I ran Toad's Tongue through Grammarly which caught many of the things that the Lush moderators would have chastised me for. I'd recommend you split the story into either two or three pieces. I made it two 5K chunks because there was a scene break conveniently near that point. There are some Lush rules for stories (paragraphing, dialogue, etcetera) - I can never remember where they are so I scraped them and saved a document on my hard drive so I can check.

Evo, if you're still looking, my workload has finally dropped to the point where i can be active here again.

Are you looking for another set of eyes currently?

Thank you for the clarification - and Happy New Year!

Thanks to all. I'm partitioning into a Part 1 and Part 2, which means there will be a time gap between the parts showing up. Lush isn't approving stories again until after January 3 so the moderators will have to work through a backed-up queue before Part 1 shows up and probably still a busy queue before I can submit and they can review Part 2.

My next story is coming in at 10,000 words. Story action takes place over a couple of weeks. Logically it's 12 segments varying between 800 and 1200 words; I can group those reasonably into four chapters of roughly 2500 words each.

What is the preference of Lush management? What would be the preference of most readers?

I actually must correct myself. I decided to try grammarly on a 10,000-word story that I've been writing. When I went to create an account on the website, it turns out that I already had one - from five years ago when I wrote the first few paragraphs of this story. I'd completely forgotten about that. And from all the things Grammarly flagged this time through, I obviously didn't learn much from it.

Set the story aside, work on something else for a while. Or, if you're writing in a linear mode, try jumping ahead to a future action or scene that you have in mind, and see if that draws the earlier characters into the right direction. I currently have a 5000-word draft that needs some sex punched up and has two draggy middle sections, which I can't get myself reconnected with enough to deal with those. I also have a 3400-word where I tried to do too many things (age-difference seduction, mind control for starters) and while I know roughly what parts to rip out, I can't get myself to do it yet. Then I've got a 3800 word draft which is solid for about 2800 words then breaks into concepts and mini-scenes that I haven't been able to flesh into a flow.

So I went to my slush pile - a file of about 50 items ranging from six-line ideas to thousand word chunks. And as luck would have it, a story plotted loosely to have eight sections that I hit a wall after the third (five years ago I hit that wall), triggered something in my head and I got a few lines then a few more good writing rush and within a month got all the way to a proper end. So you never really know what draft or fragment may flip a switch and turn on the words.

Back in the day, there was "Ruthie's Club", and after that the Fish Tank. You joined up, then you critiqued drafts already posted by others, then you qualified to put up your own draft and get feedback. It was a great place, but Desdmona eventually shut down the website maybe ten years ago. I don't know of a similar place since then.

Quote by kiteares

I would also recommend using Grammarly, but use the import/export function (rather than copy and paste) to retain the formatting.

I just used the Grammarly website for the first time; I copied and pasted out of it back into Word and didn't lose the line spaces between paragraphs or the 5-character first line indents. But I didn't see the import and export functions, so I'll have to look for those the next time I try Grammarly.

Well, I'm waiting on a current story to be reviewed so I can submit this: I just recently completed a story a little over 10,000 words. It's the longest story I've ever written. I started it in 2020 so it's taken me a bit under 5 years to write. But there's an asterisk on that - I've been in something of a writing blockage since the start of 2021, and it only recently cracked open enough for this story to get completed. So we'll see if it gets through the review process.

My first writing name was "Major Havoc". But I decided after two stories that it was too juvenile a name, so I switched to Rajah Dodger and I've used that ever since. I think when I started writing I initially used whatever my CB radio handle was at the time, but I was concerned about overlap with that usage effectively outing me as a smut writer. So that's why I started officially with Major Havoc then switched to Rajah Dodger.

My last approved story was in July 2024 and there are two later submissions that are flagged with "you already have submitted a story". Is there a way to see which story is causing the backlog?

I'm not sure that I have a favorite or preferred length when reading. That said, I do hold off reading something labeled as first chapter if there are standalone stories with an equally grabbing title or summary.

I finally found it. I don't have the three-line "hamburger" menu, but the stories/activity thing is under the big banner.

I tried to upload a screen shot, there's no preview available so I'll see if it shows when I submit this.

Quote by MollyDoll

Hello. Go to LushStories in the upper right-hand corner. There you will see Stories and Activity. Click Activity. Once there you will see Post a status...

Hope this helps!

Huh. I don't have an "Activity" option.

What I see are:

Profile

Stories

Media

Friends

Interactions

Reading Queue

Favorite Stories

Matches

Get Verified

Report Bug

Settings

Logout

Maybe the "Activity" is only offered to paying members. Thanks for showing me where to look.

How do I update my status? It looks kind of like a "latest personal comment".

Here's the deal. If the UFO/UAP/whatever things are physical and real, then we're totally screwed. Congresscritters can wail about national security implications but we can't defend ourselves against something that (a) we can't come anywhere near replicating, and (b) breaks our understanding of the laws of physics.

So basically, this is all sideshow. The government can have rotting alien biologic material all they want, it won't tell them anything meaningful. Their best bet would bring in a few hard science-fiction writers. The only thing I agree with is not flooding the media with details of all the unclassifiable stuff they've got.