Being ‘passionate’
Turning rejection into fuel.
Hi besties,
Have you ever gone on a job interview or a date and the person on the other end said to you afterward, “You’re clearly very passionate, but unfortunately you just don’t have what I’m looking for?”
Why is this the worst kind of rejection? If you’re like me, you radiate passion. In human design, I’m a Generator, which means I can’t focus on something unless I’m passionate about it.
In Nashville, I once saw a psychic who told me, “You are all about chemistry. Relationships, career, everything. You don’t have a type. You’ll know it when you feel it.” So when something feels aligned — when the chemistry is there — and you get an “I admire your passion, but you don’t have what I’m looking for,” it guts you.
I stopped querying in early December after an agent told me I needed to cut roughly 20k words before I could re-submit to her. My revision has turned into a full blown rewrite, which has taken some time. Since querying is such a slow process, I’ve been receiving rejections from agents I queried in the fall. I recently received this form rejection from an agent:
I’m not emotionally attached to it. I knew that my manuscript could be better, which is why I’m tearing it apart and rewriting it.
However, this rejection did make me think about how frustrating this process is. Publishing is a business like anything else, so the writing and the story have to be there. But when I received this rejection, I found myself asking: why doesn’t passion count for something?
If my passion stood out enough for you to comment on, I found myself saying to this agent in my imagination, don’t you think it will do the same in our conversations? Don’t you think I will bring my passion to the room with the editor? To the marketing team and the plan we craft together? To my socials? Don’t you think this promo girl is going to bring her passion (feel my passion, goddamnit!) to the road? Don’t you think the girl who brought artists on radio tour is excited for her own book tour? Don’t you think she’s going to talk to anybody and everybody? Don’t you think that she’ll make friends with readers across the country — and the world (hello, Italian book tour!)? Don’t you think passion is exactly what the publishing industry needs?
Looking back on being “passionate”
Nine years ago I interviewed with Katie at MCA for the promotion coordinator position. I was an editorial assistant at a trade publication and I was eager to be in radio promotion. More than that, MCA was my dream record label. They had the artists and the team was made up of the most badass women in Nashville.
I knew nothing about how the charts worked. I didn’t know how to read tracking sheets — so many numbers! — and I was not proficient at Excel. English major, helloooo!
By some miracle, Katie offered me the job.
I was thrown into the fire and I loved it. It was hard work, but it was my dream job. I learned so much and I climbed the ranks to become a regional in the southeast. Years later, Katie casually mentioned that my interview wasn’t good.
What?! I was filled with retroactive shame and embarrassment. Objectively, she had stronger candidates who interviewed better than I did.
Why did you hire me, then? I asked.
“Your passion.” She said. “You can’t teach hustle.”
A few months after that conversation, Katie announced she was leaving MCA to go run a new record label, where she would go on to launch Country superstar Zach Top. Before she left, she wrote each of us a goodbye letter. I cried a lot, and I laughed at the part where she wrote, “Your interview wasn’t that bad, by the way.”
When I knew that I wanted to traditionally publish Melodies of the Moon, I knew exactly what I was looking for in my literary agent. All of my journal entries manifesting my agent look like this:
I am manifesting an aligned literary agent who reminds me of Katie. Someone I respect. Someone with integrity. Someone the industry respects. Someone who gets shit done. Someone who shares my vision. Someone who dreams big and thinks outside the box. Someone who ruffles feathers. Someone who’s honest with me.
The thing I’ve realized with this most recent rejection is that I want someone who sees the magic in me. Katie saw the potential in me before I saw it in myself.
I’ve come a long way in my self-worth journey, and I don’t need the external validation of an agent the way I did just a couple months ago. I know that nobody can tell the stories I write, because they are uniquely and magically my own, based off my own life experiences and told through the lens of my authentic voice. I know that my writing style is uniquely my own — for better or worse. I know the light I bring to the world — and to the pages — and I no longer need external validation to tell me that.
However, I desire a literary agent who sees a big future for me — something beyond my wildest dreams, something I may not even realize is a possibility. I want them to see the passion that Katie did. And not as an afterthought in my rejection letter.
I want an agent who sees my passion and chooses me because of it.
Lessons from rejection
The funny thing is that rejection is not new to me.
For anyone reading who is not in the music industry, record labels have a Promotion Department which is responsible for getting songs played on the radio. A “Director of Regional Promotion” aka “label rep” aka “regional” role is a combination of sales and marketing. Their job is to get their artists’ singles played on the reporting panel of radio stations. Airplay from those stations is monitored and that is how you get the airplay charts.
For those of you who work in promo, I apologize for the bare bones description of your incredibly hard and complex job.
Aside from Katie’s point, that you need a shit ton of hustle to be in promo, the job at MCA taught me how to turn rejection into fuel. Bouncing back from rejection was a strength. Working in radio promotion means being masochistic — you have to love the gut punch of rejection and being hit by it over and over and over again.
Every day, radio programmers told me no. It wasn’t my art that I was pitching, but it felt like it. The most frustrating was when I’d go in with a data-backed argument, proof that my artist and their single were outperforming across all metrics in their market, and they’d say no. It was infuriating most days, but I learned valuable lessons.
What I learned from getting rejected:
That “no” doesn’t mean “no.” It means “not right now.” And that I can work with.
To be creative in my pitch. I learned that some programmers loved data. Some wanted to be wined and dined. Some loved marketing ideas. (Insert Louie Newman wink.) Some wanted to see me beat down and then finally, when their ego was satisfied, they’d give up the add. Some wanted silly songs I wrote and recorded on my phone to persuade them to add my artist’s song. Some wanted thoughtful letters. I found that the goofy videos I made and the personality-punched emails I sent earned me more airplay than direct arguments.
Not to take the rejection personally. In radio, most people were spread thin and answering to people above them who had their own priorities. I learned to work ahead, to get a long-game commitment instead of the immediate one I desired. I also learned that sometimes people just hated the artist or the song, and that was not a reflection of me and my efforts.
Passion goes a long way. I once had a programmer give me the add because of “how badly I wanted it.” He didn’t understand the buzz the artist had, and he didn’t hear the single, but he felt my passion. And yes, maybe I did move myself to tears on the call. But to Katie’s point, hustle goes a long way. If people can tell that you radiate passion for whatever it is that you’re pitching, it gets you a lot further than you realize.
Don’t give up. This I learned more from the artists than from radio. I got to witness creatives who had “made it.” They had made it to the big leagues, the major label, and their songs were being played on mainstream country radio. Aside from their shared genre of music, what these artists had in common was that they never gave up on themselves or their dream. And that’s the only way to ensure success. To never, ever give up. No matter how many rejections.
So to my future agent,
Hi. I’m Bri. I’m ready to hustle. I’ve been hustling. I started writing my manuscript in September 2022, and I haven’t stopped for a minute since. Writing. Editing. Reading. Studying. Learning. Researching. Living. Putting myself out there. All of it. I’m not giving up. Not until I’m one of the last ones standing and my book is on shelves.
Besties, if you’re also putting yourself out there — a creative endeavor, applying for jobs, dating, and anything else in between — I hope you don’t give up. I hope you bring your passion every single day. I hope you bring your weird, your cringe, your unique, your audacious, your bold, and your niche. I hope your dreams come true.
Until next week,
with love and magic,
Bri — your author bestie