Covering that human-driven mess in 1800 words means taking a few shortcuts, but overall, I’m happy with the article, which each and every one of you should run out and buy this instant.

Outside of the check I received for writing CA Fly Fisher’s “The Good Fight” section, it’s clear I benefited from the article in other ways; Little M recently used a word that raised the L&T’s eyebrows, and I only escaped punishment through clever use of reasonable doubt:

“She must have learned it during my many discussions of Klamath “dam” removal. Yeah, that’s the ticket.”

See? Fly fishing’s not just good for your soul. It’s good for your health as well.

See you practicing not saying the wrong things, Tom Chandler

Are the gears turning or jammed?

Yet sometimes I find myself translating the fishing experience into ideas, sentences and paragraphs as it happens — an odd sensation, but one that has become far more common since I started the Underground 6.5 years ago.

The latter “translation” mode delivers less fishing success, but more sentences for the text editor. And a very, very different fishing experience.

It’s likely that some people (notably productive fiction writers) are always in “writer” mode, directly translating their streams of symbols into sentences. Others shift into it.

I wonder if the compelling, directly told experiences of John Gierach suggest he’s always in translation mode (and that he does it well), while the more complex constructs surrounding Leeson’s writing means he fishes now and translates later.

Probably no way to know for sure, and it’s a tough question to ask.

Fav sci-fi writer Walter Jon Williams cops to something similar when he describes his writing process, which involves a translation from symbols into words — a reaction to a writer’s workshop where other writers suggested they thought in sentences (I’d guess Williams is working on a deeper level):

After that I began paying more attention to the way my brain seems to function. When I think, I’m not using a structured, grammatical language, it’s more like I’m laying out a series of Tarot cards. Each card is a symbol, or series of symbols, that stands for a group of concepts or associations. The shape of the array of cards implies a structure and a conclusion. My mind skips from one card to the other without bothering to fill in the grammar that connects them, like a mountain goat bounding from peak to peak without traversing the valleys in between.

I can translate this into English, but it takes a certain amount of effort. I have to add the grammar and explain what the symbols mean. Sometimes my mind gets well ahead of the translation and I stumble to a halt, looking for a word or phrase that got lost. Sometimes I can backtrack and pick up the translation where it stopped; and sometimes I end up totally lost, with people staring at me wondering what the hell I was trying to say.

Most fly fishermen aren’t much concerned with translating their experience into words (though with advent of blogs, that number has grown). For them, achieving “caveman mode” is the most desirable outcome.

The world recedes and the fish come. Simply put, “life good.”

While you’d expect someone’s fly fishing experience to change over the course of 6.5 years, I believe that writing constantly about fly fishing has altered the way I experience the sport.

To Tom the Caveman, the fish are the end result. To Tom the Writer, the goals and the picture are hazier.

Some fishing buddies will tell you I’m pretty intense about fishing for a time. Dave Roberts once remarked that we’d get halfway through a drift boat trip and I’d suddenly straighten up and start looking around, not bored with the process, but not as deeply sunk in it either.

I know that moment, and I think a lot of the fishing reports I’ve filed over the last three years reflect the fact that Tom the Writer/Appreciator is now present as much as Tom the Caveman.

The Changing Caveman

I’ve become more interested in exploring small streams — more interested in what’s around the next bend or how a stretch feels like “home water” — than I am with hoovering every available fish from every available pool.

That’s not to denigrate Tom the Caveman (who could probably stand to bathe more often). Becoming the Caveman is a prerequisite for learning to catch trout, and Tom the Writer’s appreciation for the formerly empty space surrounding the act of fishing is predicated on an ability to catch those fish.

All of this is interesting (at least it was to me as I wrote it), but it also skirts pretty closely to the fly fishing writing abyss: Excessive Navel Gazing.

Which is why I’m halting here, and inviting the Undergrounders to sit back for a minute and try to distinguish between their Caveman and their Appreciator. Given the nature of any population, I’d expect some never remove themselves from Caveman mode, while others essentially live in Appreciator mode.

And for those who flip, how many of you know the moment when it happens?

See you with Zog and the Writer on the river, Tom Chandler.

I’ll spare you the usual Underground diatribe against flying (though if we were meant to fly we’d have been born with our own flight attendant), but an observation is in order.

I don’t sleep on planes, so both ways I was sleepless for better than two full days.

If asked, I’d have told you I was surprisingly good; sharp even.

Mr. High Functioning Sleep Deprivation.

Then the L&T had asked me a simple question, and I consumed better than a half minute staring at her blankly while I puzzled out the words.

