An Accidental Memoirist

By Willa Goodfellow

People ask, “What inspired you to write a memoir?”

You’d think after two memoirs, I would have an answer. But there was no moment of inspiration. 

I am an accidental memoirist. I never sat down to write a book. They both just happened.

In January 2005 on my way into the doctor’s office, I had a disturbing thought. It was a side effect of the medication I was taking. But paranoia was part of that side effect, so I didn’t mention it to my doc. When I described my other symptoms, she increased my dose.

Oh brother!

This thought was beyond disturbing. It was bizarre. Later that week, it occurred to me that it was so bizarre, it was funny. In my head I started writing a comedic monologue in my head. I titled it, “Bizarre.”

Armed with a yellow notepad and a ballpoint pen, I headed to Costa Rica for an eight-day vacation. By now I was in a full-blown hypomanic episode. Instead of seeing the sights, I spent those eight days filling that yellow notepad, writing one monologue after another. I came home with seven monologues. Halfway through that vacation, I wondered, “Am I writing a book?”

My illness got worse after that. Misdiagnosed with depression and receiving the wrong treatment—well, I was in no shape to publish a book.

It took fifteen years to get a better diagnosis of bipolar spectrum, figure out the right treatment, work on my recovery, and repair my brain before Prozac Monologues: A Voice from the Edge was published in 2020, a comedic memoir of that struggle inside my mind and all the information I learned along the road to recovery.

Meanwhile, my wife and I had bought a little house in a gritty little tourist town on the northeast coast of Costa Rica, the site of that first vacation. In my fragile mental state, I was not able to work full-time. My understanding boss gave me a flexible schedule that allowed me to spend four to six weeks in Costa Rica, once or twice a year.

Our little house in a Tico neighborhood had air conditioning only in the bedroom and office. The rest of the house would climb to 96°F by midday—great incentive to stay in the office, do remote work, read research papers on mood disorders, and write what would become Prozac Monologues. Late afternoons, I would stroll over to the Pato Loco, my sister’s restaurant, for happy hour.

One morning, while eating breakfast on the front porch, I heard my neighbor shouting, “Shut up!” After a minute, he shouted it again, “Shut up!” This went on for a while, until hee turned to stronger language, and then in Spanish, “Shut up! Comprende? Shut up!”

It turns out, he was yelling at a mynah bird. Which did shut up, after he made his appeal in the mynah bird’s language.

This was a story that couldn’t wait for happy hour. I went straight over to the Pato Loco, and told it to a friend who was finishing her breakfast. She laughed so hard that I went home to write it down.

Over the years, I collected stories that I heard at the Pato Loco. No plan in mind, but I thought I might use them someday.

Then in March 2020, COVID entered the world, and my trips to Costa Rica went into hiatus.

I joined a writing group that met by Zoom, using my collected bar tales as my contribution. The stories needed lots of work. But the group kept asking for more. They convinced me that this collection had the makings of a second book. That became A Gritty Little Tourist Town: Bar Tales from Costa Rica, published in April 2026.

I have written two memoirs. Both are funny. Both are filled with stories about Costa Rica. But otherwise, they could not be more different.

Prozac Monologues was scribbled in a fury, describing a scribbled and furious mind. It is the inside story. At 4 p.m. every day, I turned off that interior conflagration and walked through a bright and colorful neighborhood, to interact with people who were having a good time. A Gritty Little Tourist Town became the outside story.

Neither book was planned. I am so much a pantser that I never even planned to become an author.

Now I live in Ireland, down the lane from a pub and coffee shop that function much as the Pato Loco did. It is a place where people gather, stories are told, communication is exchanged, and community is formed. They tell me I should write another book. There are so many stories here. Then they add, “But don’t put me in it!” Yeah, that’s not going to work.

I don’t feel “inspired” for a third book. But it might happen. I expect I’ll be halfway through before I notice.

—

Willa Goodfellow likes to travel. In college she hitchhiked through Germany and cleaned hotel rooms in Liechtenstein. She comet-gazed in Australia and camped in Arches National Park. She gambled in Mexico and won a pasta-making contest in Tuscany. She swam in the Irish Sea. No, she jumped in, screamed, and jumped out. It was cold! She also likes to write. Some of her best stories come from sitting still and listening at the Pato Loco, her sister’s bar in Costa Rica. But there is more to come—today she lives and is listening to pub tales in County Kerry, Ireland.

A Gritty Little Tourist Town
Bar Tales from Costa Rica

Fans of Bill Bryson will love this intimate and humorous memoir surrounding a group of expats as they entertain each other with their stories at a bar in a Costa Rican village. 

Willa and her wife travel to Costa Rica to visit family—but what they discover is far more than they expected . In a sleepy fishing village on the Pacific coast, they meet a vibrant, curious group of expats who have come looking for paradise—or at least cheap beer.

At the Pato Loco, a local bar where stories flow as freely as the drinks, they meet Mama, the blind seventy-two-year-old co-owner of the place; her partner Mary, Willa’s sister, a bartender and installation artist; Richie, the aging hippie whose words are few but weighty; and a whole cast of unforgettable characters who will answer questions like:

• What is it really like to live in another country?
• How important is it to learn the local language?
• How does a tight-knit community face the pressure of development?
• Can you survive dengue—and would you want to?
• Oh, and how do you perform CPR on a fish?

A collection of stories full of humor, heart, and wisdom from unexpected places, A Gritty Little Tourist Town follows Willa as she discovers connection within this community of strangers—one bar tale at a time.

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