Rejection, Walt Disney’s Swamp, and My Own Crossroads

I woke up to another rejection email today. It was polite, almost too polite:

Thank you for responding to us. We appreciate your platform and mission. However, after delving a bit more into the market, we could see this project isn’t quite a fit for us. We decline with the greatest respect and deepest regret.

We appreciate you for thinking of us and wish you continued success.

I want to be mad at it. I want to give up. Writing agent queries is exhausting. A pleasant rejection is still a rejection, and rejection hurts. It makes me question everything. Do I have what it takes? Am I just screaming into the void?

I closed my laptop and exhaled, rubbing my temples. I needed a distraction. My mind drifted back to another time I felt stuck, questioning my next move.

It was October 2005, and the colored leaves were barely hanging onto the trees as Gerard and I drove through the Pinehills in Plymouth. We had been spending a lot of time together back then, me, trying to make sense of my life, and Gerard, well, Gerard always had a story. Officially, he was one of the two principal owners of the real estate development company where I worked, and I was a junior analyst. But when we were talking things through, we had no titles. He was my first editor, my sounding board, the person who challenged me to see things differently.

The company had purchased a 60-acre development site in the Pinehills in what was supposed to be one of the largest new residential and commercial developments in New England. But by 2005, construction had all but stopped. The project was plagued by financial difficulties, and for all the ambitious plans, there wasn’t much to see, just trees.

Gerard slowed the car and gestured toward a sign nailed to a pair of trees. It read: Welcome to the Pinehills. I stared at the empty expanse beyond it.

“What do you see?” Gerard asked, his voice carrying the certainty of someone who already knew my answer.

“Trees,” I said. “A lot of trees.”

Gerard chuckled. “That’s what most people see. But let me tell you a story.”

He leaned into the steering wheel, his voice gaining energy. “You ever hear how hard it was for Walt Disney to get Disneyland built? Banks turned him down again and again. His own brother, who ran the studio’s finances, didn’t want to touch it. Everybody told him the numbers didn’t work.”

Gerard turned toward me, his expression alive with the same passion he poured into his own developments. “Walt didn’t have the money and he didn’t have the backing, so he sold off what he had, cashed in his own life insurance policy, and made a deal with a television network nobody thought would pay off. People kept telling him no. He kept finding another way to get to yes.”

Gerard grinned. “He didn’t care about what was. He believed in what could be. And the rest? The rest is history.”

I looked back at the trees, but now they felt different. It wasn’t just empty space anymore, it was potential.

Gerard saw what I was thinking. “You get rejected, right?” he asked, his voice steady. “And it makes you wonder if you’re wasting your time.”

I nodded.

He smiled. “That’s exactly how Walt felt. But he didn’t stop. Because he knew what he was building before anyone else did.”

I’m done thinking about the rejection email sitting in my inbox. I’m done thinking about the agent who saw my idea but didn’t think it was quite right for them. About the polite words that still stung.

Now, I’m thinking about that story. About Walt. About Gerard. About how easy it would be to take this rejection as a sign to stop. I could let the agents’ doubts convince me that my book isn’t worth fighting for. I can do what Walt did, keep pushing. Keep believing. Keep building until they have no choice but to see what I see.