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Once at a historical reenactment-type gathering, a rather rough-looking Mountain Man character challenged me with, "You haven't quit writing, have you?" "Why...no." "Good, because if you do someone ought to hit you between the eyes with something!" It remains the best compliment to my writing. What has been the best compliment to yours?
Posts: 283 | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Woah, wow! Your writing is so much better this version!
Possibly that one, the most recent anyway. I rewrote or am in the process of rewriting a story that I began last year. Now I started it again and decided to post it on the same site as I always go to, not here, and posted it. I was glad for the comeback.
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"You have talent." Scrawled on a rejection slip from a currently-defunct magazine, by a writer whose work I'd actually read and liked. Of course there was more to it, like why the story was [deservedly] rejected...
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Not really a direct compliment, but in 8th grade I wrote a short story for my English class. My teacher thought it was so good that he read it to all of his English classes.
Afterwards, I had several people come up to me and tell me that they thought it was an excellent story and that I should expand on in it and make it into a novel. I did exactly that and several years later now, I have it finished and it is currently undergoing revision in the hopes that one day someone willl want to publish it.
Basically, the compliments I received on that story--from my teacher as well as from my classmates--are the reason that I write at all. It wasn't until then that I realized that I could write and that I actually enjoyed it. Before that, the thought of being a writer one day never even crossed my mind.
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Best compliment? The best one came from a managing editor. He called me into his office and handed me a nice check for what I had written. He said, "Listen when you've written something again or you have an idea, come and see me personally. Don't bother with the assistants." That did wonders for my motivation and confidence.
Posts: 409 | Registered: Feb 2006
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"Not really a direct compliment, but in 8th grade I wrote a short story for my English class. My teacher thought it was so good that he read it to all of his English classes.
Afterwards, I had several people come up to me and tell me that they thought it was an excellent story and that I should expand on in it and make it into a novel. I did exactly that and several years later now, I have it finished and it is currently undergoing revision in the hopes that one day someone willl want to publish it. "
Wow, you were in eighth grade just a few years ago and have a novel near ready for publication? I am humbled. I wrote a lot in junior high (a LONG time ago!) and some of my stories were read to complimentary responses, but didn't publish a novel till much later and even that was desktop publishing.
Larry Niven did say back when I was in high school that I wrote a damn good letter.
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At boot camp, OSC said my story had "Fictional anthropology at its best."
Unfortunately, it needed a working plot.
But the best writing compliment I've heard was what he said about Dakota's story. "This is the hardest kind of story to critique, because it works," and then he continued to sing her praises.
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Well, this one was from my dad, and we all know how biased they are, but it still made my ego swell a bit lol. I asked him to read what i had of my novel (he reads a LOT of sci/fi-fantasy) and after reading it he said "you better finish this, cuz i want to know what happens!!" Posts: 7 | Registered: Apr 2006
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My brother read the first part of a novel I'm working on, and has not stopped bugging me for more since.
Posts: 136 | Registered: Mar 2006
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I've received a few compliments that vie for best.
The one that makes me chuckle when I think about it is, "You seem like a real writer" (from a non-Hatrack forum). I like the way it's phrased and have always taken it as the compliment s/he intended it to be.
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Not really the best, but one "compliment" I will always remember is from my third grade teacher. She told us to write about something for homework, so I wrote it and turned it in the next day. When she gave it back, there was a minus 0 on the paper. She told me, "I know how third graders write and I know how older people write. A third grader did not write this."
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I've been told by various people at different times that I write well. I decided the chance they were all blowing smoke was unlikely.
Posts: 160 | Registered: Feb 2006
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quote:Wow, you were in eighth grade just a few years ago and have a novel near ready for publication? I am humbled.
Thanks! Now I can add that to my compliments.
I've sent the first few chapters into some editors, and it's been rejected so far, but their rejections have always said something along the lines of "While we cannot publish your work, we encourage you to keep submitting it to other publishers." (Is this a compliment or just a nice way of saying, "Your writing is terrible and there is no way we would ever publish it"? I am still not sure...)
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Plus, you know something I don't. How to quote a post to which you are replying. You notice I had to just put the excerpt from yours in quotes because I couldn't figure out how to do it the proper way.
Posts: 283 | Registered: Feb 2006
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My best compliment I believe was(to the best of my recollection) that I have a wonderful way of painting a picture in the mind's eye. Of course, this was followed by, we really don't need to see that much. Posts: 341 | Registered: Jan 2006
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Perhaps the most impressive complement I’ve ever gotten in relation to my writing was from a professional play write, who said my story was refreshing and had great rhythm. Later he asked me to lend him a copy of the story to give a friend of his who works for a children’s’ book publisher. I was on cloud nine. Still no word from either of them but I’m just happy to have gotten such praise. Quizz
Posts: 14 | Registered: May 2005
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I've been fortunate enough to get several quite nice compliments over the years.
