World Champs

I just want to say congratulations to the Dallas Mavericks. They won the first title in the history of the franchise last night. They've been close before, but this is the first time. It's also the first ring for several veteran players who may have otherwise retired without a championship. Players like Jason Kidd, Dirk Nowitzki, and Jason Terry.

That's like a writer who has been after her dreams for decades finally achieving publication.

Now I've got to go write.

Bracketology

As I watched the announcement of the NCAA men's basketball tournament on CBS last night, it dawned on me that making the tournament was a bit like getting published.

There's a lot of hard work involved, sure, and a lot of waiting for other people to make decisions that you have no control over, and frankly sometimes seem ridiculous, but honestly, it's sometimes entirely inexplicable why some teams make it, and others don't.

You have automatic qualifying conferences, at large bids, and a bunch of other formulae and reasons why certain teams make it, but they're generally quite hard for most people to understand, and there is inevitably someone left pissed off for getting skipped over. This year it's the University of Colorado, Virgina Tech, St. Mary's, the University of Alabama, and I'm sure several others.

Then you have the teams that probably shouldn't have made it, but did. I'm not knowledgeable enough about college hoops to judge this one for myself, but all the experts say that UAB, VCU, and USC don't belong.

Anyway, this needs to be a quick post today, but I think this sounds a lot like publishing. All my published friends say that first you have to write a good book, work really hard, and then there must be a sort of a perfect storm of timing, luck, and fundamentally subjective taste. I don't have any reason to doubt them.

You've got authors like James Patterson (think Ohio State), who can essentially write anything, and it will be published, and be commercially successful. Then you've got authors like Brunonia Barry, or Christopher Paolini, whose road to publication did not go through the normal routes, but who still found success (think Butler, last year). Finally, you've got authors like Amanda Hocking, who find incredible success without entering the traditional publishing waters (I'm not sure I have a perfect basketball analogy for this one, but maybe this would be the winner of the NIT).

What do you guys think? Am I nuts? Did anyone get left out of the tournament that you would have liked to see make it? Is there anyone who made it that you think does not belong?