Forging Ahead

Rejection.

How much can one person handle?

When does it start to seep into the fabric of your being?

How does it become a catalyst for growth and ambition?

No one likes to be told no.  But it's a necessary experience to build a thick skin.  It just is.  Yet sometimes making lemons out of lemonade gets old.

I got another rejection email tonight from something that I really felt I did a great job at.  I'm not any sort of finalist or semi-finalist.  So I didn't technically "get close."  But I've had a few experiences where I didn't make it to that semi-finalist stage and had an artistic director or a decision maker reach out to me and say that many discussions were had regarding my material and I "almost got there."

Yet I'm not sad.  I'm disappointed because I would have liked to have gone further.  I feel like one of those Project Runway contestants who was sent home for a design that they believed in.  And they always say, that they would rather go home for a design that represented them than one that felt like a compromise.  I'm in that category with this rejection.  I wrote a pilot I am proud of.  I wrote a treatment for that pilot that I am extremely proud of as well.  I know how to make something sound great.  Maybe they didn't see it in the pilot I submitted.  Maybe I wasn't what they were looking for.

A friend came by the office today to write with me.  We were talking about teaching jobs.  He said to me that he came close to a job recently and didn't get it, but knew that he was a finalist for the job because he was what they were looking for.  So I don't know if I was what these folks were looking for.  But I know that this script has made me a better writer.  It has expanded my skill set.  And the script proves that I can think visually.  The story is one of a person going through an existential crisis.  For some people, that might not be the most exciting subject.  But I know that the script was crafted beautifully and that it takes place in a world that is interesting.  It asks interesting questions.  Those are the types of scripts I'm interested in writing.

That's why the "rejection" doesn't cut deep.  It doesn't make me feel like I have failed as a person or as a writer.  It just feels like I didn't get something that would have been great to get and that everybody wants.  And it would have felt great to get something that everybody wants.

But the daily work continues.  I wrote 31 pages of a new screenplay.  I finished Act One in four days technically.  But I wrote 9 pages on Tuesday and 22 pages today.  So I actually wrote that Act One in two days.  But day one was a false start.  And yesterday, I watched a bunch of movies that I reference in the script stylistically.  The work is there.  And I am in love with this world and the process of it.  It's also a screenplay, which is something I have not attempted in years and years.  That rejection email does not rob me of the success and accomplishment I have felt all day.

I am realizing more and more that if the daily work is not happening, if I do not have something to look forward to tomorrow, then the rejection will cut deeper.  If I don't feel productive, then I will feel like I have to pick up my dead weight and keep going.  But I have momentum and that won't stop for a rejection.  

In moments like these, I have to remind myself of the following:

• I wrote and rewrote a pilot this year.
• I wrote and rewrote a play that I will go back to rewriting next month.
• I wrote and rewrote a spec.
• I know what I'm writing next.
• I have a play I'm researching and putting together.
• I have nine ideas for the next pilot.  
• I have narrowed down those nine ideas to three that I feel work.
• One of those ideas I will work on in October to write the next pilot (and treatment and outline and story bible).
• I'm writing a fucking screenplay.  That's big for me.

I keep going.  I don't let things stop me.  I "play hurt."  In The War of Art and Turning Pro, Steven Pressfield talks about playing hurt.  We all have this idea that we will fix ourselves and be complete people first, then we will let that awareness inform our work.  But sometimes, most often, it is in the broken pieces that the lesson is found.  I am not a whole person, but I keep doing my work.  Partially to find that path to becoming whole.  Sometimes to explore the playground of the broken.  But always to learn things about myself.

I am writing this screenplay and in the past I would have made all of these characters' stories complete.  I would have found the wholeness in the characters before I started rather than letting their journeys be a lesson.  All of these characters are flawed in some ways, even my hero is flawed.  It's such a deeper, purer landscape.  I forge ahead even though I am playing hurt.  It's what I have to do.

I am grateful for my writing practice.

I am grateful that I have something to work on tomorrow.

I am grateful for my productivity.

I am grateful that ideas are flowing through me.

I am grateful for my mediation practice.