Fishing for Meaning, by John McCaffrey

For nearly two years, starting with the breakup of my marriage, I regularly ventured during the fishing season to a secluded beach along an eastern Long Island bay known for holding good-size striped bass in its shallows. There I would walk, spinning rod in hand, casting and casting, often piercing with my lure the ripples and swells made by rolling stripers. 

Sometimes the fish would show themselves, or parts of themselves, revealing a flash of a fin, the curve of their backs, their bucket-shaped mouths as they rose to the surface and sucked in sand eels, peanut bunker, or whatever bait they were chasing. But my offerings stayed untouched, and during that time my rod never once bent in defiance, nor did my line tighten against a formidable foe. 

Fishing was something I learned how to do and did do with my father, starting at an early age, when we would target fluke and flounder, porgies and blues during summers spent vacationing on Long Island. After college, as often is the case, time spent with my parents, my father, was less frequent, and so my time fishing decreased as well. There were several years, in fact, when I fished only once or twice, and even then the experience lacked meaning. Somewhere along the line, I had lost interest. 

Getting divorced changed that. I needed time to lick my wounds and to figure things out, to be alone but not to feel lonely. Fishing filled the bill. I found solace and solitude in the sport, gratefully distracted as I tried to decipher meaning from the elements, from tidal currents, wind directions, and moon phases. Fishing served as a guided mediation, helping me navigate through the pain, allowing my subconscious to work on deeper problems while my conscious self was concerned with the mechanisms of angling. 

Perhaps because I was so grateful to feel better while I was fishing, I didn’t feel bad about not catching fish. But as I began to heal emotionally, when my head finally held more answers than questions, it began to bother me. No longer was I satisfied to return home empty, to not even entice a strike from a striper. Yet I did not change my approach, my tackle, or my mind-set: I fished the way I was taught, and the way I knew. 

But then I met and fell in love with the woman who would later become my wife. Her beauty matched a pristine pragmatism I admired and needed. Early into our relationship, when she joined me on a walk one morning on the beach and watched my futile casts amid water-breaking bass, she asked me what I was doing wrong. I told her I didn’t know. 

She responded without pause: “Maybe you don’t want to catch one.” She was right, of course, but it took me some time to accept the idea as true, and longer to figure out why. 

Basically, I was conflicted. Ever since I was young, I often felt a sense of guilt when catching a fish, for wounding it during the fight or for taking its life if I didn’t release it. This feeling had gradually intensified as I got older, contributing to my staying more or less away from a hook and line for several years. Yet as my first marriage imploded, I was drawn back to the water, to the sport, and so I fished with a psyche divided: one half desiring the thrill of landing a striper, the other dreading the emotional consequence that might come after. 

I believe this is why I never mimicked the methods of other fishermen who were catching bass, or never once asked a tackle shop owner for advice on a lure or type of bait that would bring me luck. Finally, I realized I needed to make a decision, that I could no longer sit on the fence — either I was going to fish to the best of my ability or I was not going to fish at all. I chose the former. 

And with that decision I began to study other fishermen, I spoke with the owners of tackle shops, I purchased new equipment, I restocked my tackle box. And, not long after, I began to catch bass.

Several years later, I was faced with a similar choice, but this time it involved my writing career. I had worked hard to get an M.A. in creative writing, and after that had worked just as hard to write and publish many short stories. When I figured I had pushed the limit of that genre, I set out to write a novel. It took time and effort, and several rewrites, but I finished a book I thought good and immediately set out to sell it. 

But just as I hadn’t educated myself on how to catch bass, I did not take time to learn about the publishing industry. Basically, I sent my novel out without much thought, using a scattergun approach to get it into the hands of as many decision makers as possible. The result, not surprisingly, was uniform rejection. 

As with my wife’s remark on the beach, it was the words of a mentor that finally woke me up. It was after yet another round of rejections, and I was considering rewriting the novel yet again, when he suggested, gently, that maybe it was time to let go and move on. It was sound advice, but devastating for me to consider. Faced with the realities of my situation, however, the drag on my emotions caused by the constant turn-downs, and the holding pattern it put me in regarding working on new writing projects, I realized I needed to make a decision: move on, or continue to try to market the book. 

I chose the latter, but instead of sending out more queries, I took time to better understand the field, to determine the publishers most receptive to my book’s genre (dystopia), to improve my website and presence on social media, to hone my synopsis, and make my cover letter pop. I did everything I could possibly do to encourage a publisher to accept my novel. And, not long after, one did. 

It is easy to say that the connective tissue between my not catching bass and my not selling my novel was ignorance. I didn’t know (well enough) how to fish for bass or how to pitch my book, so I failed in both attempts. But in each case there was a deeper issue fueling my reluctance to seek out the knowledge I needed. For fishing, it was guilt. But for writing, it was fear. 

Because I feared my novel might be rejected, I did not do all I could to sell it, thus, when it did get rejected, I tempered my disappointment by telling myself it was not the quality of the book that was lacking but the quality of the approach. In this regard I kept up the illusion that my novel was perfect. And with each rejection I retreated deeper into this fallacy, lured, in a way, to the safe and sheltered haven of failure. 

I would like to say that I now fish free of guilt, and submit manuscripts without fear of rejection. Neither is true, but recognizing I have these feelings, and accepting them as part of who I am, has helped me to not be limited by them, to not be held back in being the best I can be, whether it is on the water or on the page.

John McCaffrey lives part time in Wainscott. He is the author of “Two Syllable Men,” from Vine Leaves Press, and “The Book of Ash,” a science fiction novel.