I've had several members asking me lately (mostly over PM & email), why their chapter has been waiting in the queue for so long, often over 10 days.

"Bizarre," I thought. "I was in the queue last night and the wait-time wasn't anywhere near that long."

So I grabbed a cup of coffee and off I went to investigate. And I discovered two things:

1) They did, indeed, submit the story at least 10 days ago.
2) But they have edited the chapter since.

Whenever you edit a story that has been submitted to the Queue, the Queue automatically sends it to the bottom of the list. It does this, smart Queue that is it, to prevent people from abusing the system, by submitting 500 words of spam or an incomplete chapter, to secure a place in line, while they finish their story. (We don't like line-jumping. Star Bucky thinks it's quite rude, in fact. It makes him cry and iron his ears.)

What this means is, if you edit a chapter that is currently in waiting, you can effectively double your wait-time before the chapter is validated.

So, let's say you've submitted a chapter and 2 or 3 days later you're itching to edit it, but don't want to lose your place in line. What's a writer to do?

Here's my suggestions:

1) If it's a minor change (ie, typo, fixing grammatical error, adding an authors note), resist the urge. Wait it out. Take up knitting, work on a new story, clean your room, do anything but edit that chapter! Then, once your chapter has been validated, if you go back and edit it, it goes back into the Queue, but into a different line. Edits to pre-existing, validated chapters are fast tracked in the Queue, and usually validated within 1-2 days.

2) If you suddenly realize, "Uhoh, my chapter violates the ToS!!!" please do edit it. Fix that open formatting tag, remove copyright protected material, add that strong violence warning, delete that adult/minor relationship, or whatever else might make your chapter ToS compliant. You'll be saving yourself time, because we'd only reject your chapter anyway.

Not sure whether your chapter violates the ToS? If, after you've read through the rules again, you're still unsure, please ask a member of staff. :)

Happy Writing!