What's New at CC

[Ed]

Hi Writers,

I hope your weekend was great, whether you were celebrating the Fourth of July or simply gearing up for another work week.

Behind the scenes at Constant Content, we've been busy. Here is what's new with CC:

The Review Team
Having a single editor – or even a single editor with one part time assistant – is no longer practical for the volume of articles that are submitted to CC each week. We now have a review team, each member of which I work closely with to ensure that you can expect a quality review.

Rejection Responses
Rejection responses now contain more information. The hope is that sources you are directed to will provide solutions to common writing problems.

Many rejection responses are pulled from the following document:
http://www.constant-content.com/about/e ... elines.htm
This is a good resource to bookmark if you're looking for information on a particular writing-related issue.

We still want to emphasize that each article is reviewed by human eyes. This means that, while we desire to achieve consistency from one review to the next, each editor will look at an article slightly differently. This is a good thing! I hope that all of us can learn from the combined experience of the review team to improve Constant Content overall.

Goals
With these improvements, we hope to be able to realize certain goals:

• Lessened review time
  Improved rejection responses
  Improved overall quality of articles for sale

We want your experience to be a good one. If you have questions or comments about the changes to CC, let us know.

Thanks,
Ed and the Constant Content Review Team

[J. A. Young]

Sounds good Ed. Will you still be reviewing articles along with the new review team?

[Ed]

J.A.,

Yes! I'm still reviewing the majority of the articles. But I can no longer take credit for reviewing all of the articles.

Ed

[jadedragon]

Great moves - this should make for happy writers.

Is your name really Ed or is it short for Editor?

Will we see other members of the review team post in the forum? What user names to watch for giving an official word?

[Ed]

I'm the only editor you will see on the forums.

Thanks,
Ed

[Celeste Stewart]

So glad to hear from you Ed, and super glad to hear that you're getting the support you need to continue your work. This is terrific news!

[Ed]

Thanks, Celeste!

[AmyT]

Very happy with this change! CC continues to expand....

Keep it up and thank you!

Amy

[nichewriter]

As someone who's had a few rejections since Ed's review team came on board, I've learned TONS! I was feeling bummed out after getting two more rejections, but Ed has been/is incredibly encouraging! The rejection notices I've gotten have been so detailed (e.g., telling me which paragraph is problematic, otherwise the rest are okay). I have 7 articles in review that I re-did after getting the initial rejections so I'm on tenterhooks. Not planning on submitting any more articles until I get a yay or a nay on these articles so I can incorporate the advice I get when I write my next ones.

But...thank you, Ed and the review team! I can only improve with the rejections

~Sherry

[dmgray]

I too have received more rejections than normal and I have become slightly more apprehensive about my submissions now. This is not a critism in any shape or form, all the rejections were valid and entirely my own fault for either having a bad week, or proofreading with tired eyes. Sorry to the team for my recent sub-par submissions.

What this has highlighted (to me at least), is that the Ed and his new review honchos are really on the ball and this is great for CC and submitted content. The rejection responses have been excellent and there is now more instruction as to why the article was rejected - this really does help when editing out the mistakes. I have also noticed a real turnaround in review times, a great improvement and I am sure that Ed is relieved to finally have some help.

I am still not enjoying the return of the first-time submission nerves, I thought I had seen the back of those! Like Sherry, I wait with baited breath for acceptance and I am opening my CC emails rather cautiously for the time being. Guess I will have to get my act together and stop submitting content with stupid mistakes. Apologies again to Ed and the review team.

[Ed]

Hi D M,

I'm glad you see the positives behind more thorough reviews!

Have you checked out our tips for self-editing?
http://www.constant-content.com/forum/v ... =4&t=14407

You might try incorporating a couple of the suggestions that you don't currently utilize and see if you catch more errors that way.

Thanks,
Ed

[dmgray]

Ed,

The way I see it, it can only help me to hone my writing skills and improve my grammar. Many of the recent mistakes have been silly spelling errors that I would normally notice. But I know I have a problem with sentence run-ons and comma-splicing, I have been making a real effort to remedy this annoying problem and I do seem to be having less rejections due to this problem.

Occassionally, I sometimes wonder if my regional dialect (or colloquials) are a problem for me. In my head a sentence may seem correct and even after proofreading I may miss it, due to the fact it is the norm for me. This seems to happen with number agreements, for example:

"By filling out the form and submitting their details, a visitor will then be sent...."

I thought that sounded fine and it is how I would state that sentence. Obviously, I now realise that it is incorrect but it still sounds fine to me! But then we Yorkshire-types are known to have a strange grasp of the english language! However, since it was pointed out to me in a rejection, I am aware of my eroneous grammatical inclinations and will be checking for them with more scrutiny in the future.

Thanks for the link, I will be taking the advice onboard. Now all I have to do is train my brain to ignore years of Yorkshire dialect - at least I have not slipped "'appen", "Nowt", "E' sez" and "t'internet" in any articles thus far...