The not-so-complicated words.

Sharp as a tack.

Eventually I emerged from the fog; waiting for me was a pile of work and my big, expensive, fast dead desktop PC, which went belly up three days before we left (yes, somehow they know). Time was at a premium, so it stills sits beneath my desk, unworking and untouched while I work on the older backup PC.

A new motherboard is on the way, so by next week, I’ll be wasting the usual amount of time, but on a much faster machine.

Meanwhile, it’s spring in the mountains:

The warm, pleasant days of spring...

See you in the land of the sane (someday), Tom Chandler.

I just wish I knew how to use it for good instead of evil.

I’m writing this from Ethiopia, where the Internet service at the guest house oscillates between appearing to be there (but not really — gotcha!) to not being there at all, which is frankly a lot better than it was the last time.

What lies ahead is the trip home, and while I’ll never look forward to time spent in the flying aluminum sausage, I can’t wait to be back.

Ethiopia remains a beguiling place; a poverty stricken country that is experiencing real economic growth, but still suffers all the usual third-world ills — most of which are on display right along the roadside.

It’s a place that makes me appreciate all I have (and if you read the Underground, you’ve probably got a lot) yet practically demands another visit.

Which obliquely brings us back to the part of the trip that weighs heaviest; we met little M2 at the orphanage and she’s sweet and happy and took to us right away, but at the end of the afternoon the best we could do was kiss her, promise her we’d come back for her as soon as we could, hand her back to the nanny, and try not to trip over the seams in the sidewalk because we were blinking back tears.

It’s not an experience I recommend.

I’m fully capable of ranting about the opaque nature of the international adoption process and the glacial work rate of the agencies involved (just ask the L&T). But I also have to acknowledge the unhappy reality that the fine line between adoption and the outright sale of children appears to have been crossed on occasion, and caution is probably the right course.

At least for everyone else.

We fly Saturday night, and should be at S.F. International by late Sunday, though probably not home until Tuesday or so. I expect I’ll occupy an ecological niche between cogent human being and living dead, but at least I’ll occupy it at home.

See you going home, Tom Chandler.

Posted from WordPress for Android

I’m here to assure you it’s going to stay that way.

In about a week, the L&T and I leave for Ethiopia. The L&T breezes through travel like she’s still on the couch at home, and by way of contrast, I’d suggest the odds are about 50/50 I won’t survive the first plane trip.

(Those who don’t know me think I’m being dramatic, but those who do are planning to confiscate my shoelaces and belt before I get on a plane for twenty hours.)

Between now and the time of confiscation, there is much work to be done — including a website launch, lots of writing, and a few other goodies.

More work, in fact, than can be performed in a week.

While I’m gone, you might not hear from me at all (the Internet in Ethiopia may be deathly slow, but at least it’s unreliable).

Maybe it’s time to enjoy the quiet.

What’s Next?

With Tax Deduction #2 on the way (we go get her about two months after the first Ethiopia trip), it’s natural to wonder if it isn’t time for a life-sized “reboot.”

You know, simplify.

I recently turned off the satellite TV (turns out I only miss it when Manchester United is playing). I streamlined my writing workflow. I spend less time futzing around on the Internet.

Now I’m wondering about the bigger things.

Like my blogs.

A little over a year ago I pulled the plug on my successful Copywriter Underground blog (twice picked as a Top 10 Writer’s blog and twice listed in the Writer’s Digest “101 Best Blogs For Writers” issue).

It’s now the far-less ambitious, less-focused Writer Underground, which I feed only when I feel like it and enjoy a lot more.

The Trout Underground has been a going concern for 6.5 years, and at times it’s functioned as a badly needed outpost of sanity.

Still, I wonder what it’s like to wake up without the pressure to produce a post in the next 48 hours.

A lot has changed over the past 6.5 years — on both sides of the monitor. I work more than ever, and given the circumstances, I’d suggest early retirement isn’t exactly on the horizon.

Also, the Internet has changed; friendlier in some ways and more sinister in others. Broader, yet more clique-ish.

And yes, some interesting new options exist.

Only a fool pretends the landscape isn’t changing around him, especially when so much of that landscape looks so… interesting.

With all that lies in front of me — and taking into account all that’s behind (1,000,000+ words, according to WordPress), I’m not doing anything in a hurry.

But I am wondering if it’s time to do something different.

Perhaps a group blog. Maybe a reboot with fewer posts, but better writing. Or combine the fly fishing and writing blog, then fade into relative obscurity. Or simply write for other outlets.

Wall-to-wall bikini posts?

Perhaps you have an idea or two.

