Watching the Wimbledon women’s final on Saturday – or, more accurately, watching the trophy ceremony – I was reminded of the similarities between tennis and writing. The player holding the trophy, Iga Świątek, was having, until that afternoon, a disappointing year, with not a single tournament win. Her ranking had dropped from #2 to #8. But in less than an hour, as the commentator Mary Jo Fernandez noted, all those losses disappeared in the light of this great triumph.
It's the same in writing. You send out a manuscript – or a story, or an essay – and one acceptance wipes out all the rejections that preceded it. The difference between the two fields is that in sports, talent is always rewarded – talent plus hard work and dedication – while in writing it’s popularity that reigns supreme. Talent often plays a role, but brilliance – the game-changer (literally) on the playing field – frequently goes unappreciated on the page.
