Contest

The present author - that is, the one who is writing this post - has had no luck over the course of his relatively short and non-prolific existence of getting his short stories published by literary journals both physical and online. Presently, said author has entered his current favourite work - that is, the one he hates the least - into a sort-of crowd-based rating contest where stories are critiqued by contestants and the worst are eliminated over the course of several rounds, until a few remain to be published in a literary journal, and reward their authors with cash prizes. Given the author's propensity for failure, even making it past the first round would be a success (and would be a victory over the odds), and cause a short term celebration which will be quickly replaced, as always, with crippling self-doubt. Such is life. If nothing else, it should be an opportunity to read people whose talent level exceeds the present author, and who are also shorted by the inescapably random, competitive, and long-odds trifecta of the publishing industry. Such, to say it again, is life.