Jo-Ann Mapson

Research, Shopping, and Your Husband Called
and Said Buy Anything you Want.

In addition to the plumbers, carpet guys, and insurance agents combing my house as a result of the latest flood damage, Jodi Picoult is also a houseguest. Jodi, author of a score of wonderful novels including "The Pact," left this morning for Bethel. When she visited Alaska for the first time this past September, she gave a craft talk at UAA, and did a few Alaskan things, such as halibut fishing with her husband, where she spent the day at the railing hurling her guts into the ocean. Before she left, she'd arranged to come back in January to do some research east of Bethel.

"Are you insane?" I asked her. "There is brr and there is BRR, and Bethel in January is extraordinarily BRR."

"It's just as cold in New Hampshire," she said, "and besides, this gives me an excuse to visit you and go shopping."

Shop we did, but not for clothes. Husbands who don't write cannot understand what shopping means to women writers. They do not get that it's not really about the clothes and shoes, although the perfect pair of jeans or Merrells on sale are to be snapped up before someone else finds them. Shopping is about talking and telling secrets and bolstering each other's confidence when it comes to the blank page that must be filled. They don't know that while we shop we tell each other plots and characters and try out our best lines. "Oh, that made me cry," is a response we like to hear from each other. Running a close second is "That shirt makes you look so skinny you have to get it because you'll need it to wear at the National Book Award ceremony when you win for best novel."

Right.

Jodi and I stopped for lunch in the Food Court and ate and talked for an hour. Wouldn't you know it, Jodi got food poisoning and spent the rest of the day heaving her guts out. "This is starting to become an unfortunate Alaskan tradition," I said, but that Jodi, she's a trooper. She was up at four a.m. to catch her flight to Bethel, from where she'd travel by snowmobile to a remote village to do her research. "Does the term honey bucket mean anything to you?" I asked feebly, but she went anyway.

Mention research, and some writers will scowl, and probably say that all they need to know is there in their heads, and hearts. Or if absolutely necessary, they'll go Internet surfing to gather the perfect little factoid to make believable their imaginary stories. When I was writing my second book, I spent two weeks in northern New Mexico, walking down the streets of sleepy old towns, looking in junk shops, eyeing cowboys, listening to people chatting in diners. I spent a whole afternoon inspecting headstones in the graveyard in Taos, photographing, taking notes, and generally steeping myself in that place, that world so different from my own. I did it because I wanted to create a story that respected the land from which it was about to emerge.

In school the potential writer hears the phrase "write what you know" and takes it to heart. That approach may get you through a few books, or if you're Pat Conroy, all of them, but eventually you start to worry, what if there are no more stories? What if I used up all my good stuff in this last book? Then comes the mad scramble to fill up that empty cup. "Write what you want to know," is probably a roomier better credo to live by when you have pen in hand.

In the book I'm currently writing, some of the things I want to know about my characters are: Why did none of these women ever marry? How do they explain babies out of wedlock to their daughters? How do smart young daughters without fathers fill up the gap they no doubt have? What do they think about when they are all alone in their heads, staring into space? At what point do they begin to understand that their mothers are doing the best that they can? Or will they ever feel that way?

To research a subject like moms and daughters you might think that I need only travel into my own heart, but really, writing that story is a much larger endeavor. To do the subject justice, I have to try to know the hearts of many women. This is where shopping comes in-I'll bet you'd already forgotten the shopping thing-and where some of my richest research is done. At the mall-that strange evolution from department stores to this bizarre village, this techno agora, this money-hungry temple I witnessed take root in my lifetime. My son has never known a mall-less life. I can't go to one without feeling a little claustrophobic. Seeing all the racks of clothes make me sweat. I do a trick that I learned from my horse trainer-when you feel scared, look ahead to where you want to go next. As soon as you reach that place, look ahead to the next one.

I often say that I learned as much about writing from my horse that I learned in school. But I also learned a lot by shuffling through the rack of markdowns in Nordstrom. Next time you're there, look at the lone shopper behind you, and wonder what's going on in her mind. And a bit of advice? Stay away from the Food Court.

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