Humble sighs

Well. I got my first real rejection today. Or at least the closest I've come to a rejection. I've had Ping practically rewrite my stuff on occassion, but at least he gives it to me to see it before letting it go on.

That's usually bad enough, but today I got an email which basically said my script had to be rewritten and that it's out of my hands. Well, it was much nicer than that, but that's what my paranoid eyes beaded out from between the lines. And I felt pretty lousy about that.

Truth is, I don't like to fail. At least I'm better about things like this these days; I used to hate failing so much that I had an ill feeling in my mouth and I would go all broody. 'Failing' in those days included not coming top in the maths exam. How times have changed. These days, I'd be happy just to be able to reproduce a proof for the Chinese Remainder Theorem. (If you're wondering, yes, I'm trying to work that out right now too.)

But I still don't like to fail, and having a producer get somebody to rewrite your words is, to me, failure.

As a writer, what do you do when you fail? The obvious answer is "learn from your mistakes".

Easier said than done. I have to dredge up the old version, read it with a critical eye and then swallow every bitter line with a bit of humble sigh. I don't like doing that.

It's a complete coincidence that somebody today wrote in a comment section below about hating the earlier work she had done, that it made her "sick in the stomach too". I guess I can take comfort in the fact that everybody who works in a creative field gets a little like this from time to time.

But I wish I didn't have to.