Rejection is bitter, but it is in the recipe

My thoughts on rejection, what I wrote this week, and another excerpt from my first novel

I can’t say for certain why I decided, very last minute, to drop a pack of Neutrogena makeup wipes in my bag when I packed for my audition at the Yale School of Drama a decade ago.

A part of me did anticipate the day would end up with my crying on the Northeast Regional and scaring passengers from New Haven to Providence. I also wanted to be prepared for an unexpected eyeliner emergency as I used to wear them thicker those days.

The wipes, they did come in handy unfortunately, and after a lifetime of thinking I’d done everything right to get to that moment, the moment of being an actor “in the real world” with a “real MFA,” the rejection hit me hard. So hard that I booked an appointment with the college psych services for the first time, and all they ever did was to make sure I wouldn’t harm myself. I remember the counselor telling me there was nothing I could do about rejection, no fix. I just had to live through it. (Some resources here, by the way, that I hope will be more helpful.)

I did live through it all, by giving up. Or at least it seemed that way a decade ago. From the outside, I pivoted: I ended up at a prestigious journalism job and I covered stories I cared about and also didn’t. I let myself believe that my earlier dreams were simply a hobby, something I couldn’t live for. But I still kept on writing my own work and began to perform at an Off-off Broadway theatre. Deep down, I hoped I was wrong.

No matter what you do these days, you’ll face rejection one way or another.

You will go on terrible terrible dates, and still feel rejected when the other person texts you this is just not the right fit.

You will apply to jobs that don’t get back to you or tell you after you’ve even forgotten about them that this is just not the right fit.

You will submit stories to places that tell you this is just not the right fit.

You will share scripts with professionals you admire... who will also tell you this is just not the right fit.

Sometimes it’ll feel personal, heck, maybe most of the time it’ll feel personal, but ultimately, you’ll also have to remind yourself that there’s so much you don’t know about how certain decisions are made. And if you’re not the right fit, then that’s not the right puzzle for you anyway. (Here’s what I had to say on this on Points in Case in 2020.)

I’m not here to say this is all easy, or that getting used to rejection grants anyone moral superiority. It hurts each time—though some rejections hurt more than others. I, too, find myself in a position where I wonder if I’m not meant for my dreams after all. I fill in the blanks of the feedback I receive, and most of them don’t reveal much, so I’m left with the only variable I can control: myself. I put all the pressure on me.

I know there are a lot of people who feel that way. Most of us are waiting for that breakthrough in our lives—no matter what we do; professionally, romantically, or platonically. Last week’s note of “Focus on mastery over performance” is once again, easier said than done, so I thought I could share bits and pieces of rejection I receive during the week in this newsletter as an honest documentation of my journey. Like the fact that last week I got three rejection emails about a variety of things I’ve been working on, and after the third, I did feel exhausted.

Then I thought about how much I enjoy working on those projects regardless. If I’m in a good mood, that reminder is just enough. But at the end of the day, I go back to... I’m sorry, but Star Wars, because, bear with me:

This is the way.

And right now, there’s no other way for me but the one I’ve picked for myself.

The same applies to you, too: You change your mind when you change your mind. Until then, you stick around and continue to do what gives you joy and what you believe in.

Here’s what a great writer-producer friend of mine texted me that I will hang up by my desk. He is so good at describing the state of the creative industry as well as where we are as a society:

“I think where a lot of people are right now is not necessarily due to the choices we made, but more so an industry that has collapsed due to larger and completely unforeseen forces of greed and recklessness.

Our endeavors and vision were based on what we knew in that moment—and we were not foolish, we made a decision of the most consciousness and information available to us. And it was the right one, but the world fell apart.

... I think we still have our bearings of what we learned about the world and about ourselves to still have a chance to live a life that we envisioned. It’s just not going to be linear, not cause and effect, and is going to take a bit longer.”

Take care and please keep me posted on what you think!

Love,

D

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WHAT I WROTE THIS WEEK

I’ve been working on my second novel and things are picking up pace. We’re in 1910s Paris:

Sending letters to Augustino was risky, not because Tomris would be corresponding with an unmarried man of no relation. It was risky, because he may have never responded and she had never been rejected in her life. Each letter to her former instructor she crafted for hours. When her hands ached and her mind followed, she started to draw. Draw the boats floating on the Seine, draw the boys dangling from the tram, draw the sparrows clustered at her feet, nibbling at baguette crumbs.

She lit up the first time Augustino responded. And every single time after. He chose his words within the constraints of formality, even when Tomris mentioned the affections of French men and alike. She imagined the jealousy in his words. Miss Tomris, he warned her, finding authority in the ten-years that stood between them, about the cabarets and the soirees and the salons. She was to be 20 after all, a grown woman (Are you allowed to say that? Tomris quipped in her response), but after his usual warnings, he always dove into what they loved the most: Art.