Until then, see you eyeing my netbook power cord (and idly wondering if the overhead compartment would take the weight), Tom Chandler.

“Aw come on, Grandpa. Have a heart.”

Ouch.

I don’t know if I’m necessarily heartless, but after that, I can say my ass stings a little.

Most days, that’s just a funny story. This week, it’s an omen.

You see, we got The Call.

On April 5, the L&T and I are due to appear before the Ethiopian High Court, setting into motion the formal adoption of our daughter’s little sister.

Or, Grandpa, it’s time to get your shit together.

A Tale Of Two Sisters

For those who aren’t up to speed, the L&T and I adopted Little M from Ethiopia several years ago, and despite the fact she’s a great kid, I’d have told you one was enough.

Late last summer, a surprise afternoon phone call revealed Little M had a little sister on the verge of adoption elsewhere (mistakenly, since Ethiopia wants siblings placed together if possible), and that we had twelve hours to decide what to do about that.

Given the value of a flesh & blood sister to an international adoptee, it wasn’t a lengthy decision (though it wasn’t an easy one either).

A little math suggests I’ll be at retirement age when I’m teaching M2 to drive (which shouldn’t kill me) and just a bit older when she heads off to college and starts dating slacker rage haiku poets (which probably will).

Learning To Fly

So on April 1 — after filling out a lot of forms and several (more) alarmingly big checks — we’re flying to Ethiopia.

There we’ll meet M2 (my clever code name for Little M’s sister), stand up in front of a court conducted in a language we don’t understand, and then fly home.

Eight weeks later we fly back, gather up M2, and fly her back to meet the sister she would never have known, who is really into practicing the older sister thing (bossing people around).

I hope M2′s at least a little like her older sister, who is bright and happy and draws people to her like honey draws bees.

Little M has learned a lot in her time here, like Wally will always lick her face if given the chance, and that the really interesting stuff (like ice cream) is kept on the third shelf of the freezer, but more importantly, she’s learned to trust us.

How, I don’t know.

During her first year of life, she watched one adult after another walk away — and suffered more privation in that time than I have in my entire life.

Yet she’s fearless and athletic and climbs anything taller than she is, and without warning, she’ll leap out into space, trusting that her parents will catch her as she tumbles from orbit.

It’s a lesson for a sometimes-cynical dad who is a lot closer to crawling than flying when it comes to the faith in humanity department.

I don’t know what lessons M2 holds for me, though if she spoke English instead of Amharic, I suspect one of them might run along these lines:

“Come on Grandpa, it’s time to learn to fly.”

See you in the air, Tom Chandler.

In other words, it’s the first ideal Blue Winged Olive day of the year.

Some of us wait for the BWO hatch like children wait for Christmas.

Whether the olives actually come off or not is immaterial; we wait for these “first” days like children wait for Christmas, the tension building, our heads spinning.

Every sport has its variants: if it’s not the BWOs it’s the drakes, or the opening of deer season, the playoffs, the World Cup, etc.

The Silk Lines and Paper Hulls blog (a gem I’ve overlooked) writes powerfully about upland bird hunting, and you can almost feel the tension draining:

Mornings were crisp, followed by hot afternoons. A few birds here and there, each a reward for considerable effort. My best memory: a mistake I made after climbing a little too high above a bowl that held a covey of birds. While I sat resting, gasping for O’s and chewing on jerky, I watched the show unfold on my own personal IMAX theater. From a few hundreds yards beneath my feet I saw a point, a single flush, a fallen bird, a relocation, occasional laughter, then another flush, and finally a long poke from way downtown resulting a collected bird brought to hand. After the smoke cleared, the reports silenced and the birds collected, I watched a few strays escape out the back door, those with enough nerve to hold their ground and flip us a furry footed bird. It’s here. It’s finally here.

“It’s finally here” is the kind of statement an old writing friend would have labeled an archetypal phrase — words so heaped with meaning they’re more symbol than sentence.

“The steelhead are in.”

“The drakes are hatching.”

“The BWOs are coming off.”

“Runoff’s done.”

“The trail’s clear.”

“The [insert your archetypal phrase].”

Some build their lives around these phrases, the phone ringing, words coming down the line, life interrupted.

Lately, I’ve missed a lot more of these than I’ve hit, the product of work, a small daughter, and a lot of daycare hiccups.

For those with families and jobs and adult responsibilities, the words don’t lose their impact; you simply lose the ability to drop the phone and run for the door.

Which is why I sat with Little M today while Chris Raine went exploring, and while he’s typically not above sending the occasional taunt, this time he said he caught a few, didn’t see any BWOs, and may have been there too early.

