Term Extension

Fishing for Trophy Trout, wherein Piscator reveals that the Highway to Hefty Trout is traversed through no matching of hatch, nor lengthening of leader, nor perfection of presentation or imitation, nor naturalness of drift, but through fishing in the dead of night "with a strong line, and not a little hook;" 

~ David James Duncan, The River Why

Fishing is an appropriate figurative extension of the work of the creative writer. Invention (hueretics) is the heart of the creative process, and the work activities of the writer and the fisherman share a number of commonalities.

Tuna Fishing: Homage to Meissonier
Salvador Dali, 1966-7

Humans have been catching fish in the open ocean dating as far back as 42,000 years. Recent archaeological findings indicate that many of these fish were members of "pelagic species," or those fish that can only exist in the open ocean (sharks, rays, and tuna, for instance). While the manner of catching these fish is not known precisely, "researchers speculate that it was done from boats or rafts using either nets or fibre lines with hooks" (Corbyn).
  
Fishing represents an apt metaphor for the work of a creative writer across a number of categories. Fishing methods vary based on factors such as geography, history, and personal identity; this bears a similarity to form as narrative signature, and a kinship with regional literature as a means of community identification. 

Fishing Mosaic: 1st or 2nd Century AD
Leptis Magna World Heritage Site

Like the incalculable number of fish in the ocean, language is expansive and varied. Just as a fisherman embarks on a trip without absolute knowledge of what he may find at the end of his line, or the fibers of his nets, so too does the creative writer approach the creative process without certainty of the day's work. 

Each is a job predicated on repetition. Each is a practice in the art of collection and, paradoxically, diminution and division. The commercial fisherman understands that the fisheries are a natural resource, and so she returns juveniles or spawning fish in the interests of sustenance. The creative writer collects words and, in the interests of fashioning a story, whittles the lifeless prose until the catch is complete.

These practices suggest the foundation for a personal philosophy for, just as fishing can come to represent the "source of enhanced fellowship with both the natural world and humanity," creative writing can serve as a capable conduit to then making sense of that connection (Swann).