Jo-Ann Mapson

Proust's Madelines, Sherry's Bougainvillea, and My Cocoa

My favorite Christmas gift was a tin of pinon cocoa mix from Bosque Farms, New Mexico. Flavored with cinnamon and chile, yes, chile, it only took one sip and I was sitting in Michael's in Taos with an order of warm, honey-drizzled sopapillas. Walking in warm, dry night air lightly scented with sage. Dazedly staring at an absurdly blue afternoon sky filled with stunning cloud formations. Catching sight of El Pedernal, the mountain Georgia O'Keeffe claimed as her own. Watching low rider Chevies bouncing down the main drag on Friday nights.the cocoa allowed me a mental vacation, which is the only kind I can afford at the moment, but it also reminded me that landscape is many things to a writer.

Over the holiday break I was finishing up Good-bye, Earl , the last book in the Bad Girl Creek trilogy, to be published next December. It says in my bio it "takes place entirely in Alaska." Except, whoops, some other places crept in. I wanted it to be all about Alaska, but as the pages piled up, it was starting to sound like a Fodor's guide, or a crazed Alaska stalker who believes the mountains are sending her secret messages. So the book went to Big Sur, California, lingered long enough for a really great love scene, and ended up back at Bad Girl Creek, the mythical utopian farm where women live together harmoniously and have crème brulee for breakfast. I love that place. I know where every stick of furniture is in the farmhouse, and where certain varieties of flowers are planted. I see the water bugs skittering across the surface of the creek, their feet making little dents, as if they're quilting the water. I know the worn places on the fence where the horses crib. Their mailbox flag that needs paint. The crack in the floor tile in the bathroom.

Every semester I begin my classes explaining that good fiction can't stand on characters alone. That plot grows out of character, that in order to write believable, dimensional fiction, the landscape must feel real, and then there's the matter of dialogue, which isn't the same thing as ordinary speech at all. My students can spend countless pages trying to do things their way, but eventually they come around--about twelve seconds before the class ends. I don't blame them. I was the same with my writing teachers, those old geezers who knew nothing of the world, nothing, the fools! In a strange way, no one can teach a writer to write except the writer him or herself. These very lessons I lecture about generally find the writer anyway.

Take for example, my colleague, Sherry Simpson, who just returned from a real live vacation in Mexico. She's tan and relaxed, and I hate her just a little bit because I wanted to be in Mexico instead of parked in front of my computer meeting a New York deadline. When I asked her how her trip was, she told me she'd come up with an alternate career that would allow her to stay in Mexico indefinitely. "My job could be turning the hermit crabs around so they're facing the ocean," she said, and then spoke of wild donkeys wandering on the beach, tortillas for breakfast, and a hotel maid who spelled out "Feliz Navidad" in bougainvillea blossoms on Christmas Day. One doesn't need a master's degree for that.

Whatever photos Sherry brought back with her, those images of the donkeys and the hermit crabs were the gold nuggets. These a writer can import into a story to make it real. If you're lucky, you get a vacation tan in the bargain. For the rest of us, there's always cocoa.

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