It’s either the unvarnished truth or a friendly gesture from someone who knows the score up here at TU/Man Cave World Headquarters, but either way, it means there’s still hope.

After all, I may have missed the first day of BWO weather (and because I’m teaching, I’m going to miss it Wednesday and Thursday too), but I haven’t missed the BWO hatch, which can run into January.

With a new 5wt to test (and the BWOs represent one leg of the perfect 5wt test), I expect I’ll get a few trout at some point in the hatch.

After all, the BWOs are almost here.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

John Gierach

As testament to his broad appeal, all 16 of his essay books — dating back to the original Trout Bum in 1986 — are still in print. In a small publishing niche — where 4,000 books is a pretty good run for an essay title — Gierach’s hardcovers and paperbacks sell upwards of 60,000-70,000 books per title.

In other words, not only does Gierach have a lot of fans, he’s one of the tiny handful of fly fishing writers (some suggest he’s the only writer) making a decent living in the fly fishing genre.

He’s also an interesting interview; he’s remarkably unguarded, and as a result, the conversation tends to take on interesting shapes. As an interviewer, you’re willing to take a few chances to see what happens.

A note about this interview; Gierach and I talked at length and he also answered a few questions via email, and while I tried to avoid transcription errors, any odd Gierach phrasings or other errors are the result of my frantic scribbling. I did rearrange the order of the larger subject areas, and at times chopped away some of the less-relevant digressions.

Without further qualification…

Gierach On “No Shortage Of Good Days”

Q: In an interview, you suggested your earlier books were cobbled-together essay collections, but that later efforts are actually books that have been pieced out as essays. Which of those best describes No Shortage of Good Days?

Actually, I would say this new one is more on that older model. I think what I meant is that I have a book in mind, and I sometimes write the essays that way. I sort of carry a book in my mind, but it’s not like I have an outline already written.

I’m an instinctive writer; I don’t think about this stuff. I suspect I’m a guy who has been picking away at this same theme for the last 16 books.

Q: That theme being?

My theme is how do you live in the world as it is, while that world really tries to step on that? That’s really the only question isn’t it; how do you live?

Q: You refer to what I’ll call “fly fishing’s class wars” a bit more here than in prior books.

I think I notice it more. I’m more aware of it because I end up stumbling into this other end of it. For the longest time I was just this little blue collar fly fishing hippie, and as I get more well known, I’m suddenly in these places I never dreamed I’d find, or in some cases even existed.

If you’re a writer — hell a thinking human being — you’re bound to ask yourself exactly what this means. And what’s my role, I’m here as a guest, and I paid for the plane ticket, but this trip would have cost a $100K if I’d paid for it, which you couldn’t even do.

As something of a populist, how am I supposed to feel about this?

So yeah, you think about this stuff. It’s just odd. This is how some people do it. We’re all some kind of populists out here in the west, and you have to ask why isn’t this public water?

I don’t know if I have an answer.

Q: Your earlier books introduced us to people like AK Best, Mike Clark and Ed Engle — and did so in some depth — yet the people you write about these days don’t seem as fully revealed to your readers. It that a conscious thing? Did you find people getting skittish about showing up in your books?

The reason is that I don’t know those people as well. I don’t know Jim Babb as well as I know AK Best. I don’t have the decades of history with some of these folks. And I may have said all there is to say about these guys, at least publicly. I mean I know a lot of stuff about AK Best that is none of my business, let alone any of yours, and maybe I’ve exhausted everything that needs to be publicly said.

When you’re writing about your friends, they’re kind of trusting you. I can reveal stuff about myself, but that’s my decision.

And yes, I’m traveling more on my own. It’s the worse recession in 30 years; everybody’s broke.

Q: I’m tempted to label this the small stream book — there might be more references to small streams in this book than there are in your actual small stream book.

I’ll have to check that, but these things are autobiographical, and that’s what I’ve been doing a lot lately.

Q: How do you think you fit into a more extreme fly fishing media landscape?

I’m suspicious of this trend towards making fly fishing an extreme sport. For example, on this book tour, I’m constantly asked “what do you think about the fly fishing film tour?”

I appreciate the adventure and the fishing they’re showing and technically it’s awesome stuff, but that’s just not the sport I recognize. Maybe I’m a little more invested in this pastoral stuff.

Q: That’s interesting. The video guys are trying make a living by going fishing and selling the experience, so in one sense, they’re the new Gierachs, the new trout bums — they’re your children.

I… I guess I can accept that. They’re into a counter-culture head — they live outside the mainstream.

