Rejection

I wanted to say a few things about rejection.

Somewhere in Columbus, Ohio is a file box. In that box are 125 rejection letters I received for my book. I kept every single one of them. Not out of some pained need to keep experiencing that feeling, but to remind me that these people who said no were not the end of my story.

Many years later when I decided to become a screenwriter, I would get three times that number of rejections on various projects, stories, and ideas from a slew of people who, again, were not the end of my story. 

And then one day I raised my head out of my own self-doubt to a peculiar sight.

George Lucas got rejected.

Steven Spielberg got rejected.

Dick Wolf got rejected.

Everybody got rejected. 

In that moment, I discovered rejection is part of the process, it comes with the territory. You get it and you get on, you keep going in spite of it. That caused me to do one final thing, look at all the people who had been rejected and quit. And trust me, I know a boatload of them, And that was the end of their story.

So the lesson, quite simply is don't quit. Keep going. Everyone who has taken this journey to heart will at some point be rejected. And the difference between you and the person buying a bus ticket back home is... what will you do next?

A choice, that's it.

Choose not to quit. 

Go. Be. Epic. 

JM