I LOVE So You Think You Can Dance. It's one of my favorite shows. This year they are changing up the structure of the show and instead of having a top twenty they're having a top ten. Only five girls and five guys are going to be on. Although they cheated a bit and had six boys. Each of the top ten are going to be paired with a former contestant from previous seasons. This last week they had the episode where they delivered the news to the people who made it and to the less lucky people who didn't make the cut. It was heartbreaking. These people have studied dance and are amazing in their own genre of dance and are versatile enough to be passing at the others styles as well. They survived rounds of grueling auditions, made it to the last round this close*holds thumb and index finer an inch apart* to having their dream come true only to be cut.
I think being cut from the competition at any point would have sucked but it has to be more painful being close enough you could almost hear the studio audience cheering your name, feel the heat of the lights and seeing yourself on the stage and realizing you just weren't good enough or just not what they wanted.
I think we as writers understand this. We practice our skill, learn our craft and send out our queries. Getting a rejection from a query sucks, off a partial hurts a little bit more but to have a full rejected is painful. I remember two lovely agents who read my full and both liked it but one rejected it (after telling me how much she liked it) with no feedback and the other had signed a project too similar to mine to be able to represent me. I think those rejections were the hardest because I was so close (in my mind) to my goal. What about you? Any rejections that hurt more than the others?