And while I say I don’t recognize the sport, I do recognize those guys. Those are bohemian guys who don’t give a shit what anyone thinks about what they’re doing — they’re doing it for love, and I certainly recognize and understand that.

And those guys will grow up.

Q: In our earlier interview I compared Trout Bum to Kerouac’s On the Road, the idea being Trout Bum afforded fly fishers permission to view the sport — which was saddled with a painfully highbrow image — in a different context. It was possible to see it from the perspective of a subsistence, almost hippie, nearly obsessive lifestyle that also happened to be no big deal.

Again, I heard that a lot — that I wrote some kind of counterculture testament. You weren’t hearing about it, but what was going on was that there was a handful of guys in the West living this way; all these guys were exploring fly fishing as a possible path to enlightenment.

So while I think it’s fair to say Trout Bum was counter-culture, it’s also true I was just reporting what was going on. That’s what journalists do — they pick up the stuff they’re doing and start talking about it.

Q: I’d suggest you’ve achieved a largely iconic status, yet you seem largely bemused by it, especially while someone is fawning over you in a vid…

[Interrupting] Well, what would you do?

[ED: Point taken.]

Gierach on Steelheading

You once said that fly fishing for steelhead was going to be “your next thing.” Have you become one of those existentialist steelheaders?

I do it as much as I can; but I’m in the wrong place. I’m too far away.

I try to get out twice a year; in some years it’s only once. A couple times I didn’t go at all. One problem I had was that I was always trying to fish in the winter, which seemed like a great deal; go out and catch a steelhead when the fishing here was limited.

Problem is the flows are unstable and you plan a trip and the river’s blown out and you go anyway — which happened on one trip, when we probably shouldn’t have even gone. I suppose you’re kind of buffalo hunting — you’re doing something without much chance of success, but it’s there to do, and you might as well do it.

I finally started fishing in the fall, which makes all the difference in the world. You can use floating lines, the fish are more predictable and it’s not as cold.

Still, fishing in winter is really compelling; I recently fished a river I’ve been spey casting with conventional lines without success. I had no idea what wasn’t working, but my fly had no ability to get down.

Someone loaned me a new kind of sinking line and the clouds parted. The casting’s great and you can rocket those things across the river. Of course I’m a fly fisherman, so I came home and got on the phone and called people and told them I’ve got these rods, now what do I need to do this kind of thing?

So the winter fish are hard, but they’re still worth it. They’re huge and they’re bright and they’re raspy and they still have sea lice on them.

It’s worth it. It’s just worth it.

You may only get one or a few, but it’s like rhinoceros hunting; you don’t bag thirty of them, you get your Teddy Roosevelt picture holding it and leave it at that. It’s not about the body count, and more people should probably fish trout that way. They really should.

Q: You’ve been fly fishing for decades, yet when it comes to steelheading, you might be in the same boat as your average reader; it’s something you don’t do often enough to really stay sharp.

That’s right. Especially at first, when I was learning, I’d have trouble. But the last couple of times I’ve pretty much gone out and flubbed the first 2-3 casts, mostly because I was pushing with my top hand instead of pulling with the bottom. I’d remind myself to pull, and lately, I’ve recovered pretty quickly, and then I’m just fishing.

The thing I had to learn about spey casting was this; like so much in fly fishing, people make it more complicated than it has to be. I mean, It’s a change of direction roll cast. You put that loop in the right spot and punch it, and it’s going to go. You just have to remember to pull more on the bottom hand than the top hand.

Q: So why — given the distance — are you still doing it?

I don’t get jaded, but at the same time, I’ve been fly fishing for at least 35 years, and it’s cool to do something new. There’s an enthusiasm. And yes, it’s kind of less important that I catch fish now.

If you really don’t care about catching fish, you should just quit. But then, I write about actually catching fish a lot less than I used to.

My first time steelheading, I fished a week and caught two fish.

Q: You seem to have a predilection for that kind of difficult fishing — you keep returning to it. You fished at least a week in Scotland without a bite, your Atlantic Salmon trips have been hardly any better, and now you’re bombing around the Northwest to catch a couple fish over the course of a week.

When I fish small streams, I tend to catch a lot of fish and that’s great, but steelheading is very different. I know my local small streams pretty intimately and I’ve got the timing down, but with steelhead, you’re suddenly playing chess against somebody who really knows what they’re doing.

Especially when I go steelheading in the fall, I’ll come off my small creeks — which I fish about as well as anybody and I catch a lot of fish, and then I’m not.

