Silence and "Success"
When I was in school, I submitted plays to a fellowship several years in a row. Each year I got a personal note from the director saying it wasn’t quite right for them that year but he loved my writing and to keep submitting. Then I wrote what I felt was my best play by far.
I submitted the play to the fellowship that year, optimistic and excited to hear feedback. I got a default form rejection. No note. No nothing. Same things for other opportunities that I submitted that play to. Deafening silence. No one liked this play.
“Maybe this play is terrible. Maybe I’m terrible. This is so embarrassing.” I stopped sending the play out. The very next week… I found out the play was a winner for a very competitive national award.
The opportunities that opened up were invaluable in my career.
As an artist, one of the hardest things is trying to evaluate the quality of your own work. Taste is arbitrary. Awards even more so. All we can do is make stuff, get better, and try again. …Which is not encouraging advice when you’re years in and on a dry spell.
Getting where you wanna go and the opportunities you want to find is so often infuriatingly dependent on luck and arbitrary taste. But the silence and the grind are normal. You’re okay. You’re doing fine. You’re on the right track.
It’s hard to hear nothing, to get no feedback, to feel like the world doesn’t care. And honestly… they don’t, until someone or some institution looks your way, and suddenly they all care very much.
I don’t wanna say “stick with it and you’ll break through eventually,” bc honestly? Dometimes you don’t. The universe is unjust. I went to grad school with so many wildly talented actors that devastate and inspire me every time they perform who you’ve never heard of.
And yet.
Sometimes when you stick w/ it, you find it. Or you find something even better. Trust in yourself, do the hard work, find the joy, and don’t worry so much about the stretches of deafening silence. Let the sound of your own heartbeat and your own weird drum guide you instead.