What Acting Taught Me About Rejection

I’ve been querying my first novel for a little while now. So far, the response has been good: three requests for manuscripts out of about fifteen queries. Out of those three requests, so far, I’ve got two rejections. One of them just came in today. 

Of course, I had the obligatory freak-out this morning when I saw the email in my inbox from the agency that requested my manuscript. 

“Nope!” I declared over email to Genn and Angel. “Nope, I won’t look at it. Won’t peek! Not til later, with wine in hand and boyfriend massaging my shoulders.”

And then I got over it, and read it. Yep, it was a rejection. The agent did kindly give some feedback, which I massively appreciated. But, of course, I wanted her to love my book. I wanted excitement, thrills, compliments. I wanted a yes. That’s not what I got. Most of the time in life, that’s not what I get.

Rejection and I are on really, really comfortable terms. I’m an actress as well as a writer. Which means there are two whole realms where I have opportunities for rejection on a massive scale. 

When you get rejected as an actor, it’s not about some artistic work that's outside of yourself. It’s about you as a person—how you look, how you behave, how you walk into a room. Acting—especially for things like commercials—is less about playing a constructed character and more about being the most distilled version of yourself that you can be. And you’d better hope the casting people like that version. Especially in the commercial arena, if you’re decent enough at the sheer craft, they reject you because you’re just not enough of the type that they’re looking for. Your “you” is just not what they want.

Which sometimes leads me to wonder whether I'm actually believable as a human being.

This week I did two auditions. I probably won’t get cast in either of them. I’ve had what I felt were fantastic auditions and not gotten so much as a callback. I’ve poured my heart out in rooms where the auditioners were eating lunch and gazing at their iPhones. I’ve been met with a curt “thanks” and no eye contact. I’ve gotten passed over for commercials, voiceovers, plays, indie films…pretty much every kind of acting project there is, I have gotten not cast in it.

But I’ve also gotten cast--kind of a lot, especially in the past year. There’s a “yes” hidden in every big pile of “no’s” I come up against. Which is why it’s so important to just move on. To do an audition, and then immediately start thinking about the next one. 

I like to be a shark. Sharks have to keep swimming, or they can’t breathe and they die. I keep swimming.

Yup...that's me.

I've been handling deeply personal rejection on a more-or-less weekly basis since getting into acting--and if I can cope with that, I can cope with rejection in this area, too. That’s not to say it doesn't hurt, though. I think what's going to get to me the most is the brief flash of hope--you know, the one that goes "OMG MY LIFE COULD CHANGE!!!" just before opening an email. Because a letdown from that hope can be a painful thing, even if it's just momentary. 

But still. When I opened the email, I was ready for a devastating emotional response. Instead, what I felt was this:

Oh. Look at that. Someone's taking a pass on my work. Biiiiig surprise. NEXT.

And then I sent out five more query letters. Because that's what sharks do.