About Mutual Interests (For real) · 10:55pm Dec 19th, 2014
Alright, two things today. First thing: I got a message from The Royal Guard group saying that my story had been declined entrance. This shocked me for three reasons. One, I had just woken up and seeing a message that my story sucked wasn't how I thought my day would start. Two, I don't remember ever submitting Mutual Interests for anything. I haven't even sent it to EQD yet. And three, I don't even know what the royal guard group is, as I am not a part of it. (I checked, I'm not) So, I'm sitting here scratching my head wondering what this was about.
By the way if you think I'm upset, I'm not. I'm just curious on who sent my story in. 
Anyway, and this is the important bit, one part of their review was a complaint about the description. To date, including theirs, I've received about 5 separate opinions that suggest I change the description of the story. Honestly, I thought so too at first, but I shrugged it off, figuring that if the general plot of the story stayed unchanged, everything would be fine. That was around chapter 5 and I had only written 6k words. Ahh those were the days. But as someone pointed out, I'm now at 10 chapters and 26k words, and only now starting to hit the story the description suggests... I kinda see their point now. Oh well, learning experience. Anyway, I've decided to change the description after all. Hopefully, this represents the story better. I also may, or may not change the cover art.
After what happened at the Fall Formal, Rarity comes to see that Sunset Shimmer's become little more than a recluse, a mere shell of her former self. It doesn't help that no one in the school is even willing to talk to her. Rarity sees this as inexcusable. So, honoring their promise to Twilight, she convinces the girls to try their hardest to get Sunset out of her shell by having the girl take part in their activities.
But will a simple shared interest be enough able to open up Sunset's rapidly closing heart?
Expect about two updates soon... ish. 
Thanks for reading.
Hi there. A little birdie told me that something was amiss.
Unfortunately, verification isn't as simple as 2664888 implies. Over the course of the past year, the Royal Guard has received hundreds of submissions. While we put the rule (about only submitting your own stories) front and center, we don't currently have a feasible method to enforce it on that sort of scale. Besides, there's no harm—aside from our time potentially being wasted—if someone other than an author submits a story to us.
I apologize for the unsolicited critique, but I hope you got something useful from it. Our standards are generally comparable to those of Equestria Daily, so the feedback you received should be helpful in getting it posted over there, if that's your intention.
As an aside, it's worth noting that one does not need to be a member of the group to submit stories. We accept any stories published on this site, and approved stories are posted in site blogs that are viewed by thousands of users. Should you decide it's worth your time to revise and resubmit the story, we'd be more than happy to look at it again.
2664965 Oh no, of course the review was beneficial. It told me where I was weak at and finally convinced me to make this change. Plus, I had a feeling that commas were where I was weakest at. I'll go back over the story and try my best to fix those issues. Thank you for the critique.