The impossible dream…
Numb on the couch.
I just sent my first query.
I sent it to an agent that only accepts once a month – at an agency that has expressed that the genre I’m submitting for is over-saturated and looks grim. But I was compelled to take an impossible chance.
So much on the internet, so many vlogs, try to encourage or warn writers that their rejections must be taken in stride. Stories from Stephen King to J.K. Rowling boast of astranomical numbers of rejections.
I have a good deal of experience in that area. When I was a young actor, rejection was devastating. But it’s part of the business. As an unknown actor in Chicago, I kept a book of auditions I went on. Fifty before a single call-back! But then the little stars beside those call-backs began to speckle the pages. Before long a constellation of mini-sucesses. If only once step closer. Finally, the jobs came much more regularly with companies and directors I had networked with.
The old book makes me happy; proud of the persistence that led to a grateful, varied career in theatre.
But I was much younger then.
I’m curious if this new field will feel similar, now that I’m older. Of course there’s hope when you send in a query – the feeling that yours is somehow special. And when rejections come, I think I’ll be ready. The little flame of hope will remain stronger than ever.
But I don’t know. It may falter at that puff of rejection.
So, an experiment. Hope through what seems unlikely sucess. The most impossible, impossible, foolish hope. Funny enough, that’s exactly the story I submitted – enduring faith against what are sure to be impossible odds.