Rejection and Being Your Own Cheerleader

Before I decided to become a writer I had suffered from a reasonable amount of rejection. Some highlights: I came third in the 1992 Design a Dress for Barbie competition, a handsome boy said he would walk me home but only if I didn’t try to kiss him, I didn’t get through to the final round of the Butlin’s talent show despite my heart wrenching rendition of “The White Cliffs of Dover.” Standard life rejections.

However no amount of childhood/teenage rejection could prepare me for the emotional rigmarole I would go through attempting to be a writer. Rejection exploded into my life like a character in a David Cronenberg movie. Like a penis in the face of a person who likes penis’s exploding in their face. Like a condom used as a water balloon.

Sure, there has been highs over the past four years (I got paid to write a film script!) but also many lows (that was four years ago!).

I know that this kind of non — traditional career path (I class traditional jobs as the ones men have in romantic comedies e.g lawyer, architect, doctor) involve a lot of rejections. I get that. I have chosen this, and I have no one to blame but myself but it still sucks, and I still spent a lot of time talking myself down from lots of mental ledges. I am forever dousing the ever rising flame of ‘what the heck am I doing with my life,’ with the water of positive thinking (yep). I spend nights awake worrying about money, and the crappy admin jobs I do in order to keep myself in kinder eggs, trying to convince myself it will all be okay, life is short and you should do what you love, right?! I then back this up with some sound logic like, ‘what the hell else are you going to do with a 2:1 in Journalism anyway? Other than lie about it on your C.V.?’

After some good self comforting (masturbation) I start to feel a bit more normal. Once more unto the breach dear friend etc. This is routine now. A constant cycle of rejection followed by pep talks. I have to spend a lot of time being my own cheerleader. Who, by the way, totally looks like Eliza Dushku in Bring It On.

And some day’s it’s harder than others. A string of rejections from film festivals, funding bodies, agents, TV opp’s and my inner cheerleader’s pom poms start to wilt like grandma’s boobs, and she’s all like ‘why don’t we just give up on the creative stuff, and get drunk at the big game? We can make out with coach and vomit on ourselves before we pass out under the bleachers!”

And I have to tell her ‘No! Because you didn’t even get a 2:1 in Journalism. You got a 2:2!’

These negative thoughts are often highest when around people who have chosen a more traditional career path. Those people who expertly straddle the career AND the housing ladder. Those people who tell you you are brave, but you don’t really feel brave. Instead you wonder if you aren’t quite as good at putting sentences together as your primary school teacher led you to believe. And JESUS CHRIST you wish your mother would stop telling you about JK Rowling, and how she didn’t make it until she was in her 40’s, as if that makes you feel better. For every J K Rowling there are a thousand other writers who wrote stories about wizards and who didn’t quite make it.

I am trying to accept that the only way to survive such setbacks is to see failure as a form of motivation (stay with me) rather than a reason to panic. Obviously I mourn the failure first. I have a cry, kick an inanimate object, drink some wine and ask someone I love to tell me that I definitely don’t suck — but then I accept that it is part and parcel of trying to do such a silly job for a living (I’m not trying to write the next great American novel here — I most write and perform comedy). Your friends and family can tell you how brave you are, but no one else is going to care. You are one of a million talented people trying to get paid to make stuff up, and your applications, and pitches and efforts may mean the world to you, but to the person on the other end of the computer you are just stranger. And it is nothing personal.

Unless you pitched a show where the main character happened to have the name of the person reading your pitch, and their name is Butterskisandwhich McCluckersford. And Butterskisandwhich works in TV/Film funding and in your pitch they are the worst and their butt explodes. Then, that might be personal.

But knowing why you are doing it (the arts, darling) that helps. Knowing you’re not doing it for the benjamins, although that would be nice, you are doing it because you have something to say. And occasionally someone will get what you are saying, and they will feel warmed by it and when that happens. Oh, it’s glorious.

Because being a creative person involves living in your head and then occasionally inviting everyone in for a glimpse, and apologising about the mess. It involves creating a lot of work that no one will ever see, or more than 15 people will ever see. It involves filling in applications, and writing treatments and synopsis, it involves letting your cheerleader take over and tell everyone how fucking fantastic you are. Even if you don’t feel that way.

I did my first Edinburgh Fringe two years ago, and that was a real bootcamp. Performing regularly for four people and one of them is asleep, that knocks you down to earth quickly. Makes you realise the sold out shows in your home town mean bugger all in Scotland, when you are one of a thousand talented schmo’s. So my inner cheerleader had to come out a lot for that, she had to give me a lot of pep talks, a lot of positive thoughts, she let me do a lot of crying in a lot of toilets, I spent a lot of time asking passers-by ‘CAN YOU GUYS SEE HER TOO?’ And now she spends a lot of time arguing with my ovaries, telling them to shut up when they start asking ‘WHEN WILL YOU USE US?’

I don’t know if I will make it as a writer. But that’s the wonder of life, no spoilers. I do know I aint getting any younger (despite trying) and one day, I might have to pack it in because I am a woman and our shelf life for ambition runs out at about 38. Apart from for J K Rowling, obvs. And maybe all the self-cheering on was for nothing other than finding it difficult to explain what it is exactly I do at parties and to hairdressers. And maybe the panic attacks are a sign that I don’t have the resilience for this.

But then I watch something I love, read something which stirs me and I think yes. I want to do this. I am good at this. I think.

All I know is writing soothes me, and it’s the only thing I don’t get sick of.* I get sick of jobs, hobbies, TV series and my own face but I don’t ever want to stop inventing. And I hope my cheerleader doesn’t break her ankle doing a flip kick, because I would miss her. Or I would have to do a mercy killing on her. Either way.

• Actually that’s a lie. I really like porridge.