You have spent days, nights and inordinate amounts of coffee working on your first fanfic. You have spent hours reading the ridiculously long manual on how to format and submit it properly. You have clicked the 'Submit' buttons with fingers trembling with anticipation and been running to your inbox ten times a day ever since.

Only to find an e-mail saying 'Your submission to the DungeonLight Archives was not approved at this time'.

Sadly, we all get turned down at some point in our lives. But believe us when we say that unlike real world publishing houses, we do our best to explain why your work was rejected.

What to do (in this recommended order):
- restrain your first instinctive impulse to throw your computer out the window;
- read the rejection letter carefully;
- restrain the reawakened impulse to go violent on your computer (it's not its fault, remember!);
- read the rejection letter again;
- try to understand what you can change in your story in order to have it approved at your second go;
- optional, but recommended: seek friendly advice and/or find a beta reader. For this purpose, our forums are always available;
- once you've made the changes, resubmit the story.

What NOT to do (in no particular order):
- despair;
- toss the story on the shelf and decide never to touch a pen again;
- resubmit the story without making any changes hoping to 'get lucky this time';
- badmouth moderators to their faces (may make future validation difficult. Feel free to do it behind their backs, though. We all did it in our own time.).

If you've been turned down multiple times or are confused about something, feel free to ask your question in the Ask a Moderator thread or by personal message to the respective mod. Remember – we are here not to crush your dreams, but to help you write high-quality fanfiction.