My 9th grade English teacher told me my poetry was reminiscent of Sir Walter Scott. My 11th grade English teacher held up a paper I wrote in front of the class and told everyone that I could write better than he could. (Of course, that was also a negative. I had people write in my yearbook that they hated me because of English class.)
And for some strange reason, OSC is very generous with his compliments to me.
Of course, it's really really hard to remember these things when gettting harsh (deservedly so, alas) critiques on everthing I've written lately.
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ACTUALLY, the best two compliments I've ever received on my writing (with all due respect to OSC) were from my eighth grade English teacher who was not forthcoming with compliments. Just having him tell me I wrote well, in fact just having SOMEONE tell my I wrote well at that point in my mental and emotional development, changed my life.
The most touching and powerful compliment I've ever had, however, was looking over to see a very dear friend of mine *Winks at Mary* weeping while reading my story.
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OSC himself gave me this one at boot camp regarding my 'one-page' submission. I don't remember the exact words, but the gist of it was:
"This opening should have been terrible. You did everything wrong. But it actually works, and the ONLY reason is because you write action scenes really well."
The rest of my stay at boot camp, I demonstrated quite definitively my numerous literary shortcomings. Not only did my story AND my submission get thoroughly ripped apart, (although there were positive comments from everybody, too.) but almost every time I made a comment, OSC would take his turn at the end, and by the time he was done, nearly point for point he'd have contradicted most of my comments. Though the comments weren't directed at me, being that wrong (for lack of a better word) was actually harder to take than having my story ripped apart.
So . . . after 3 days of "constructive criticism", (translation -> delightful, incredible, excruciating, painful torture) my spirits by that time THOROUGHLY in the toilet, I got this comment.
It pretty much made my week.
-Falken224 (posing as Corin)
(edited for spelling and incomprehensibility)
[This message has been edited by Corin224 (edited April 12, 2006).]
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some deluded person once said, after reading a poem of mine, that he would pay to hear me just free-associate
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That's like the thing where you wish to see what would happen to the Genie for not granting your wish, right? I mean, if you're being paid, then how is it "free" association Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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In the 9th grade, people paid attention when my story was read aloud. (Does that count?)
And in the 12th, my screenplay was one of two chosen from more than 30 to turn into a children's play. That one (and actually seeing the play) still make me smile.
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Best compliment: when I read my story out loud to my English class and everybody laughed at the right moments. Hope they weren't laughing at me. Posts: 329 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Well, when they're laughing, they're always laughing at you. But if you're laughing at yourself, they're also laughing with you.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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Ok- here's a favorite compliment (not best, but favorite). I let someone read a story of mine and they looked up in shock- "You wrote this? But this is actually worth reading." It's great cause it's as much a burn as a compliment.
Posts: 303 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Best compliments for me were a full hand-written note from an editor apologizing that sometimes he had to reject articles he truly liked, followed by a phone call from him repeating it when an editor he had steered me to had also liked the article but couldn't use it and sent it to the first editor thinking he could use it. <eyes going round in circles>
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earlier today i had a meeting with my professor on a paper i had wrote analyzing The Bell Jar, and he said that i was surprisingly thorough, to the point where he was tempted to check to see if i copied and pasted it from somewhere. He then went on to say it was one of the best papers he has read from a freshman this year.
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From my graduate advisor on my first conference paper: "It usually takes someone four or five conference papers before they write this well."
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I gather that she was either speechless in delight, or horrified beyond words. Not that it matters...'tis still my favorite.
Alternately:
"You wrote that?"
Inkwell ------------------ "The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp." -Anonymous
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When a woman I let take my book home from the office called me on the phone the next day and said, "I was going to email you, but if anybody else saw it they might think it was strange if I said you kept me up all night."
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A member of my writing group, who I admire greatly, read one of my poems and said, "I wish I had written that." My toes are still "happy in my shoes." (Are there any Dr. Suess fans in the room?)
Posts: 247 | Registered: Apr 2006
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"Not my style, but I'd pay to read the rest." Elmore Leonard at a writing conference in California.
Posts: 331 | Registered: Jan 2005
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I rewrote or am in the process of rewriting a story that I began last year. Now I started it again and decided to post it on the same site as I always go to, not here, and posted it. I was glad for the comeback. 
