Also, it takes time for a GE to edit a story, and, speaking from my own experience, my GE's critique definitely improved my stories. (hi, Jeanne:) ) So that a story is not yet on the archive doesn't mean it won't be there.
Stories out being GE'd don't really figure in the mix because they have been submitted to the Archive. It's the stories which haven't been that I'm focusing on. As EIC of the Archive, I'm aware of which stories have been submitted but not yet uploaded because they are still in the system and so these have already been factored into the count of submitted stories and can be ignored.
Nor do I think the quiet year the Archive has had this year has anything to do with authors editing and tweaking their stories before submitting them. Authors have always done this. They did it in 2004. They did it in 2003. And it had no impact on the number of submissions we received across the year in 2003 and 2004. It's only been this year that we've been so quiet. So the fact that authors tweaking isn't a new phenomenum would tend to make me think this isn't part of the problem.
and that we, as a group, must respect the decision of a writer to delay or hold back a story. For us, as a group, to interfer with that private decision, seems, to me, a tad... well... disrespectful.
Just so that it's clear, I'm not at all advocating
telling authors they have to submit their story to the Archive. It seems such an obvious truth to me that this is entirely the decision of an author.
LabRat
