Dear Vocal, I have two requests

Its 1:46 am in Bangalore, India.

I am writing this on my Ipad with my puppy sleeping blissfully on my lap. Staying awake this late to write for Vocal challenges is my current favourite ritual. What about winning you ask? I show up and here for the best participant award (that does not exist).

I just submitted my first of summer fiction series story to Challenge until I noticed a mistake.

I had misspelled my protagonist name and I have used her name in the title too!

It's Anya and I have used Anaya instead of Anya in most places. The horror.

I am upset. I can’t edit it now. That sinking feeling of having written an ambiguous story. Oh, who would bother reading it!

I am sleep deprived, my bed is a mess and to top it all, I have a full time job to log into in another 6 hours but I am not going anywhere.

Not before I place my requests in this space. Please hear me out.

To err is human, so let me edit my submitted drafts

Oh I wish I was perfect as the draft copy I am expected to submit.

It's impossible for a distracted person like me to submit a flawless draft. My heart sinks everytime I spot a school level grammatical error or spelling mistake or a completely irrelevant example. Or like today - I missed my protagonist name. Sorry Anya, you should not visit the barn again unless you change your name to Anaya.

I don't want to place this request by comparing with other platforms (*cough* Medium *cough*) and I a, very happy for the quick edit feature for the published stories.

I love Vocal for the freshness and the amazing communities, challenges etc and it’s my home for finding my niche. I am trying comedy, mental health discussion but I do feel like I am yelling to an empty hallway (dear readers, are you even there!) and see my stats daily to console me.

Adding a quick edit for the draft would be amazing and is necessary for writers. We are flawed beings and as creative souls we our inner critic already having a great time belittling us. We need a chance to perfect our art before it moves to our audience eyes.

Until then I will stay feeling like a college student who realized her answers were wrong the moment she stepped out of the exam hall. THAT HORROR!

Words, Words, Words

Please display my word count in my draft column or when I am about to submit it to a community. Yes please!

My article had to be rejected twice yesterday because I could not hit the 600 word mark.

Oh please, reject it for it‘s dumb content or click bait title but not for a basic feature like word count. Having to write a story with word count is so taxing (I feel like writing an essay with fillers).

What if I enjoy writing a short feature sometimes like I tried yesterday With 600-700 words.

Dear Vocal, you let us experiment, try various genres in the pursuit of finding our voice but this non availability of word count display and rejecting on that grounds does not help. Please bring this feature soon.

My puppy is snoring now and my eyes are closing automatically yet I am copy pasting this whole article into a online word count site just to qualify for publication.

It would be wonderful if you could consider lazy and absent minded writers like us and provide us word count before we submit.

I promise, you would be happy you did!

Final thoughts

“Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone deserves a second chance.” - Mo’ne Davis

Dear Vocal, I am loving my time here. Here are my requests again incase it’s lost in my rant:

1. Feature to edit the submitted drafts

2. Word count display while I am editing the draft or when I am about to submit it to a community

Waiting for your updates on second chances and meanwhile, please forgive my Anaya.

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