#WordWeavers Mar. 5 – What's the most supportive/uplifting thing you’ve heard related to writing?

For my writing there's been so much over the years it's hard to choose, from a fourth-grade teacher telling the class my writing is quiet yet pierces deep—yeah, imagine hearing that in public as an 11-year-old—to being told mine was the editors' favorite submission for a mag issue and repeatedly being thanked for it 😳 Oh, and being nominated for a Pushcart, which was incredibly nice of them.

Someone with a very high level of training and a real career in writing once told me I was the smartest writer they had come across in years; I heard that professors I never knew talked for years afterward about an essay on Les Misérables that I submitted to a student contest (I bought Christmas presents with the prize money); I've heard from readers who read and reread my fanfics, four times in one case. People have been incredibly supportive over the years of my uneven and unconventional writing journey—I didn't study literature past high school! I wrote fanfic!—and I always try to pay that forward.

Special mention, however, goes to the reviewer who threatened to come after me if I killed off all my characters. (I had killed one named character by that point. One. Game of Thrones I am not.) Praise and accolades are treasured forever; threats say it all for emotional engagement.