The End of the Road for Waterlog

[Tweed]

Possibly the best fishing writer, possibly not.

I'd suggest better to do your own thing, gain that glittering originality than trying to copy somebody else.

A good story helps of course, and all the better if it isn't contrived, written in ridiculous flowery descriptive prose, and and avoiding obvious attempts to portray the author heroically.

I can't wait to read what I reckon will be a cracker.

Got me started too on a first sentence. "Tweed perceived a gentle tinkle, as a wavelet, perfect in both form and harmony, dispersed its atoms in a random yet ordered way, as it crashed in slow motion into the myriad tiny pebbles, that acted as a metaphor, on the shore".

[Santiago]

Hemingway is the only fishing writer to be awarded a Nobel Prize for literature, for a fishing story. So he can't be that bad.

[Tengisgol]

Hemingway is the only fishing writer to be awarded a Nobel Prize for literature, for a fishing story. So he can't be that bad.

I adore reading Hemingway too, not so much his short stories though.

[Scott]

I adore reading Hemingway too, not so much his short stories though.

Funny you should say that because my favourite Hemingway story and possibly my favourite fishing story is 'Big Two Hearted River', which is, of course, a short story. My favourite Hemingway 'book', if it can be called that, is 'The Nick Adams Stories', a collection of chapters from other books (I think) which feature Nick Adams who I believe is supposed to be Hemingway himself. It actually reads like a novel in its own right, get it if you haven't already...

[John Aston]

Criticising bad writing isn't snobbery - it's just taking an informed and justifiable view on the quality of writing. The view is informed by technical standards - bad grammar. mis-spellings , poor structure and excessive use of cliche etc. Anybody is entitled to enjoy a dreadfully written book or periodical - see the published works of Jeffrey Archer and/or the weekly angling press for examples .

Hemingway writes so well I could weep.

[DaceAce]

There are lots of reasons why articles don't get accepted apart from poor grammar and spelling. In no particular order: doesn't meet house style, insufficient 'hook', subject already covered adequately, article not interesting enough, too many other submissions, too short, too long, not appropriate for the publication, poor timing (elderberry fishing in December!) and lack of good pictures. Sometimes an article is accepted but never published. Conversely, sometimes you just get lucky. The first article I ever wrote was for Waterlog and I enjoyed writing it so much I wrote another as a response to an article in the current edition. The first article was held until the right moment but the other was published immediately. Since then I've subjected the angling public to the best part of 3/4 million words.

[Tweed]

Surely if somebody has taken the trouble to write an article they spell check it? And presumably the sub-editor could run it through a spell check?

[Vole]

The troubles with spell-checking are that it won't pick out correct spellings of the wrong word - "hair-brained" for "hare-brained", for instance, also the multiple homophones of "to" and "there"; and that it will colorfully Americanize everything with zees (typed through gritted teeth) and dropped "u"s.

Guidance on the correct way of writing the plural of the name of a letter would be of help to me!
"u"s? "U"s? "U's" (I think not)? Ewes, yous, use, yews, yoos? Help!

[Gary Bills]

As someone who's written fairly regularly for Waterlog, in recent years, I'm obviously rather sad that the magazine, as we know it, will apparently end with the 100th issue; but I'm hoping it's not all doom and gloom, because Medlar is also promising exciting new projects in the pipeline. We don't know what these projects are, as yet; but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they will offer sufficient reasons for optimism.

[Nigel Rainton]

Modern spell checkers use the context of the word and can pick up correctly spelt but wrongly used words. If you change the language setting on your device from US to English, the spell checker uses English spellings.