I think the problem is that I was already planning on what I would say when the answer was “yes”. Already planning my Instagram post – which filter would make me look properly humbled and stunned. The writerly Miss America.

If I was writing my story, NBC is a win I would have given me. The pacing seemed right. The chances of getting to the finals on your first year are, as I was told so many times, slim to none. I wasn’t supposed to make it that far, and as it unfolded, I felt like I was unwrapping an answer.

That is why this year has been so fucking hard. That’s why. It was all gearing up for this win.

I was ready for the yes. Hands open, smile poised like someone who is walking into a room and trying to hide the fact that she knows there are dozens of her closest friends hiding in the shadows, ready to jump out and yell “surprise!”

This yes would write me into the movie I was directing, and I’d felt like I played my part – the character working through the first act. I’d cried with my forehead against the steering wheel after dropping Aryn off at school. I’d plucked a “past due” notice out of the mailbox and opened it over a steaming cup of shitty coffee, my hair in a messy bun. I’d done the weary walk through the house at 2am, leaning on the doorway of my kids’ bedrooms as I prayed something like how is this going to work?

I thought the yes was mine. I thought I could taste it – powdered sugar and champagne bubbles on the tip of my tongue, filling in all the hard parts of this year with a shimmering and that’s why.

That yes was going to remake me.

That yes was going to change everything.

And the problem is

that the answer

was no.

In the space of three months earlier this year, I wrote two pilots and a spec. I finished one novel and launched another. I polished personal statements and watched interviews with former fellowship winners. I lobbed drafts over to my people, waiting to catch the edits they volleyed back over. I’d spin back to the work table, nimble fingers tinkering for hours until the story was tight and shiny.

Publishing threw some serious curve balls. I wrote more.

Half-empty coffee cups, post-its, and hummus-smeared plates towering on the edges of my desk. Eyes burning, jaw set.

It was the training montage, set to “Harder Better Faster Stronger” by Willa Amai.

I’d crawl into bed at 2am, characters and their bloody missions and quick, pithy dialogue swirling in my chest like pregnancy heartburn.

It was hard, but it made sense. It was the second act. So, obviously.

I submitted everything, and then I waited. I waited, and I had a weird little feeling in my heart. A good kind of splinter. This is it.

So when I got the email that I made the first round, I screamed.

Not just because I was at the top of the top of submissions, but because that little hopeful splinter was right.

I turned in my supplementary materials, and I waited again. There’s a Reddit thread I followed feverishly:

Anyone heard anything, yet? Anyone?

I’d log on and stop breathing when I saw new comments posted. I’d find my footing again when I realize it was just someone asking again.

Anything from NBC?

Interview requests were coming soon, and I prayed. Ross prayed. Our whole family prayed. I’d read and re-read my pilot – DEATH, BUT MAKE IT FASHION: my most “out there” idea to date – what if Regina George was Death? And what if she stopped the awkward girl from killing herself because she wouldn’t let her die in hideous Tinkerbell pajamas? And what if they became unlikely friends? – and imagined them reading it. Were they sitting back in their chairs, pulling off their glasses, and looking up like “we found her”? Because that’s what I would write, if I were writing my story.

I was at a stoplight, on my way to get a feverish Liam early from daycare when my phone beeped, and I saw my drug of choice: the (1) marker by the inbox.

And it was them. They loved my pilot, and they wanted to meet me.

I screamed again, and the splinter cracked me wide open. It was in two days. Bills landed in our inbox as I scrambled to find work. Bronchitis hit, taking out Aryn and Ross in one fell swoop.

But it made sense. It was the third act. I was bound to face some sort of adversary. That’s what I would do to my character, and I was a good storyteller:

A finalist at NBC, in fact.

This is it.

I wandered the lot on the day of my interview. I got coffee. I relished in the feeling of arriving. I tucked my hair behind my ear and gaped at the spectacle of it all – the golf carts zipping between sound stages, the larger-than-life posters on the sides of the buildings – because if I were writing this character, she’d be uncertain, even as every door opened before her.

I thought the interview went well. We laughed a lot. I turned the charm up as high as it could go (which, for me, is about a six and a half). We talked about kids, and how they loved my writing. They told me they’d be in touch soon.

I called Ross, hands shaking as I breathlessly recounted everything. And I looked around, loving the small voice that whispered, see you soon.

Weeks passed. They sent out an email letting us know they needed more time to decide. They’d call by the following Friday.

I went to urgent care with a high fever and bronchitis.

Totally something that would happen to me right before the biggest win of my screenwriting career. CLASSIC.

I found out I have to rewrite some stuff for some secret stuff I CAN’T SAY MORE YET.

Wow, I’m going to be so busy when I start the fellowship!

I was in a private group with some of the other finalists. One, in particular, is a real gem. We lamented together. Every day, we’d check in – anything?

No. Ugh.

My baby sister was getting married that weekend. The Friday of their self-imposed deadline was also the day I had to head out to Malibu for the rehearsal dinner.

What a perfect day! A win and then dinner with all my favorite people!

