muskies

Posted by John Blatchford Jan 13, 2007

Connie Newbauer (Early Childhood Suite101 http://earlychildhood.suite101.com/) posted in one of my discussions and asked me to write something about 'muskies'.

I must confess that, as a European, I had no idea what she was talking about! So I did a bit of research and discovered that she wanted me to write about pike, well - a weird American version of 'real' pike anyway!

The experience of writing this article was very different from all my previous work for Suite101. Normally I start from an idea of my own, some quirky fact or snippet of information, and work up the biology from that (the biology part is 'second nature' to me). For this one I had to look up the biology first, then try to manufacture some sort of 'angle'. I found this hard, and the best I could do was to mention the Polish Christmas Eve meal and the origins of the name of the fish.

For me this was useful, the situation where you are asked to write something - 'cold'.

I will try to respond to all direct requests for articles, and am grateful to Connie for asking me this first time - but I must confess that I find it much more difficult than writing stuff that my own peculiar sub-conscious throws up!