John Luther, Writer

The writer’s worst but constant companion. I got another one yesterday for a short story.

The summer after I graduated college I worked for one day selling frozen fish door-to-door. The company assigned me to spend my first week training with their star salesman. I can’t remember his name so I’ll call him Don.

I met him early Monday morning at the warehouse and helped him load the chest freezer in the back of his pickup with boxes of frozen cod, salmon, shrimp, and an exotic new creature from Australia called “orange roughy.”

We spent the day cruising the upscale suburbs around Albany, stopping every few blocks to get out and knock on doors. Don pushed the orange roughy, hard. “Ma’am, have you had Orange Roughy? No? Not many people in this country have. It’s the most popular fish in Europe. Well, what an amazing fish, ma’am. It has a light, flaky texture but–I swear to God–tastes exactly like lobster.”

The housewives were not impressed. We sold nothing.

At lunchtime Don had to pick something up at his apartment. When we got there he invited me inside and disappeared into the kitchen. The only furniture in the place was a twin mattress on the floor in the living room. There were no curtains, no dishes, no pictures, no stereo, no television. The wall-to-wall carpet was threadbare and dirty. “Got it,” he said, waving an envelope in the air. “I need to mail this. It’s to my wife’s lawyer. Getting divorced.”

The afternoon went just like the morning. We must have knocked on a hundred doors and were turned away at every one. Most people were polite but a few were downright nasty.

At the end of the day Don asked me what I thought. “I don’t think it’s for me,” I said.

“Give it another couple days,” he said. “Always remember–every No is one step closer to a Yes.”

At the time, this struck me as the most pathetic thing I’d ever heard, especially considering the guy’s circumstances.

But now that I’m older I recognize the hard truth in this cliché, and I admire Don for getting up and packing his freezer every morning. When you’re a writer, rejection is a core part of your life. You have to believe that the no’s will someday result in a yes, or why bother writing it at all?