Tomris told him about that serendipitous afternoon in Montparnasse. An American art lover—“Call me Gertrude,” she had insisted—introduced her to Matisse and his friend, a Spanish painter named Pablo, who frequented Café de la Rotonde with their posse. “A Turk,” Matisse’s eyes sparkled with interest, “And nevertheless a woman without a veil.”

Tomris squeezed in at a crowded table and listened to Matisse’s recent adventures in Morocco and his love of tradition and the exotic women who sat for him. She observed the group take on lovers and discuss style and form and breaking barriers. When offered, she pretended to smoke, and once she got home, her throat hurt, but the buzz she decided she liked.

She wrote to Augustino everything she wished she could have said at the table. About the Romantics, the Modernists, the Impressionists, and the impressionable who didn’t bring much of their own to the craft. She complained about the critique of her work and proudly mentioned the high praise she received—if she ever did.

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FROM STRANGERS & REVISIONS - THE NOVEL

If you were able to read last week’s newsletter, this excerpt picks up where we left off:

Shortly after shelter-in-place was announced, people picked up YouTube exercises or long runs or spent thousands of dollars on stationary bikes that screamed back at them.

I picked up two things: My first crush in America whom I hadn’t talked to since sophomore year of college so that I could crash and burn with him. And the cookbook my mom gave me that her mom gave her when she got married. Hers is edition 12, mine is 31. Not to brag but I’ve perfected the edition 31 lentil balls recipe.

I throw in the lettuce and the parsley and the green onions I diced—green onions are a must. Then I dunk salt and red pepper into the mix. I massage the mixture until the tomato paste turns all of it into a light red and then it’s time to shape my balls. My potato salad is marinating in the fridge. It, too, is covered in green onions plus olive oil and lemon juice, and in the background plays my favorite comfort watch: the divisive Star Wars sequel, The Last Jedi. An homage to tall broken men and the women who think they can fix them.

I maybe haven’t found the person who’ll take care of me and I desperately undulate between wanting a boyfriend and a butler, but in the meantime, I’m doing a pretty good job at taking care of myself. I grab the beautiful plate I’ve created—Van Gogh be damned—and take a seat on my couch. It is the nicest piece of furniture I have in my apartment and it only took me two years and a visa approval to press the purchase button on a fancy furniture website.

I'm a few minutes into a fight scene when a deafening beep blasts in my apartment and I jump off my seat. I run from the living room to the kitchen in approximately five steps and see the dusty carbon monoxide alarm blaring where I placed it on my counter. Months ago, I woke up in the middle of the night, hyperventilating because of a nightmare about a gas leak. The only thing that calmed me down was ordering a restaurant-grade carbon monoxide detector, despite the hybrid fire alarm that already came with the apartment.

My panic purchase howls in my hands.

Death, my brain screams, and I grab my keys and my phone and leave the apartment. I throw myself out on a busy street in Brooklyn. I breathe while simultaneously wondering how long I had been holding my breath. It’s colder than usual for March, especially with no sunlight, and I’m standing in the middle of the street with no coat or jacket, just my Brooklyn Nets shirt and my period sweatpants stained around the butt. The weight of my anxiety being right sinks in, the alarm audible from the sidewalk through my open window in the kitchen.

I don’t want to call him. I don’t. We haven’t spoken in days. Five days, to be exact. That is a record for us and it’s good. It was what we both decided was the right thing to do. Or really, he did that thing guys love to do where they make you think you were the one who broke up with them, but they’ve actually done everything to make sure you broke up with them. When the words “I don’t want to talk anymore” came out of my mouth, I couldn’t discern whether they belonged to me or him.

He says my name after two short rings. His voice is worried, but also not surprised that I gave him a call. That I couldn’t keep my promise of staying away. “Is everything okay?”

“The carbon monoxide alarm in my apartment went off,” my voice trembles. “I left the apartment in my slippers. It’s freezing out. Don’t know what to do.”

“I see,” he says calmly, his voice echoing in a room. He’s at work. “You should call 911. Then go back into the apartment and open the windows. You’ll be fine. You have to be exposed to a lot of carbon monoxide to die. Something like 800 ppm.”

I don’t know what a ppm is but he makes me feel better anyway. I nod quietly and hang up. I wait for multiple fire trucks to show up on my corner, their sirens ringing in the ears of all my neighbors. A dozen firefighters walk into my studio apartment.

“This whole thing needs to change,” the tiniest firefighter in the group tells me in a heavy New York accent, pointing at the stove. He’s just about my height, his commanding voice buried under layers of heavy gear.

“Nah,” he says when I ask him if I could have died. “You would have probably started throwing up and fainting before all that.” And with that assurance, the crew exits, leaving me with my lost appetite and Star Wars playing in the background. The gas to my stove has been turned off and the alarm doesn’t beep anymore, but I spend the night with all my windows open anyway. I hide under layers of blankets in my bed, ignoring the morgue-like temperature of the apartment.

It’s dark in my room, but it doesn’t matter. I look at the ceiling anyway. I wait for him to call me, ask if I’m okay, but my phone doesn’t ring and I doze off.