A Rejection I Can Live With

When I was very green about the play submission process, I submitted to a number of agents. Some of them have turned out to be very professional – one turned out to be far less than that.
But I also submitted to an on-line agent. I won’t name the agent as they are providing a service (it’s just the service it provides and its potential for exploiting playwrights that disturbs me). Its site looked very professional and prompted me to make this site. I liked the look of what they were doing… so I submitted to them.

I now feel that this was a mistake that I have got away with.

Why a mistake… A decent agent will give you a reply in 3 to 6 months. I received the rejection from this e-agent in February 2005. For those of you that have been visiting this site for a while, you’ll realise that JaysPlays.Net has been running for nearly 3 years now. As I said, the e-agent’s website prompted me to make this one. That’s one heck of a long wait.

On top of this, I started to realise that this site is aimed at amateur companies. Not that there is anything wrong with that (after all, it’s only because of amateur companies that I can call myself a playwright). But what serious production company is going to use such an agent to find their next touring play?

So after a while I thought that submitting to this agency was a mistake.

Then I received a rejection and truly realised what a mistake it was. It was fairly standard in composition, but it contained a sentence that shook me to my writing roots.

“It is our policy to only accept one submission from any given playwright.”

Translated, that means: “We don’t like what you shown us… Now never bother us again”.

Writers grow. With each play, each production, each actor’s/director’s input our writing changes. My style from PRIME DIRECTIVE to MARK OF A GENTLEMAN has altered dramatically (no pun intended).

For an agency to turn round to a playwright and say that ‘you’ve got one chance Tonto’ I find abhorrent. I have been rejected by agents far superior in standing than this e-agent, but having read my work have requested that I forward any further plays I pen. Why…? Because they know writers grow and tastes change…

So as the Ramble’s title states, it’s a rejection I can live with… Never submit to an agent that is so narrow minded as the to the nature and development of writers.