There is nothing more thrilling than to receive good reviews on a story. A writer is never happier than when one hears that other people enjoyed their work.
Tuesday I printed out my ten page short-story “Who Stole Annie’s Rocks?” and sent it home with Dylan for him to read. It was based after a church get-together we all had at his house, and he was one of the main characters in the story. He promised to tell me what he thought the next time we saw each other.
Well. He filled me in on his thoughts after service on Sunday. That writer in me cringed than glowed when he walked up to me and stated:
“You know your story you gave me?”
“Yeah?”
He broke into this huge grin. “I loved it!”
You might just think this is silly stuff, but there’s not a happier feeling than knowing that your written word isn’t junk.
He went on to tell me that he read it about three times and loved it each time. He said outside of a couple grammar errors, I’d done very well with spelling and everything else. He’d read it once to himself and than read it twice out loud to Daryck (Daryck said he read it to himself, too). He’d enjoyed how I described Luke and his trouble-making and he kept thinking, “Hey, that actually happened!” and “That is so true!”. After telling me just about everything he had on his mind, he told me he expected the sequel by next Sunday! LOL. He was joking of course, but I told him I’d try to have it finished by then.
It’s great having happy readers. 
Today, I’m being the voice of those who share their work: I wanted to encourage anyone reading this to always give feedback to others. You really enjoyed their blog post, it made you smile or laugh. Tell them! You liked reading someone’s movie review or fanfiction… well, tell them! Maybe they just shared a link with you but you loved it! Tell them!
You don’t have to be a writer of stories and books to enjoy hearing from your happy readers–if you blog, than you know this is true. I want to encourage you to be sure to always share you appreciate and love with the people who took the time to share theirs first; be it a blog post, a email or even a short story, like me. It means the world to people who put words down on paper to hear from happy readers that they were able to brighten someone’s day. And if you don’t tell them, how will they ever know?
Here’s a thank you to all my frequent commentators; it makes my day to hear from you! I hope I’m able to respond to you just as much!
Oh, and that story? I’ll be publishing it up here within the next week! But right now, I have the sequel to write. I’ve got two boys chomping on the bit to read it!
~Jamie
