A rejection in any walk of life is never pleasant. We can often take a rejection, even in the profesional setting, of our ideas or work, personally. This is understandable and we have to take a little extra care of ourselves when we face this situation. Other times, with a little self assessment, the rejection is not unexpected although may still sting a little.
I recently saw the call by The National Theatre of Scotland for stories from the public that they hope to turn into a piece of theatre as part of their program of celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the Theatre. A member of the creative team from the theatre came to a script-reading group I attend to tell us about the project and ask that we consider submitting a story. Unfortunately, the deadline was in 2 days time!
I had a think (a very quick one) about what story I could tell and did manage to write out a story and submit it before the deadline. It was a story about events that happened in my youth and was therefore very personal. However, I was very aware of the speed with which I wrote it and knew it wasn’t my best work or even the most accesible story to transform to a piece of theatre.
Today I got the rejection letter. However, I did not feel sad or rejected. Not least because the letter was so lovely and that they had included a beautiful notebook for me to continue writing stories. Good luck to those whose stories have been shortlisted and I look forward to voting on my favourite in due course.
Significantly Different 