Simon Whaley’s Business of Writing: November 2024—Keeping the Compliments

Welcome to my November 2024 newsletter.

As I write this, we’ve gone from having four inches of snow to local towns, villages, and roads being flooded as Storm Bert came through, thanks to the excessive rain and sharp increase in air temperatures. Who knows which season we’ll be in by the time this newsletter lands in your inbox!

Snowy Shropshire! © Simon Whaley

Thankfully, the weather wasn’t too bad a couple of weeks ago when I had a weekend writing retreat with 18 of my writer friends. It was dry enough that we didn’t get wet when going out for our ‘thinking’ walks, yet grey and gloomy enough to keep us indoors writing for most of the time. Once again, we failed to solve who the murderer was during our Saturday evening Murder Mystery meal. 🤣

Cars abandoned for a weekend writing retreat © Simon Whaley

It was while on retreat that I was chatting with one of our newest retreaters about rejections while we were waiting for the kettle to boil.

“Do you keep a compliments journal?” I asked.

“A what?”

“A compliments journal.”

She shook her head. “I have megabytes of rejection emails, though,” she giggled.

“That’s why I keep a compliments journal,” I replied, slipping my phone from my pocket. “We always remember the rejections. Rarely do we remember the positives. So I take positive steps to capture and retain any compliments,” I explained.

My thumb swiped across my phone screen to where I keep my journals, and I selected my Compliment Journal. I don’t add to this every day. But whenever someone sends me a nice email about my writing, or I see someone commenting about my work on social media, I keep a record of it.

Where I keep my Compliments © Simon Whaley

And on those days when my writing isn’t going well, or I’m deluged with rejections, I make a point of taking five minutes to go through my compliments journal. I find it a great way of putting things into perspective.

Here’s one from a magazine editor, nearly ten years ago:

Hi Simon,
I have to say, after all the faff we've had with this slot—it's been hard work sometimes getting people just to answer us—it was a total breath of fresh air to read the one you've sent in. Perfect, just as it is. Utterly delighted.

And here’s another one:

Hi Simon,

Thanks for your piece on Onny Meadows. It’s exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for. Lovely images too!

There’s one email I had from an editor that stood out for me. Not because of what it said, but because the editor did not have to go to the time and trouble to say it, yet they did.

Hi Simon,

I’m aware you haven’t had a commission recently, despite pitching several ideas over the past few months. I just wanted to let you know that this is nothing to do with the quality of your pitches, but rather an unlucky blend of duplicating locations that are due to feature elsewhere in the issue, recent issues or future issues, which you could not possibly foresee.

Your ideas are always great (as are your images), so I hope you continue to send them in.

It’s not just emails I keep, but anything with a positive vibe to it. Some of you may recall that I occasionally write pieces for The Writing Cooperative on the Medium platform. Well, I was a bit gobsmacked when the editor tweeted about the best articles in one month’s edition and tagged me in it. I screenshotted that one and added it to the journal!

Compliment screenshotted from X

So if you don’t yet have a Compliments Journal, consider setting one up. I found that simply having one in the first place encourages me to think I’ll save that to my Compliments Journal whenever I come across anything nice.

You only keep your writing business going by being motivated to continue writing. That becomes challenging on those days when things don’t go according to plan. And every writer has days like that. Whenever we see a successful writer proudly sharing a success on social media, it’s easy to think that this success has come easily to them. Yet, we know nothing of the rejections they’ve been through to get there.

By keeping them all in one place, it’s so simple to scroll through and remind myself that there are good days to this writing business malarky.

Bluesky thinking

Call me a lemming, but where others have gone, I seem to have followed. Many writer-friends have ditched X (Twitter) and switched to Bluesky instead. I have recently created an account of Bluesky too, so if you’re on there and want to follow, then you can find me at @simonwhaley.bsky.social.

I’m on Bluesky!

I quite like the more positive vibe on there at the moment. How long it lasts remains to be seen, but I’m not abandoning X just at the moment. It has made me think about my social media presence. While I’m on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn, and X, I’d much rather be on a couple, rather than everything.

We’re back to the business basics of doing something brilliantly on one or two platforms rather than spreading yourself thin and being on them all.

It reminds me of Anne Lamott’s quote:

”Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”

Anne Lamott—Bird by Bird

Ultimately, this is what social media should be about. Instead of being on every social media platform (like I feel I am at the moment), which is like being a lighthouse running around an island, I should instead focus on one or two platforms. Show up regularly on one platform and people who want to find you will find you.

What are your thoughts on this? And is anyone else dipping their toe into the Bluesky pond?

ALCS

This is just a brief reminder for those of you based in the UK, that the deadline for registering your articles with the ALCS is only two days away: 30th November.

For those of you who don’t know, the ALCS (Authors Licensing and Collecting Society—www.alcs.co.uk) is an organisation that collects money for secondary rights, such as photocopying. So if you’ve had an article published, it is available for photocopying, so you are entitled to a share of that money. For a more detailed guide about ALCS, what you can register, and how to join, see my article on Medium here (as a newsletter subscriber, this link gets you behind Medium’s paywall for this article for free).

The key criteria for registering your published articles are:

• Articles must have been written since January 2021

• Articles must be published in a UK magazine or journal

• Publications must have a valid ISSN

Until next month, keeeeeeeeeep writing!

Best wishes,

Simon