Sorry, Paris. We’re not interested.

on my failure of the week.

This past week I received the most dreaded e-mail a writer can possibly receive, the standard letting-you-down-easy rejection:

Dear Marcela,

Thank you for submitting xxxxxxx for consideration to us here at xxxxxx, and for your patience as we made our way through over [insert an extremely high number here] short story submissions. I'm sorry to say it has not been selected for publication in our Winter 2024-25 issue.*

Which, honestly, fair enough. When I was younger I was idealistic to an annoying degree about the things that I wanted to pursue and kind of bought into the idea that if I worked hard enough I’d make them true. Worry not, dear reader, it is not that I’ve become sceptical and disillusioned at the ripe old age of 31, but rather that I’m simply more aware of the fact that there are just so many people in the world who are extremely talented, or gifted, or well-connected and that not everyone will choose or even get you. Your sense of humour, your talent, your charm, your sense of style, your way of writing - however you frame it, you will simply never be everyone’s cup of tea. Navigating life is about persevering through these denials, rejections, and break-ups. It’s accepting sometimes you’ll just love someone more or maybe you’ll not even love them enough and things will not align as you hoped. The thing with me, personally, is that I’ve grown up to become really tenacious about my dreams. I always have a plan, which can be exhausting, but also exhilarating.

For some reason, however, this rejection stung. I could probably pin this on my cycle, but although I wasn’t necessarily expecting them to select my story, it would’ve been really effing nice to have that particular win at this particular moment. So I began examining this feeling: is it me? Am I doing it all wrong? Is my story maybe a bit shit? Am I being ridiculous? Why is my new TikTok account stalling when the first one blew up two videos in? Am I no longer interesting?

This got me thinking about Paris from Gilmore Girls and her meltdown on live TV about not getting into Harvard and by rewatching her speech I managed to get out of my own spiral.

Harvard. I thought of nothing else. Many of you out there can attest to that fact. I was on my way and nothing could stop me. And here’s the really funny thing – after four years of slaving away, I go home today and I found this. I’m not going to Harvard. I got the tiny envelope, the one that reads, “Sorry, Paris. We’re not interested. Try again next year. Love, Harvard.” And the thing that’s really funny here is, who in the world deserves to go to Harvard more than me? Have you seen how hard I’ve worked over these past four years? I mean, can anyone here believe that I’m not going to Harvard? I can’t. I’m not going to Harvard. I am not going to Harvard. I had sex, but I’m not going to Harvard.

Aside from the fact that Amy Sherman-Palladino did actually punish all women characters who had sex in her show, which makes Paris surprisingly accurate even in her moment of crisis, the thing that stands out to me is the realisation that when you have all your eggs inside one single basket, you just make it too easy for people to take them away from you. Rather, if you have only one dream, you’re always one step away from ending up with a broken heart. Chasing dreams is also about embracing failure, learning from it, getting up and strategising again. It is also about trying and experimenting with multiple things at once. Sometimes one of them will work smoothlessly and then stall. But if you have many things going on at the same try, you can just try something different while you reassess without panicking.

When I was Paris’s age, I was just like that. Well-rounded dreams, long-term goals, and a foolproof plan. The thing is, even if you don’t ever let yourself down, which you absolutely might, other people inevitably will. Long, complex plans will probably rely on others, and on so many variables. You just have to learn to bounce back which, of course, Paris Geller one-hundred-per-cent did.

I’ve also been thinking about Dev Patel a lot. Nobody would cast him as a lead in an action film, so he wrote, directed, and starred his own movie with an insanely tiny budget. When people said no, he simply found a way to make it happen himself. That’s what amazing people do. Validation is great, but you always have the power to find your people, whether they are your readers, your friends, your lovers, or your business partners. They're out there somewhere and your job is to find them.

If you’re at all interested in delving deeper into a celebration of failure, I would absolutely recommend Elizabeth Day’s podcast, How to Fail.

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*Specific information removed for obvious reasons.