Where Do I Go From Here? Please Help.

[APonderingPen1]

How many chapters did you submit, and what's the approximate word count? Once something has been rejected, it generally gets closer scrutiny on subsequent passes, and if it happens to be long and requires close reading, it can take a while. One of my rejections was based on content that was deemed potentially against the rules, and to resolve the issue, I submitted several chapters of my serial at once so Laurel could see where the story went (it was admittedly ambiguous the way the chapters were originally broken up). That was a chunk of about 20k words and it took nearly a month to pass, probably because she didn't have the leisure to deal with it all at once. I can't speak for her, but if you've sent multiple similar messages, it might just be annoying and lowering the incentive to prioritize your case.

Given the original ambiguity of your situation, it might also be the case that they can't verify the completeness of your current submission without paying to match it against what's available elsewhere, which they have no reason to do. If you've posted it in its entirety on any other free sites, you might mention that in a direct message, but my advice would be to wait patiently, assuming the status still says pending. Two or three days is normal, but a week to ten days is not hugely abnormal, depending on various factors, and like I said above, three or four weeks is not out of the question when it comes to unusual situations that require research or a judgement call.

I submitted nine chapters, Bamagan, all totalling approximately 30,000 words.

Concerning the multiple messages, my intent behind them wasn't to rush or harass Laurel, but to ensure that she knew I had resubmitted my stories; my main worry is that, through juggling the massive amounts of work they have ensuring the sites continues to be such a great resource for readers and writers alike, my story might have 'fallen through the cracks' so to speak, and been missed or forgotten.

 

[APonderingPen1]

I do not know what is going on with Laurel lately. My latest story sat in Pending for ten days and each inquiry was ignored. I finally got a message today claiming that she was busy. Ten days is not abnormal for a story edit but not for a new story. the average is about 2 days and the quickest I had was a matter of hours.

Is this place suddenly too big for Laurel to handle? Did the software issues from several weeks ago catch up with her? It must have, she never bothered to tell the readers about the April Fools contest.

I can't even imagine how much Laurel must work to keep this whole, great enterprise running so smoothly; I suspect in cases like ours where our inquiries have gone unanswered is a software fault. However, if such is the case, I can't help but fret and worry at how my search for answers in this forum might seem to Laurel if she's reading this; I dread to think Laurel is doing her best to fix the problem and I'm over here adding to stress and strain.

Laurel, if you are reading this, I apologise if I am causing you any inconvenience. You have my most sincere apologies if I am.

 

[Bamagan]

I submitted nine chapters, Bamagan, all totalling approximately 30,000 words.

Concerning the multiple messages, my intent behind them wasn't to rush or harass Laurel, but to ensure that she knew I had resubmitted my stories; my main worry is that, through juggling the massive amounts of work they have ensuring the sites continues to be such a great resource for readers and writers alike, my story might have 'fallen through the cracks' so to speak, and been missed or forgotten.

My advice is still to be patient, especially if the chapters are still listed as pending. While things do fall through the cracks, I don't think it's especially common, and your case in particular is one that was apparently brought to her attention via complaint, so it's probably even less likely to have simply slipped into a crevice somewhere. To quote a Tolkien character: "The time of my thought is my own to spend." There are many authors and stories competing for her attention (see below), and it's possible that she's adopted the position that responding to people who make repeated inquiries in a short span of time is simply rewarding them for being demanding.

A couple of other points: Laurel does seem to at least occasionally visit the forums and even read and post things from time to time, but decorating your public posts with praise and prayers is a little weird and maybe off-putting, or would be to me if I were in such a position and happened to see it.

Secondly, as you may have noticed and as alluded to above, the site typically posts more than a thousand new stories/chapters/installments each week, by almost that many authors. Even if only one to ten percent of them decide they need to send her a message or special instructions or have questions or concerns about their submissions, that's dozens to maybe a couple hundred correspondences each week. She does not respond individually to all of them, and perhaps not even to many of them (and it's fairly likely a lot of them are basically the same thing/different person week after week). I have never received a response, although I've only sent three or four messages, and all of the concerns were either addressed or rendered moot through her actions, which for me was sufficient. The lack of direct response is highly agitating to certain people, and if you are one of them, that's unfortunate, but that's apparently just the way things are around here. My only advice for that is the same, although I know it's not satisfying: be patient.

Good luck!