The Great Inkslinger By Michael

Captain Fatty aboard Wild Card
http://fattygoodlander.com/beauty

I’ve made reference to Fatty Goodlander a few times on this blog and his name is probably well-known to most folks who have more than a passing interest in sailboat cruising. He has a column in Cruising World magazine and did a stint on NPR during the summer of 2008. He’s written a few autobiographical cruising books and does a radio show for a Caribbean station.

While I enjoy reading Captain Fatty’s column each month, what makes him important to me is the role he’s played in my writing life.

It has always seemed to me that writers—people we know as writers because they are successfully writing, it’s their identity—just are. That is to say they don’t seem to have a genesis. Sure, you can read writer’s biographies, but I’ve never read one (and admittedly I’ve not read many) that really details the transformation from the person who wanted to write, to the person who wrote successfully—until I read this essay by Fatty Goodlander.

I encourage anyone interested in writing to read it. It is a joy, a real pleasure to read. It is honest and funny.

This essay did two things for me:

Harry Crews
http://harrycrews.org/

First, it inspired me. I read this before we hatched our 5-year plan and it has served since as part of the foundation for my belief that I will be able to earn an income, however meager, selling my words while we are out there. Second, reading this essay gave me cause to explore on the same site the list of writers that inspired Captain Fatty. This was my introduction to Harry Crews, now one of my favorite writers and the one who paved the path for me down a years-long exploration of southern fiction that I had thought ended with Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor.

Thank you Fatty.

--MR