Chapter 10: Behind the Scenes

Your situationship makes your friends miserable

I wrote part of this chapter after a particularly devastating rejection email for the previous revision of this book. The embarrassment and shame emerging as some visceral Tina Belcheresque moan was fully drawn from experience. Write what you know.

There’s something about that disappointment and heartbreak that comes from sharing something so personal about yourself that lacks an equal. It’s why so many people give up on being artists, it’s why many struggle to get romantic relationships off the ground, and it’s part of why the closet exists: to reveal one’s self and to be rejected is a knife strike to the heart.

That the chapter ends with a new sense of determination is no accident. Eventually you pull yourself back together and find a new project, person, mantra to keep you going. Provided you can keep from rejecting yourself, you will always have at least one person in your corner.