I have a lot of memories of my father and I fishing. Now there is one important thing to note about this - we never, ever caught anything.My father used to fish with his father, and my Dad had a some sentimental notion of how nice it was to sit and fish. The difference was my Grandad was actually someone who knew how to fish, and no doubt took Dad to his own secret spots at exactly the right time to catch something.
So when my Dad retired, he went and brought himself some fishing gear and together we went to the closest patch of water and threw in a line. Something wrong with this picture?
Well for a start there were no fish. Nothing wrong with that. The thing is we sat there, for hours and hours - with nothing biting or the bait being taken. Discouraging to say the least - and not all that inspiring to confidence either.
Its taken me all the decades between then and now to actually have the experience of getting a fish on the line. Thanks to my visit to Flinders Island and the experienced fishing guide Dave Freer. It's a hell of buzz to get something, then reel that sucker in!
What has this to do with publishing? Well - I feel like my early fishing experience has kind of given me a bloody-mindedness that makes me slog away at something when I should be packing up the writing tackle and moving to another fishing spot! I have worked and re-worked material or sub and re-subbed to various markets that I should have just written off long ago.
If there is one thing I learned fishing - its that if the fish are not biting Move On!
So how do you decide where to sub material and when to give up on a market? When to give up on a project? Or better yet - how do you pick a likely fishing spot!
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