And it’s really interesting to go out to somewhere and fish eight hours a day for a week and not catch anything, which is still really interesting to me.

It’s hard and it kind of makes you dig a little deeper — the idea that I’m going to fish my brains out and fish as well as I can and maybe I’ll catch one, maybe I won’t.

I’ve been doing this a long time, and there’s a lot of water within a day’s drive of my home I still haven’t fished yet. The stuff you know still applies, but there’s always some new wrinkle you have to work out. That’s just fascinating to me.

Gierach On Writing For a Living

Q: Editors of fly fishing magazines have admitted their pay rates essentially haven’t gone up since the 70s, and you’re probably one of two writers making a living in the fly fishing space. Have things gotten better or worse for writers in the fly fishing space?

The only reason I make a living is Simon & Schuster. There was a time when it possible to make a passable living freelancing [articles]. But that’s not the case any more.

This book is like my 16th; and they’re all out there making money for me.

The guys now aren’t making much money. I’m not sure I would be able to do today what I did then.

I’m frankly glad I don’t have to figure it out.

Q: What do you think about fly fishing’s online writers, the bloggers and ezine writers?

The quality of the writing is there, but the density isn’t. Something looks good and the idea is there, but then the essay just stops short. I don’t know if people are going to stretch out, or if this is the way it’s going.

Q: For a while you were writing for the New York Times; what’s it like to be a trout bum writing for this monstrous newspaper?

The problem was this; they were publishing one column a month, and that column would get bumped if a football player got a hangnail, and I called them and told them I couldn’t keep writing columns that I wasn’t going to get paid for.

The editor didn’t get it, and so I asked her if she had someone else she could call. She mentioned another guy, and I told her to call him next time.

It was the New York Times and it was very prestigious, and I wasn’t making any money.

Q: In the fly fishing niche — where an essay book is doing pretty well if it sells 4,000 copies — your first print runs are rumored to be in the 70,000 copy range. True?

For my last book I think they printed 26,000 hardcover copies, so if you add in the the paperback sales, that number is probably close (ED: I got the estimate from a well known book distributor.]

Q: That’s a lot of books in this industry. Why have you sold so many books and endured so long?

I have no absolutely no idea why that is; in private moments I’ll start to think I’m really that good, but that never lasts. I really think it’s because I’ve been around just so damned long.

Q: Have you ever heard of Imposter Syndrome?

What’s that?

Q: Every writer I’ve spoken to says that even after their first couple successes, they kept waiting to be discovered for the frauds they are.

Oh yeah, sure. I’m still waiting.

Q: You’ve said you write mostly in the winter so you can fish during the warmer months; is that strictly true, or do your deadlines enforce a fairly regular writing routine?

It’s as true as I can make it, but of course the reality of deadlines keeps me working more or less year around. It would be more accurate to say that I allow myself as much time as I want or need in season to fish locally or travel. And I still get the vast majority of work done over the winter.

Q: If so, do you write every day or chase XXXX words per week, or…?

I spend at least some time on the writing most of the days I’m home. That’s usually composing or editing, but also sometimes writing to editors and my agent and the other business that inevitably comes up. My problem isn’t forcing myself to write because I do it compulsively. My problem is forcing myself to stop for a while when I get stale.

I don’t chase word counts. A few thousand words a day is great (although they could eventually end up dumped or seriously pruned back) but so is a good, solid paragraph. Even a morning where I end up shit-canning every word amounts to progress because I’ve eliminated one possibility.

Q: With so many essays and articles under your belt, do you begin with some kind of formal process (outline, brainstorm, etc), or are you comfortable simply diving in? If so, what do you do when the thing comes off the rails on the 1456th word?

I like to start with an idea and a couple of thoughts about it and then dive in. I’m an instinctive, stream of consciousness writer, so I like to just turn over an interesting rock and see what crawls out.

When a story comes off the rails – and most do at one time or another – I leave it alone for a while. Sometimes it all comes clear the next morning. Other times it takes a month. Sometimes the problem is just the order of the story. A few months ago I had what I thought was a good lead, but it went nowhere. Then I realized it wasn’t the lead, it was the conclusion. Once in a great while a story just stalls and I abandon it.

Q: What writing tools do you use, and are you a stickler about them – or are you largely word processor/editor agnostic?

I use a computer. I wrote hundred of articles and three or four books on a typewriter way back when. I resisted computers, but after re-typing several book manuscripts, I opted for less drudgery.

Q: Any quirky writer behavior you’d like to reveal here for the first time ever (instantly embarrassing or endearing you to my readers?

