The Most Embarrassing Words I Ever Wrote

Don’t even try to learn from rejection, in number three of my lessons learned about writing from love letters. Catch up on #1 (forget metrics) and #2 (love your reader).

My first kiss I did not see coming.

This was in the back of the backstage behind the scrim at Schuylerville Central School. I was in eighth grade, playing Tobias in “Sweeney Todd.” She was a senior and playing Mrs. Lovett.

It wouldn’t have occurred to me that I had a chance with her. She was our brainiac quiz-team captain, about to go to Yale. I was… well, you’d have to ask her, but I suppose also brainy and cute in her eyes for a spring affair.

Another thing I had going for me was this riotous card game called Mao we played before rehearsal. I was the champ, master of the Dadaist rules.

I don’t know what happened. I only remember being grabbed—in the nicest way—and kissed, and wow.

We’d hang out in the stairwell between the stage and the fire exit and talk forever. Then her best friend and my best friend got together too. Two couples in the stairwell.

I remember a summer afternoon lying in the pasture hillside behind my house. I remember “Far and Away” with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman at the Pyramid Mall in Saratoga.

And then summer was over. Someone told me she met someone right away at Yale. He had a name that sounded really deep and sensitive. It’s on the tip of my tongue even now.

The most embarrassing words ever written

The most embarrassing words I have ever committed to paper were along the lines of “Hey I haven’t heard from you in a while… did something happen between us?”

And then, even more embarrassing, managing to find ways to say that again several times over two pages, and probably two more letters.

I still remember using a really awful metaphor, along the lines of, “I know you’ve moved onto a new chapter in your life, but I just want to be able to end this one.” Does that even make sense?

I wish I had learned from that.

But no. I didn’t. Not for a long time.

And I’m afraid to say that here I was, dear reader, about to repeat advice I’ve heard before, advice that never worked for me: learn from rejection.

Surely rejection was a big part of what I had to learn from as a teenage writer of love letters?

Forget it.

Forget rejection: Learn from “yes”

I’ve learned much more from acceptance than I have from rejection. Way for from “yes” than from “no.”

If the letters stopped arriving, if she stopped calling, my response was to search for what I had done wrong. And who better to ask what I had done wrong than the person who dropped me?

Do you see the crummy self-sabotaging logic in that? What you focus on gets bigger.

There was another time, a couple years later at camp. I fell for this purple-haired NYC denizen. She was listening to L7’s Bricks Are Heavy on her Walkman. I made sure that she knew that I knew that band. She had a beautiful name that meant “hope.” Espy for short. One afternoon I asked her out… she said yes!

That evening her sensitive long-haired dude friend came over and told me she was calling it off. This was a guy who covered Creep in the talent show and nailed it.

She couldn’t have picked a bigger gun to shoot me down with.

(My friends performed our own Monty Pythonesqe song. And yes, we nailed it. But still. Guitar beats satire.)

How many letters did I write her to find out what happened? I hate to think about it.

Here’s what I wish I knew then: when someone turns away from you, it might have nothing at all to do with you. You’re not being rejected. They’re simply moving on to something else. Maybe they’re 17 and don’t know how to communicate around that. Don’t hold yourself responsible.

Someone who loves your work might not like all of it. If you keep hearing people turn away from your work for the same reason, there’s probably something there. But don’t start there.

So many times I asked what I did wrong. What would have happened instead if I I asked what they liked?

What led to the first kiss, the first “yes”? What love letters got replies? Acceptance. Connection. Exploration. There’s something here. I like. Newness.

More of that, please.

Why’d they listen in the first place?

Whoever you’re trying to connect with, invoke what got their attention in the first place. Your readers, your friends, your clients, your customers—they will love it. Love that you try.

I wrote to friends for years, one story leading to another and to another. One sharing to another. And then I found those stories that more people liked. I learned how to write better, for everyone I write for.

I am still curious for the other sides of those stories, the painful sides, and that curiosity fuels writing as well. But I’ll never know.

Keep sharing your electricity, your excitement.

Make each piece of work fresh.

Make each kiss your first kiss.

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The author is part of the team at BuildingGreen, Inc., that loves keeping professionals up-to-date on telling between the green and the greenwash in the design and construction industry.

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