I rarely watch football, but I did watch the Superbowl matchup between the 49ers and the Chiefs. It was truly a spectacle, surreal in its disorienting deluge of ads (Temu! RFK Jr.!), the odd synergy of Usher and Alicia Keys, the constant-instant replays, and cuts to Taylor Swift in bright red lipstick. As viewers witnessed in the nail-biter overtime, however, it all came down to winners and losers. In that last quarter-hour, the two teams, exhausted from hours of playing football in front of millions of viewers, had to call on their last reserves of energy to win.
Both teams played well. Both teams suffered injuries, penalties, and the ever-present cameras in their faces. But in the game of football, there can only be one winner. In the end, the Chiefs took the prize.
As in football, there are many more losers than winners in the world of literary publishing.
I started thinking about how often I see other writers sharing publication news on social media, in blogs and newsletters. I do it too. When I get a poem or an essay or maybe even a book accepted for publication, I can’t wait to hit the “share” button and post a link about my latest achievement.
But after I watched the Superbowl, it occurred to me that for every accepted piece of writing, mine included, many others were rejected. The two football teams that faced each other in the final test were the best of the bunch, having beaten all other teams that season. It makes me think of all those poems, essays and stories competing for publication.
So much hype leads up to that ultimate confrontation: your little poem against thousands of others, some from unknowns and some from well-knowns. There are, sadly, only so many slots.
Of course, there are many differences between football and the literary submission process. As writers, we don’t know who we’re up against, so there’s no clear way to get an edge by studying the competition’s strengths and weaknesses. Football teams, however, spend a lot of time poring over each other’s tactics, trying to find the places where they have an advantage. I’m no football expert, but it seems to me that the 49rs played a more intellectual game vs. the Chiefs, who displayed a more rough-and-ready energy. I imagine their coaches trying to figure out the best way to beat each other, an activity that’s unheard of in the literary world.
One way to get at least a vague idea of who a literary journal might choose is to read their back issues, a wise practice and one that editors emphasize. But there are many journals and only a limited amount of time. Most writers I know would rather write than spend hours reading journal after journal, myself included. In addition, this practice lets us know who the journal has chosen in the past, but not necessarily who is sending them work right now, unless the submission guidelines are very specific —“women over fifty who have recently returned from living off-grid in the Alaska wilderness,” for example.
As we all know, most sports, including football, are brutal activities. They take huge tolls on the minds and bodies of athletes. But at least things are, quite literally, out in the open. Teams watch each other play. They learn from each other, strengthen their own tactics, and get better over time. Submitting to literary journals, on the other hand, indeed to practically any publication, is an opaque process. The editors are often not listed on the masthead, if you can even find it. More and more, it seems, journals feel comfortable ghosting writers, even after having taken hefty submission fees.
The word “compete,” according to my 1965 Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, means “to come together, agree, be suitable, to go, seek: to vie with one another for or as if for a prize.” I think of our poems, essays and stories rushing down a field like a team of football players. Only a few will make it to the end zone.
