Trust the pitch

I've just filed a piece for The Guardian Work section on peple who staff customer complaint lines. This morning I checked the paper to see what Work was running and came across a piece by Cath Janes.
It's about what people who have controversial jobs say when they get that inevitable question at parties: "What do you do?"
"I experiment on monkeys to make better perfumes."
Silence followed by a statement of fact about the weather.
I'm mad at myself now because I had this idea about six months ago. I honed the pitch and then bottled it thinking; "nah, the editor's not going to go for this one." I think I had had a bad run of rejections so my confidence was a bit low.
Well done Cath for a nice article - trust your instincts next time Chamberlain.