» "Keep giving them you, until you is what they want."
Lifehacker linked to this article on rejection from Psychology Today that I wish I had read sooner.
Rejection has always been quite a bugbear for me, which relatively recently learned to manage like a regular human. That is to say, I’ve started to accept failure as a learning experience and not as an indelible black mark on my living soul.
However, as Mr. Palumbo’s article points out, sometimes the reason for rejection is completely arbitrary. It never had anything to do with your talent, ability, looks, or charm. It’s a maddening prospect for a struggling, not-yet-professional type who’s livelihood is entirely dependent on improvement or the obsessive head-case who takes everything as a permanent value judgement. What are you supposed to take away from these kinds of rejections? How are you supposed to identify them? Mr. Palumbo suggests this:
Keep giving them you, until you is what they want. Which means, stay true to yourself, and keep giving the marketplace your best until it takes it.
Remember, too, that rejection comes and goes, but so does acceptance. For any artist, over the long haul, it’s mastery of your craft, wedded to the sheer love of doing it, that sustains. … the powers-that-be can accept or reject your work, you can do something they can’t: create.
I’m reminded of Marc Maron’s story of redemption in the eyes of the idustry, specifically how he described the years just before starting up WTF with Marc Maron. He tells a version of the events from his keynote address at the Just For Laughs Festival in 2011.
My manager: Nobody wants to work with you. I can’t get you an agent. I cant you get you any road work. I can’t get you anything. …
I drove home defeated. 25 years in and I had nothing. I was sitting alone in my garage in a house I was about to lose because of that bitch—lets not get into that now—and I realized. Fuck, you can build a clown, and they might not come. …
Broke, defeated and career-less, I started doing a podcast in that very garage where I was planning my own demise. I started talking about myself on the mic with no one telling me what I could or couldn’t say. I started to reach out to comics. … I needed to talk. So, I reached out to my peers and talked to them. I started to feel better about life, comedy, creativity, community. I started to understand who I was by talking to other comics and sharing it with you. I started to laugh at things again. I was excited to be alive. Doing the podcast and listening to comics was saving my life. I realized that is what comedy can do for people.
You know what the industry had to do with that? Absolutely nothing.
Nearly a quarter century of trying to make the industry notice him, working constantly as stand-ups do, Mr. Maron found his biggest success in something he created himself. His manager didn’t tell him to do a podcast, and the world certainly wasn’t asking for more podcasts. The next thing you know, WTF gets a write-up in the New York Times, the show starts airing on public radio, and Mr. Maron delivers the opening speech at a comedy festival that he might not have been invited to had he not followed the creative impulse to create WTF.
Granted, it takes 25 years to amass the cadre of friends Mr. Maron relied on in the first months of WTF, his radio experience from Air America, as well as gaining the personal intelligence to speak thoughtfully and honestly with comedians in a way that makes people want to tune in. Could anyone else replicate the appeal and success of WTF? Probably not. There will be another hit new show eventually, but it will not be anything like what Mr. Maron has created.
Ultimately, the lesson of rejection is to keep trying and create because you love to create. Learn to improve by creating new things instead of twisting yourself into someone you aren’t to fit an ideal that doesn’t exist.
January 19, 2012, 12:42pm Permalink
