A Megabus, Rejection, and the Worst All Nighter of my Life

(Content warning: This is a true and pathetically laughable story. It's a story that, at this point in my writing journey, I feel the need to tell. But it contains implications to a rather scandalous activity happening near me — much too close for comfort, actually. If you've read the Bible, you've read similar implications, so you can probably handle it. But considering my audience I wanted to add this preface.)

In retrospect, it was on me. The rejection was 100% deserved. But that first heartbreak —first real taste or rejection— is a hard pill to swallow.

This is the story of my first (and only) pitch conference. Spoiler alert: I faceplanted hard. Like, break-your-nose-and-bruise-your-eye-sockets hard. (Metaphorically speaking.) And, as I said, in retrospect that piece of the whole scarring experience was on me. The book I was trying to pitch at the time never found its footing. My “hook” was more like a cattle prod.

I was so young and so full of nervous excitement when I boarded that Megabus to New York City. My mind filled the hours with thoughts of rainbows, lollipops, and big dreams.

The first shadow over my rainbow came when I saw my hotel. This was back the in ancient times — before Airbnb — when broke baristas in their early twenties had to blindly Google “cheap New York Hotels” and hope for the best.

The “best” turned out to be the first of many unachieved hopes on this trip. I warily walked down the dark alley to the tucked away door of the hotel. My new hopes were simple:  To not get mugged and, upon seeing the room itself, to not get eaten by bedbugs or contract any weird diseases I’d have trouble explaining later.

But it was a room. In New York City. And I was about to pitch my novel to people who were going to love it. I told myself I was going to be just fine.

Though I did wonder about that weird hole near the top of the wall behind my bed…

It was too high up to see into and too small for a person to fit through, so I elected not to worry about it. It was fine. Everything was fine. I had to focus.

The first part of the conference was a workshop. I met my group of fellow writers, all with the same expression of nervous anticipation, and I felt like I had found my people. We polished and scrubbed our pitches until they gleamed, then presented them to the powers that be for review.

There were edits. So many edits. It was hard to see the forest through the trees — or the typography through all that red ink. That entire first night I worked determinedly through them.

By day two I was ready to pitch.

I had three pitch sessions in a row, and ... well the prior mentioned metaphorical bruised eye sockets pretty much sums up how those went.

But it was ok. I was still fine. I had one more chance on the final day before heading home. I just needed a few more edits and a really good night’s sleep. I was going to nail it!

...Which brings me to the part about the worst all nighter of my life.

I was editing late into the second night when I heard someone check into the room next door — on the side with the hole. After a few moments, the sound of the Home Shopping Network blared through the gap.

Annoying, but fine.

Then came a knock on my neighbor's door. Muffled voices. Door shut. Then, other noises started.

As a sincerely Catholic — and let’s just say unworldly — girl from the suburbs of Pittsburgh, it took me a several moments of slack-jawed denial to register what I was hearing.

Oh. Ew.

I’ve tried to block the details from memory, but suffice it to say my neighbor was loud. I remember thinking it entirely unnecessary for her to be so … vocal … while, just a few feet away, I desperately clung to what I believed was my one last chance to achieve all my hopes and dreams.

How was I supposed to edit to that soundtrack? I wasn’t writing that kind of book!

But surely it would end eventually, right? And it did. The door opened, slammed, and the glorious sound of the Home Shopping Network resumed.

I sighed in relief. Until…

Another knock.

No.

The pattern lasted all night: Home Shopping Network. Knock. Noises that made my soul cringe and the last of my innocence die.

I didn’t sleep. I wasn’t prepared.

Weirdly, my final pitch went better than the others. The editor laughed out loud — in a good way — and told me that my writing was clever and funny … and that no one would ever buy my book.

Because that’s the kind of feedback you get as a writer.

I stormed out of the conference vowing to never write again. Never!

I got on the Megabus heading home defeated, sleepy, and more than a little scarred. Minute after sad, wallowing minute, the miles flew by. My mind wandered. Maybe the bus would drive off a cliff. Or burst into flames. Or crash into a tanker truck full of chemicals.

Wait — what if those chemicals gave us all superpowers? And what if it wasn’t the chemicals that transformed us after all; it was actually all part of a big government conspiracy to create superhumans? … That’d be cool.

And there, with only the intermittent flashing streetlights to see by, I took out a notebook and began to write. My vow was already forgotten. It's hard to explain the feeling, exactly. It was like this gentle nudge. But it was enough.

Looking back, I know exactly where that nudge came from. God knows what we need even when we try deny ourselves.

Over the next few months I finished an entire YA novel about a bus full of attractive teenagers who, after a horrible accident, discovered they had superpowers.

It was truly terrible.

But it was what I needed to move on to the next thing, which showed more promise. Then the next thing, which was almost good. Then the next. And the next.

Hoodwinked is not terrible. I’m cautiously optimistic that it might even be really quite good.

Also, there have been no unsolicited, illegal nighttime activities in my proximity during this pitching process. (So far.) That’s progress I think.

So maybe this book goes nowhere as well. Maybe it does. Either way, I’ll keep writing and pray that God keeps nudging.