Writing Fiction Tips from Mexico

I fell in love with this place about twenty minutes after I arrived during Easter in 1993. I had traveled by train from Mexico City. The train was not late. If that surprises you, it may be because the Mexicans know better than to post arrival times, meaning the train cannot ever be late. At any rate, the trip took eight hours (the bus takes four, and that ride was my first and only by train in Mexico).

Once in San Miguel, I headed straight to the "Biblioteca," the library I had read so much about in the travel guides. There, I met a remarkable woman and writer named Donna Meyer. Donna had been lots of places, done lots of cool things (including a stint on Broadway in Hair), and was a fountain of knowledge about San Miguel. We bonded instantly. When I returned later that summer with my wife Barbara and two of our four children (the older two were in college in the US), Donna became a family friend and inspiration, particularly to my daughter, MaryBeth.

It wasn't long before Donna asked me to join a writers group consisting of her, a friend named Roy Sorrels, and a woman named Barbara, who has since passed away. The four of us got along amazing well and while I think we all benefited some from the experience, I took from it so much more than I was able to contribute. Donna, Roy and Barbara were all published with multiple books while I was still trying to break in. I've met writers that pooh-pooh writers groups, but for me it was an invaluable experience.

I'm still in touch with Donna and Roy, both of whom I predict will find their way back to San Miguel before we all join Barbara in whatever awaits on the other side. But after talking with Donna that day in the Biblioteca, I realized something profound: I'd been looking for San Miguel all my life, and now I had found it.

Photo by John Warley in San Miguel 11/1/2006

Before I came to Mexico for the first time in 1993, I read a quote that has stayed with me (although the name of the quote's author has not). "If you come to Mexico without patience, you will learn it. If you come to Mexico with patience, you will lose it." I have found this to be completely and totally TRUE.

Mexico is currently in the news for all the wrong reasons--drug wars, cartel feuds, kidnappings, decapitations, assorted violence. And while these all happen, I am happy to report that they happen a very long way from where I live, which is in San Miguel de Allende. San Miguel is in the central plateau about 200 miles north of Mexico City. I fell in love with the place twenty minutes after I got here in 1993. It is an old city dating back to 1541, when it became a crossroads for silver mining routes. The weather here is, in a word, perfect. Its downtown, the "centro," has been a national monument for a century, so little has changed since the days of Pancho Villa. I will be talking about San Miguel frequently in future postings.

My writing studio is on the third floor of a pretty condo. Photo attached, and yes, the view is so inviting that I must sometimes close the curtain to get any serious work done.

Do burros carry firewood on their backs through your town? I thought not. They do here. In fact, whenever you stray off the cobblestone streets and byways of San Miguel, you stand a good chance of running into a horse, a goat, a cow. And roosters? There are more roosters here than people (but that will be a subject for another post).

Now this photo has a bit of age on it (the burro looks much older today, with a sway back and advanced arthritis). But this was taken just a block from "civilization." As for me (the one on the right), I'm in a coat and tie because I have just returned from my teaching duties at the Tech de Monterrey in Queretaro. If memory serves, I was telling a story that bored my children, and clearly bored the burro.