/lit/ - Literature

It's generally a cliche on this board that none of us are good writers and none of us will ever amount to anything where literature is concerned. But is that really true? And if there WERE a good writer here, how would we be able to tell? What, exactly, signifies a talented writer in this day and age?

When was the last time you submitted something for publication, /lit/?

Published anything recently, /lit/?

I've heard it said that the hardest thing about making a name as a writer is just to get your first thing published, whether it's a short story, an article, a novel, etc., and that once you leap that chasm you can sort of use your previous publications to bootstrap up to bigger and better things.

Does anyone here have any experience with this?