Cheers, Female Authorship, and Some Dos and Dont's of Submitting Poetry to Lit Mags
There's a lot to love and a lot to loathe when it comes to the aspiring poet of Cheers. But her plight in a particular Season 5 episode lays bare some of the difficulties women writers have faced.
You’re reading Part II of a two-part series on Cheers, Diane Chambers, and literary magazine submissions on PopPoetry. You can read Part I here. Subscribe to PopPoetry to have more articles like this one delivered straight to your inbox!
The Twist: Tales as Old as Time
After Diane renounces poetry altogether in light of his publication, Sam admits that he plagiarized the poem that was published. She is utterly unsurprised, but her exhaustion mutes her anger at him.
SAM: “I did copy that poem.”
DIANE: (flatly) “You are scum.”
He tells Diane that the words he used came from a letter that she wrote him. Sam tells her he never thought it would be published. Diane glosses right over the inherent weirdness of this act, is thrilled to have her work published, and interprets Sam’s action as an act of love for her.
It’s weird.
The way Sam tells it, he only persisted in the charade after it was clear that Diane didn’t recognize her own words in the poem. He decided to “play it out” in order to “rub [her] smug little nose in it.” Charming.
After this point, the episode wants me to be concerned with Sam’s romantic intentions toward Diane or lack thereof. But the whole bizarre situation puts me in mind of so many other more interesting things: male authors cribbing lines from their brilliant wives and girlfriends, the countless female authors who wrote under pen names to avoid scrutiny and find success in a patriarchal world, the 2017 tweet thread about what happened when a male coworker switched email signatures with a female coworker—the list goes on.
Did the white male name of the baseball pitcher Sam Malone help to get Diane’s words published in the first place? It’s certainly possible. That’s been the experience of so many women throughout time. And Diane seems satisfied for the moment even though Sam will get all the credit and any benefits (real or imagined) of having his name on the page.
Why isn’t she angrier about this? Probably because it’s 1986 and she’s just happy to have her work in the world as an unknown woman writer. She joins a long line of women whose paths to authorship have been dependent on or obscured and co-opted by men.
Diane’s Dos
Leaving the question of whether or not one can or should write under an assumed name or allow others to benefit from their creative work, you can still learn from Diane Chambers’ experience in the literary world. As you journey through the often daunting landscape of literary publishing, avoid doing the following to increase your chances of success and your chances of remaining a good and kind literary citizen:
Do believe in yourself wildly, against all odds.
No one else will ever care for, understand, and believe in your work as much as you do, and that’s a good thing. You will also reap the most benefit from your writing life, too, whether you publish or not: the reward for the creative life is the creative life, as Julia Cameron has written.
Diane’s attitude at the outset of the episode is to be admired, obnoxious as she can be. And her end-of-episode mini-meltdown about her future prospects as a writer ends up being short-lived once she has even a glimmer of success. The best way to weather the storms of creative life is to brush off the defeats and celebrate the victories with wild abandon. Since she works at a bar, Diane choose to celebrate in one particular way that might feel uncomfortably familiar (more on this below), but you do you. Shout it from the rooftops!
Do determine what, exactly, your rejections are really saying.
It takes Diane a while, but she does eventually grasp that she has received a standard form rejection, which indicates that the editors weren’t particularly moved by her work. It’s a hard realization, but a necessary one.
Trying to decide whether or not something is a form letter or a tiered rejection has become much easier in recent years with the advent of outlets like RejectionWiki, which, had she had access to it, might have short-circuited Sam and Diane’s whole obnoxious bet, had it existed way back when.
When you receive a “no,” take the time to compare it to rejections other writers have received from the same journal and other rejections you’ve gotten from the same journal in the past if you submitted there before. Critically, read the instructions that are included with the letter as well, if any. If it says to wait six months before submitting, adhere to that; if the editor says they would like to see more of your work in the future, take them up on it!
Do think of rejection letters as “soon-to-be-accepted letters.”
I actually find this part of Diane’s psychology—reluctantly—to be charming and even useful. If you let rejections destroy you, you’re missing the point of writing. Tying your desire to create to your ability to publish and receive acceptance letters is a guaranteed recipe for burnout. Write because you must, and when you get a rejection letter, tell yourself it’s putting you one step close to acceptance.
This isn’t to say that you should dash off a poem, then immediately send it out for publication and stubbornly insist on its greatness for years without ever considering if it should be revised as you go along.
Submitting the same poem to the same journal without revisions is usually a waste of time, and it’s always worth considering whether or not your work could, well, use some work. But thinking to yourself, “That’s ok. I’ll get published there one day” is a solid way to go about your creative life.
Diane’s Don’ts
Don’t forget to research the literary journals you submit to.
From the moment Diane notes that Szygy is devoted to “cutting-edge” poetry, you know she won’t succeed in having her work published there. It hurts, but it seems that Diane is a woman who desperately wants to win the game the patriarchy is playing with her rather than create her own rules. I imagine that her poetry attempts to succeed on familiar terrain rather than breaking new ground, as well.
A thorough review of the kind of work a journal gravitates toward, coupled with an honest review of the kind of work you write, can save you time, money, and grief. You may admire a journal and the work it publishes, but that admiration doesn’t translate into a good fit. Get in where you fit in, y’all!
Don’t be a pretentious asshat.
It’s fine to read Yeats at a bar. It’s fine to be proud of a rejection. But Diane’s assumption that only someone as learned as she is can write poetry is condescending and plays right into the stereotype that poets are highfalutin bores and poetry is only fit to be encountered inside the halls of academia.
Though there’s no need to consider literary journal editors to be godlike arbiters of what constitutes “good” poetry, it’s also best to avoid, on the other end of the spectrum, the assumption that literary journals are dying to get their hands on your work. As with most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle—a point between two poles that slides and creeps from poet to poet and journal to journal.
Don’t convince yourself that any one rejection means anything about you.
When Diane finally realizes her rejection from Szygy was a form rejection that anyone could get (including sweet but simple Woody), she all but renounces the art form altogether. It’s too much, man!
Sometimes literary journals encourage writers to “keep writing” in their rejections, which I find to be quite unnecessary and bordering on the offensive—is the implication of such sentiments that a rejection from Whoever Quarterly is going to send me into a Diane Chambers-esque existential crisis that ends with me burning my manuscripts in a Victorian nightgown? Fat chance.
A rejection might have to do with the fact that your poem is not a fit for the journal’s aesthetic. It might have to do with the fact that it simply did not speak to the person reading through the slush pile. It might be because the editor making final cuts has a migraine. Or it might be because the poem isn’t all that interesting, skillful, beautiful, or moving—our greatest fear. But even if the rejection comes because the poem isn’t as good as it can be, the solution is never to stop writing. It’s to keep writing, keep reading, keep revising, and keep submitting.
Bonus Stereotype: Boozehounds
Once she learns the truth of her “publication” via Sam’s charade, Diane announces: “I’m going to go do what all poets do… Drink myself stinky!” Suffice it to say that the idea that artists, and poets in particular, have to be altered in order to create or simply because they love to get drunk is a negative stereotype with a faint shadow of truth trailing behind it.
If you get something published, by all means, celebrate with a drink if that’s your thing. But don’t feel like you have to be altered in order to create. The poets-are-drunks stereotype is well-worn territory that I have long desired to address at PopPoetry, and several upcoming posts will tackle this issue at greater length. Thanks for reading! Share this post with the creative types in your life and subscribe for more!
