Considering The Situation VI
The Fallout Effects Of Losing The Ability To Publish New Stories On Vocal
Introduction
This is a further public service announcement about the situation since I was unable to publish on the 23rd of November 2025. I am publishing this using a recycled Vocal Story and will explain more below.
The music is UB40's take on Bob Marley's "Keep On Movin'", which is appropriate to how I feel on Vocal (take a listen to the lyrics).
Where I Am At 28/12/25
As recompense, Vocal has given me a year's gratis V+ membership, which I am, of course, thankful for.
However, I am still unable to publish a brand new Vocal story, so I have to find previous ones to reuse. I am trying to identify ones which have few reads, hearts and comments, and can do this with my Stats. Below is an example with three that I feel I can reuse:
Now comes the problem. The only way you can revert a story to draft is from your Stories list. Please let me know if I am missing something.
Most creators don't have 350 pages of stories to go through, but there is no search facility, so to find a story to revert to draft is a gombination in dropping into the rough time area and then page through and hope you find the story.
This is also made difficult as the paging repeats some stories, overwriting others, so you may not even see the story you are looking for. It is the same as in the Stats report, illustrated in the story below:
Now, here is the next issue. All challenge entries must be unpublished:
Because I am recycling old story shells, they will probably be considered as "published" and therefore not eligible for any challenge. I think this is probably built into the system to stop people from entering old stories, and I doubt Vocal will have the ability to allow my stories through, although if they based it on the last publication date the could do, but then Creators could do the same with any old story.
I don't know if that is affecting why I have had no Top Story for over two months, but we shall see how things go.
Conclusion
My reads are slowly rising,
So that is good.
Thank you for reading and for your support. I am just waiting for Vocal to implement their next upgrade and hopefully I can get back to normal on here.
About the Creator
Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred
A Weaver of Tales and Poetry
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Comments (8)
We just gotta do what we gotta do to enjoy this craft of writing. Good job.
Mike, I commented on the “must not be previously published” in another reply to a different story. I thought the same. Didn’t enter old story. Someone won with 2 yr old story. I asked about it and explained it in my other reply. Although it isn’t clear. I say enter them and let the disqualify it - same advice I would give to applicants for a job apply give your best application and let them disqualify. You don’t disqualify yourself. ❓❓. IDK.
I wish you all the best, Mike. It must be incredibly frustrating. I found the search function on Vocal to be a real pain, so I now double up. I have an Excel spreadsheet in which I record every story I write, which community it was written in and a copy of the URL. That way, if I need a story, I can find it by doing a search for the title in Excel. Cumbersome and somewhat effective. I do not have anywhere near the number of students you have though.
Let's hope things will stabilize henceforth! I'm sure it will be sorted properly soon. Hang in there, Mike.
Hope this difficult situation finally unravels itself and you cna go back to a normal situation,
It's a very strange state of affairs considering that things have to be reverted to draft. Have they given you any info as to why you have to do this?
Hope you get it sorted out. I noticed that they had changed the rules of the challenges. They used to encourage entries of previously written pieces that matched the description. In some ways it is good- if they are getting too many entries, the platform must be doing ok. Also it seems like the number of bot attacks and fake accounts have lessened. Anyway, hope you have backed up all your stories, you are making me realize I need to do that again.
Omgggg, it must be so difficult for you to find that piece you saw in Stats in your Stories list! You are so dedicated Mike