to improve it.

 

[BeechLeaf]

Obviously there's some huge systemic problem. If it was easy to fix, they would have fixed it. So if you send a message saying 'my story is stuck in pending', their internal response is something like "yeah, you and 2347 others". It's just too time-consuming for them to respond to all these, saying, 'We know, but there's nothing we can do.' Laurel just can't engage with everyone with a problem. It's not because she doesn't want to, or she doesn't care, it's because the problem is too big. That seems obvious.

But yes, Laurel is still there, still invested in the site. She does fix things, she does reply sometimes. I've had positive experiences with her. A problem lots of people have is not a problem that's easily fixed. But other things, sometimes they can be addressed quickly.

 

[MikePaulWrites]

Send a message to @Laurel.

Thank you. I sent a message. I'm hopeful but not optimistic about a reply.

 

[MonaRivers]

It has now been resolved.