Nothing all that quirky or endearing. I drink lots of coffee, stare out the widow a lot, talk to the cats, take long hikes on afternoons when I’m not fishing, carry a notebook at all times. I do like to work in the morning when, as a poet friend says, the mind is still informed by the non-linear dream world. I don’t know about that, but I do sometimes go to bed stuck and wake up knowing what comes next.

Q: With the rapid arrival of ebooks, have you wrangled with your publishers over things like ebook or other digital publishing issues? (e.g. some writers have rejected the 75%/25% royalty split publishers are trying to enforce on ebooks.)

I’ve sold ebook rights to some older books (that were published before such things existed) and electronic rights have been included in more recent contracts. I get slightly better than the usual split, thanks to my agent.

Q: Has the rise of digital publishing affected your writing — or the business end of things — at all?

Not that I can tell.

Q: You once said: “I happen to have fallen into this thing where I write mostly about fishing and outdoor sports but I could have gone another way.” You’re best known for your essays, but have you ever thought about branching out into fiction, or even writing a mainstream outdoor book?

I’ve written and published some sporting fiction – most thinly fictionalized accounts of real events. I’ve also written a column for the last dozen years for the Redstone Review published in Lyons, Colorado that you could describe as politics/social commentary. To write a mainstream fishing book I’d have to be an expert fisherman, which I’m not.

Q: How did you end up writing fly fishing essays — a market which supports few writers (and seems to be getting even less lucrative than in the past)?

I started out doing it just for the money while I worked on what I thought would be a career as a “serious writer” (whatever that means.) Then it just became the place where two passions came together and that was that. Also, when I started it was a more lucrative market than it is now. But it wasn’t a business decision. Anyone who takes up writing for the money is an idiot.

Q: You often mention Tom McGuane, Annie Dillard and Jim Harrison as favorite writers in part because they do very well what you’re trying to do. Who else would you recommend to your readers?

Alice Munro (new favorite), Richard Russo, Richard Ford, Scott Spencer, Larry Watson, Ernest Hemingway (the early Michigan stories and The Old Man and the Sea), John Casey, Ethan Canin, Ted Leeson, Tobias Wolff, James Galvin (The meadow), etc.

[ED: Gierach also said -- in relation to Thomas McGuane -- that: I will admit right here in print that The Longest Silence is better than anything I've written.]

Q: You’ve been in the writing business for approximately a bazillion years; what mistakes do you see younger/novice writers making over and over?

Worrying about showing how well they can write at the expense of serving the story they’re telling. The best writing is usually transparent.

Q: Any advice for other writers looking to make a dent in outdoor writing?

Beware of the Internet. If you want to make a living, you have to get paid.

Favorite Child Questions

Q: Can you point to a Gierach book (or even essay) as your favorite?

My favorite book is always the most recent one. That’s partly because it’s still fresh and partly because I’m trying to get better and want to think my most recent work should be my best.

Q: Favorite small stream fly rod?

My favorite for the last few years (ever since I got it) is a 7-foot 9-inch 4-weight bamboo made by Walter Babb of Sweetwater, Tennessee.

Q: Favorite species of trout?

Hard to pick between cutthroats and brook trout.

Q: Favorite fishing truck?

My current 2000 V-6 Nissan Frontier.

Older TU Posts Related To No Shortage of Good Days

Review of No Shortage of Good Days

Gierach on fly fishing’s class wars

Gierach on getting old

Small stream syndrome

Too cheap to pay someone to write

There are all sorts of good excuses for this (nowadays, I come home and feed/bathe/put the kid to sleep instead of writing a report), but in a still-high-water year, I’ve had a long string of trips I’d have to classify as “research” as opposed to “fish catching bonanzas.”

A couple of small stream efforts resulted in some damned interesting new water being found, but due to high, cold water, damned few trout were caught.

The same was true for last weekend’s drive to a snowed-in pass; Wally the Wonderdog loved it, but the fisherman driving the truck mostly got a nice hike out of it.

This weekend, Wayne Eng wanted to scout some Upper Sacramento locations for a couple upcoming guide trips, and while scouting gives you the chance to see a lot of water, you also realize the goal isn’t to hammer a lot of fish, but to find places where other people — presumably less capable waders and casters — might catch a few trout.

Wayne Eng cast-o-rama

We didn’t get skunked, but the trip would have been a success even if we had, which says a lot about goals, expectations, and reality.

Fly fishing writers rarely visit the side of the ledger labeled “paying dues” — the trips where you don’t catch many fish, but sock away the knowledge that pays off later, when the water’s lower, the bugs are moving and the fly fishermen seem more smug.

