Ooh, the rare shrinking story phenomenon! I have heard of this happening, though I have never witnessed it myself. Does it at least reduce the required writing time, and thus the accompanying panic...?

YOU'D THINK I'D LEARN.

It is the Curse of the Exchange Bears. When the next exchange comes around, we will look back full of hubris and think, "hah, I don't know what the issue was last time, but hey - the deadline is far off, and the minimum word count is tiny. What coulkd possibly go wrong?!"

Good luck with breaking out of your three-step process to exchange mastery!