I could picture it: sitting at the table with my family, a small smile on my lips. I could see the way my sister’s eyebrows would shoot up as I told her and she hugged me and chastised me for not telling her sooner. It’s your day, not mine! I’d say.

I couldn’t have written it better myself.

Friday morning. I woke up thinking – today is the day. Ross smiled as he left. Today is the day.

I turned on National Treasure, and Aryn and I snuggled in to eat breakfast together.

I checked in on the finalist group – TODAY!!!!

And my friend messaged me. She asked what time the kids were leaving for school. I told her they were all staying home today – we were leaving for a wedding.

Then, some of these:

…

And my heart sunk down to the base of my spine and just kind of sat there as I watched those ellipses ripple. I heard the swish swish swish of my blood in my ears.

She said she’d want someone to tell her, if the roles were flipped:

Swish swish.

They’d called her Wednesday.

And all my narration – the ribbon of words I’d been spinning above my own head for the past six months – got caught in the zipper of my gritted teeth.

Nicholas Cage ran from Sean Bean and Aryn asked questions about the plot and sat there, quiet, as my story crumbled around me. Act One landed in the kitchen.

Act Two buckled and crashed down the stairs.

Act Three ripped in half.

I wrote back that I was so happy for her, which was a huge fucking lie and we both knew it but I am grateful that, in that moment, my human being protocol remembered to not be an asshole.

But I felt like an asshole, sitting there amongst the shipwreck of a story that didn’t make it past the harbor.

I thought it would be a yes.

I prayed for a yes.

Everyone prayed for a yes.

God, everyone prayed for a yes.

I cried because I was devastated. I cried because I fucking hated this plot twist, this ending that was more like the shitty non-endings to the short stories I read in grad school than the feel-good movie I believed I was living in.

I cried because I was embarrassed. I talked about the finals with my friends and my parents and my in-laws and, most importantly, obviously – strangers on the internet who may, at one point, have mistakenly thought I was cool. I believed it would have a happy ending, It’s so much easier to post photos of book signings and interviews than to show me striking out. Swinging as hard as I can and hitting nothing, swish swish.

I tried.

I’d called dibs on this yes.

I woke up early and stayed up late for this yes.

This yes and I made eye contact.

This yes was mine.

I pulled myself together and packed our bags. I did my makeup with extra eyeliner, like that ploy would suddenly work after all these years – like I didn’t know better from countless attempts to patch up a teenaged bathroom breakdown. Like I didn’t know that I’d wind up looking like a sad girl with a lot of makeup.

My sister asked at dinner, and I shrugged like I didn’t care. Which basically told everyone watching that I cared a whole fucking bunch. She hugged me. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

It’s your day, not mine, I said.

Now, I’m not quite sure what to do. I’m off-book. Life threw the script out. I think this pacing is shit. I didn’t realize how hard I was counting on this yes to make this tough year make sense.

The pages are turning, but not in the way I thought.

I signed on to do a ghostwriting job that is a financial game-changer. The money doesn’t come until next month, though. That’s a huge prayer answered. Just not the one I wanted. Not the career bunker-buster I thought was coming. I just feel like I’m standing still, now.

My stuff is out with a couple of people. My novel edits due at the end of the month. I’ve been praying, every day, for something to change.

Please give me a yes. Give me the yes I thought NBC was. Show me that I’m not totally delusional. Give me my yes.

But yesterday I was praying after I dropped Aryn off, and I just felt a shift.

A realization.

This isn’t how I would’ve written it. Everything feels off because this is now how I would have done it.

But I’m not writing this story.

I never have been.

This yes wasn’t mine.

And maybe there is another one with my name on it that will change my life tomorrow. Or in two weeks. Or in six months.

But right now? Right now I know that I have to keep pushing. I have to crack my knuckles and face this next chapter

next book

next scene

– whatever it is –

Without a win. No kill in my jaws, no wind in my sails. No reasons, no understanding.

Now, I come back to the work I’ve been called to, confused and sad.

I sit in the hallway, splinters under my nails as I lick my wounds and wait for doors to open.

And I’ll write. I’ll write this novel and the next pilot and the pilot after that and the book after that and then the feature I’ve been thinking about and the adult fantasy and I’ll do it even when all I hear is no.

I’ll do it on His timing, and I’ll do it without a yes.

* DISCLAIMER: I am a healthy white woman with three healthy kids and a healthy, loving husband. I live in house full of twinkle lights. I’ve never been hungry, and even on my darkest days I know I won’t be. My parents are generous and understanding. I do my dream job for a living, and my coworkers are animals. I know I got it good.

This is the blog post equivalent of me crying in the bathroom at a school dance. Right now, this feels like everything. Right now, this is devastating. Maybe it won’t be in six months. But *right now*, I’ve got mascara running down my cheeks and a limp corsage on my wrist and I just got dumped in front of everyone.

So. If you want, come sit on the tile floor with me and hand me rolled up toilet paper so I can wipe my glittery snot. But don’t think I don’t know, for one second, how blessed I am. Or that this, too, shall pass.

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Without a Yes

Katharyn Blair