one hundred rejections

Something that I struggle with in my writing is this perfectionism-procrastination cycle. It gets in my way to the point where I can find myself stuck on a project for months, where I feel afraid to share and post what I’m working on online, where I won’t submit something in time for a deadline, because I don’t think it’s good enough…

There are two parts where I find myself getting stuck in the writing process: the creating phase and the editing phase.

When I’m stuck in the creating phase, I think a lot of times it’s because I get caught up in wanting to write a really good first draft. And one thing that helped with that is just reframing my thinking and just accepting that it’s going to be messy.

Thinking about the first draft as just throwing random ideas out there like paint, and just putting something on the page, even if it feels like a dumb idea. It’s a starting point. (I love the idea of calling a first draft a vomit draft. It releases all the expectations and pressure to write something “good”!)

But today, I want to talk about getting stuck in the editing phase.

rejection ≠ failure

I get precious a lot and can easily spend hours obsessing over a line or two. And while that level of detail has helped me in ways to grow as a writer, it just as easily can become a block. And I think I’ve figured out a way to reframe my approach, which is this idea of getting 100 rejections.

I’m not the first person to come up with this, there’s a great Ted Talk about this idea:

A lot of my identity is tied to my work. I’m trying to be more aware of this thought process and separate myself from the things I create. And while I’m getting better at this, there’s still this voice in my head that’s like if I get rejected from X contest or Y program that I applied to, then that means I’m not “good enough”. And that is not true at all.

Rejection doesn’t mean that you’re not a good artist or a good person. More importantly, rejection is not equal to failure.

Everyone gets rejected. When I talk to people who are film festival programmers and readers for grants and fellowships, they always say that there are a ton of reasons why projects get picked or passed on and a lot of it has nothing to do with the film's quality. This just goes back to that saying that art is subjective.

And it’s hard! Because sometimes all I want is validation for my work.

It’s easy and straightforward to get that validation if another person or an institution is telling you that you’re a good artist, but what we need to do instead is do some inner work and learn how to achieve a form of self-validation.

Which takes me back to the 100 rejections idea.

I wanted to get out of my head and make the process a little more fun and playful, so I created a spreadsheet to keep track of all the grants/fellowships/film festivals/programs that I’ve been rejected from this year.

And once I hit my 100th rejection, my plan is to throw a little party or dinner to celebrate.

It’s about the journey and not the outcome.

I’ll let you know how it goes! 

xx

Gisella