Unknown (main narrator, possibly Aaron Tracy)

The same emotion that's motivated pretty much every author ever.

Alfred Knopf has just rejected Dahl's latest stab at adult fiction with the words every writer dreads.

He was, quote, let down by the manuscript.

Ugh, just hearing that sends a shiver up my back.

Getting this difficult feedback, Dahl goes into a funk.

His most recent collection of short stories didn't exactly set the world on fire, and now this.

Dahl lets the gloom of the rejection overtake him for about six weeks.

Then his agent, Sheila St.

Lawrence, steps in with a lifeline.

She reminds him how his story about the gremlins once changed his life.

It catapulted him into Eleanor Roosevelt's living room and inspired Walt Disney to throw him a party.

That's what you should be doing more of, Sheila tells Dahl, with the kind of conviction that only great agents can muster.

You have a natural bent in this direction and a ready audience hungry for it.

Isn't that just the dream scenario for a writer with his literary agent?

She sees potential where he can't.

She's fighting for his future when he's stuck mourning his past.

Sheila recognizes that Dahl needs a radical shift.

Children's literature could give him unlimited freedom and boundless worlds to build.

Dahl's initial response to his agent when she has this brilliant career-saving insight is the same reaction he had with Neil and Felicity when he first met them.

He completely ignores her.