Expose Yourself

Last night I made spicy Thai chicken curry and served it over quinoa. So what, you ask? For one thing, I am definitely not a foodie and even more assuredly, not a great chef. B) My mother was a terrible cook whose idea of a gourmet meal involved ground beef smothered in a can of Campbell’s vegetable soup. And thirdly, I spent my formative cooking years in Nebraska. For the uninitiated: most indigenous Nebraska meals involve a slab of meat, a copious serving of potatoes, bread and gravy, Jello to represent the fruit/vegetable group and anything with sour cream, cream of mushroom soup and/or Velveeta. Finish it off with thick hunks of cake or pie.

In other words, cooking low-calorie, high-nutrition, spicy, delicious, ethnic meals doesn’t come naturally to me. So how did I reach this gastronomic pinnacle? Completely by accident.

Several years ago I escaped from rural Nebraska to Boulder, Colorado. I can’t quote the vegetarian to carnivore ratio in the Republic of Boulder but we’d be safe to say it’s higher than in Nebraska. I experienced Indian restaurants, vegetarian deli’s, Vietnamese and even, gasp, sushi.

A string of (fortunate or unfortunate depending on how I feel on any given day) events brought me to Flagstaff where I spend my days working for an environmental non-profit. I’ve gone out in the field with real, live vegans. Exposure involved more than the weather. They’ve fed me soyrizo and scrumptious hummus burritos. One of them even gave me my first jar of curry paste. Without noticing it, my palate and recipe list expanded. It now seems natural to serve eggplant stuffed portabella mushrooms with sun-dried tomatoes and call it a meal.

And so it is with writing. (Did you wonder when I was going to get around to that?) Surprisingly, I didn’t start out with the knowledge to write a publishable book. I didn’t even know what ingredients a person might combine to make a good novel. My first attempts resembled a dried up flank steak with a side of canned peas and overly sweet bread pudding smothered in heavy cream.

I started going to conferences, reading books on writing, experimenting, entering contests, going to critique groups. I exposed myself to all manner of writing influences. I’m now getting ready to serve up a savory read with a blend of spices far more interesting than the salt and pepper I limited myself to previously.

I’m no Wolfgang Puck in the kitchen and any time I get a meal on the table it’s still a minor miracle. I admit I’m not an Ann Patchett, Barbara Kingsolver or John Irving. But if I keep exposing myself (not THAT kind of exposing—mind out of the gutter, please) maybe I’ll keep producing an ever more tasty dish—uh--book. Who knows, I might even try fried tofu next time.

What about you? What kind of silly extended metaphors can you come up with for your writer’s journey?

I Ate the Last Mango in Paris

By Deborah Sharp

Apologies to Jimmy Buffet for stealing his song title for my blog post. I've been humming that tune, though, since I powered through a marathon mango-massacre this afternoon. The kitchen counter looked like a tropical fruit crime scene, oozing with orangey golden juice and chunks of severed flesh.

Sorry, y'all. Nobody thought this was going to be a post about how to make a yummy mango smoothie, did they?

Anyhoo, we're at the very end of the mango growing season in south Florida. Past the end, in fact. These last half-dozen mangoes were over-ripe to the point of squishy; bruised and soft in places where they should be firm and blemish-free. Kind of like my 50-something-year-old thighs, but that's a topic for another day.

So, mangoes. As I stood there, up to my wrists in gunky mango goo, cutting, pulling at the fruit, trying to excavate the still-good morsels from the parts that were plainly bad, I realized the mangoes were a metaphor. Stay with me here, folks. I'm a writer. I do this stuff for a living.

A metaphor for what, you might ask? You might, if you've gotten this far anyway.

Those mangoes were like a manuscript. Okay, I know that's actually a simile, but metaphor sounds better with mango. If I'd been slicing up some sapodilla, I would have gone with simile. As I excised the spoiled fruit and collected a savory bowl of the good, I thought about how similar the process is to writing. You toss out lots of mushy, nasty goop to find the sweet parts, glistening like golden nuggets.

May your writing today be filled with nuggets as sweet as perfectly ripe -- but not too ripe -- mangoes. Even if it's soft and squishy, though, you can always put it in a blender and whip it into something delicious. The manuscript or the mango, either one.

How about you? Any scrumptious nuggets of writing you're savoring today? Your own or someone else's? I liked this line from Louis Lowy's debut, ''Die Laughing,'' describing a comedian who uses humor to deflect emotion: ''He settled for a brick barricade mortared with one-liners.''

Sweet!