Poking the Rhinoceros

Today I got up and felt ever so slightly miserable. I chatted to a producer yesterday who, on the one hand, thought my scripts were good (Yeah!) but on the other, couldn't enter me into a scheme as I was optioned (Boo. But Yeah 'optioned'!) So, with spirits not quite in the gutter but willing to kick mud at strangers, it got me to drinking... I mean, thinking.

You know me, I'm a tea jenny!

It got me to thinking about rejection and how being a writer is a bit like being a rhinoceros. You have to have a thick skin and be able to stand rejection for long periods, often hiding in grassy areas as a form of therapy to stop you throwing your laptop at a wall and bemoaning the unfairness of live.

But sometimes it takes the weirdest curve-ball to put you back on track. While I was mooching around listening to 'The Bangles' and veering towards 'head in the gas oven' classics, it dawned on me that the stinkers at the Council hadn't emptied our bins. So, a phone call and a rant later, my back was up and low and behold, inspiration.

Sometimes, I think rejection makes you feel like that rhino poked with a stick and running for the hills, the next time, you soak it up; put on music, have a bath, or go for a walk to lift your mood. Then other times, like today, you realise how life experience can give you something to write about. It can come from the smallest thing.

For me, I started the morning talking about rejection with a writer friend, got wound up trying to sort an issue on the telephone and constantly being told to 'go on-line', or to 'visit the library'. That led to, usually mild-mannered me, issuing a complaint to some poor woman that never saw me coming. Then there in the nutshell of the smallest thing, was a comedy, 'Learning from History'. In less than an hour I had a story of Caligula waiting to get his bins empty and being on hold from 41 AD, his only saviour multi-tasking teen Kevin, who does everything as there is nobody else to do it for him due to austerity cuts.

So, next time you feel like a rhino being prodded with a big stick, don't dwell on rejection. Go and do some everyday chore, make a phone call, organise bills. There are scripts to be had in the everyday things you do naturally and if no one likes it, the more rejection, the thicker the skin... and there's always that muddy bit down the path. Ha!