I upload lots of short stories, and some articles, to the Medium website. It’s a big site with loads of publications. The two I use most have several editors to deal with all the many submissions they receive. By now I do recognise most of their names, but it hadn’t occurred to me that my writing might stand out to them. This morning when I logged on I saw a message from one of the editors about my latest submission. I was expecting to be asked to clarify a point or fix a typo, but instead I read this –

One of the highlights of my week as an editor is to publish one of your stories. Keep up the good work! 🙂 Thanks for sharing.

I was beginning to feel a bit daunted about submitting my latest novel to publishers (which I’ll be doing very soon). Although it’s a completely different writing project and will be sent to places with very different requirements, those few words have given me a real boost and motivated me to keep going.