You can’t “land” a new stream and stuff its face in the camera for a hero shot and you won’t high-five each other at the truck after going fishless on a promising-but-over-its-banks stretch of small stream.

Still, when the water’s lower, there’s a good chance you’ll catch some reasonably sized trout on dry flies, and the concept of “investment” probably applies better here than it does in the financial markets, where different rules apparently exist for different people.

This kind of thing becomes more palatable when you realize every trip doesn’t have to be the Trip of a Lifetime, and that in fact, the whole enterprise makes more sense once you realize fly fishing’s best practiced as a lifetime trip.

So maybe the water’s high and the trout won’t eat dries today, but the heat is here and the snow will melt (a month late), and soon enough, you’ll see how that new stretch of river really fishes. Soon enough.

See you (exploring) on the river, Tom Chandler.

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Requiem For a Vizla, by [Name Redacted]

Among the saddest things in life is that we outlive our dogs.

Sienna was a petulant princess in a red fur coat. There may never have been been a more demanding creature — animal or otherwise. Accompanying her imperious personality was a lot of highly un-doglike behavior.

She would watch (scrutinize actually) television for hours waiting to see animals. If animals or even close cartoon likenesses of animals — like an elephant logo on Animal Planet — appeared, she would charge the television barking, ready to fight or at least sniff. All our TV screens wore nose blotches from these electronic encounters.

She was never once deceived by a human dressed in a costume. Now that it is too late I realize that we should have screened the famous Northern California footage of the purported Sasquatch so that she could have authoritatively settled its authenticity.

The most astonishing example of how attuned Sienna was to animals was when she ran barking at a windblown leopard-pattern scarf being worn by a starlet in a 60′s driving scene.

Demanding? Several times almost every night she would start up a tiny plaintive ” Uh huh, huh, huh” just loud and repetitive enough to wake Janet or me up to re-cover her with a blanket.

Like Chico Marx she loved to rest her body on people. She particularly liked planting her bottom on people’s feet or sitting in their laps. It must have seemed to Sienna that people existed mainly to cushion her from hard objects.

Unlike the good dogs that obediently request permission to sit anywhere but on the floor, Sienna knew that she belonged in lofty places. Even at the Vet’s Office she would automatically jump up on one of the plastic chairs in the waiting room. During a recent visit that included a nail trim her pose moved one of the veterinary technicians to say “Here comes Sienna for her pedicure.”

Vizslas are supposed to be what is called “versatile” hunting dogs; capable of marking and retrieving all sorts of game, including waterfowl.

Sienna would have none of that. Her self-appointed role in the field was narrowly focused — locate and point living birds. At that specialty she excelled. Her nose (the same nose that unerringly knew when you had opened a Hershey Kiss upstairs) was spectacular. She could smell pheasants from a football field away and was clever enough to anticipate their every evasive maneuver. Her fluid grace tracking birds was enthralling to follow.

Once a bird was dead, though, she lost all interest, as if to say, “You shot it, pick up yourself.”

Sienna also drew the line at swimming. She hated even getting her dainty paws wet. Reluctantly she would sometimes wade into the water, but never deeper than her chest. The few times we tried to force her to swim her frantic flailing was hilarious; they became part of family lore.

Like other royals she was afflicted with genetic infirmities of the too narrowly bred. She was allergic to beef and had to eat what we dubbed Klamath Falls Diet: duck and potato dog food.

This rare and expensive kibble was augmented with freshly cooked chicken; smoked during the summer months, crock-potted during the winter. She tolerated this diet (much better nutrition than what is available to most of humanity) but preferred to daintily pull a piece of whatever you were having off a dinner fork.

The combination of her Futaki-horned, overly convoluted ear passages and her allergies necessitated constant otic attention. Something she often provoked by loud and persistent ear rubbing with her paws or on the carpet.

She had a collection of more than a dozen “dollies” strewn about the house; stuffed animals with their offending eyes pulled off. She liked to sleep with them and would carry one into the living room whenever a guest visited or absent family member returned home. She would then insist on a game of catch, never really accepting the part where she had to return the animal to the thrower. Instead she would trot back and then immediately turn her back, forcing you to either pull or verbally command her to drop the animal.

We hear that animals live in the moment; Sienna planned for the future. When all of us left the house for prolonged periods she’d stash food, her favorite being unopened bags of bread; food laid away against the eventuality that this time we wouldn’t return.

Sienna had been such a part of our lives for so long — half of Anna’s life and two-thirds of Robby’s — that it’s impossible to believe that this time she is the one who won’t be back.