Often a great notion erupts from necessity. Too often we are left with a sunk boat or a broken line. Worse yet, our sails have holes and we reel in garbage.
I'm not a fisherman, but I need fish. I need any fish to put in plaster to make a mold of. Alas, I have no fish and my only boat is a canoe on Lake of the Isles. The canoe is green and my boss owns it. It sits on an aluminum stack with other canoes waiting among tall reeds and sandpipers digging in the trilled earth of reconstruction. I only know the canoe from it leaning on the raised flower bed of the studio in winter, dormant like my ambition. Sometimes I wish anybody could see.
I always thought that sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines in sonnets. It does, but only if you feel. Someone told me once,
"Once more. With feeling."
I felt all right, but I couldn't manage a semblance of it even though I tried. Also, I sing off key.
Pay attention to your boat even if you don't have one. Buoyancy is not a myth. Afloat a boat is good. Waves ripple like songs against even a docked bow. Splash.
I was fishing without bait the other day and wouldn't you know, I didn't catch anything. I made a joke out of it and nobody laughed, not even me.
When I caught my first fish without bait I was all alone and happy and even though it was a little sunfish, I threw it back because it was gasping for water. I've felt that way before.
Follow this lead. Not lead like weight.
I haven't mentioned recently how great the stories in your book are. They are. As in is in the every sense of are. Notice words? Placement of them might be strategic or random. Fiction is just. However, made up stories are just that. A truth glistens at the bottom of the lake like costume jewelry and two stories. One dive is all it takes. Shimmer, don't think about your sunk boat, rather the canoe that waits. | 
