RANT-'o-THE-WEEK:
Yesterday
I finished my half of the first half of a Florida travel guide
update. Today was the deadline. Monday I start on my half of
the final
half. I do halves because I have a collaborator and we take
the existing book—which was written by others a dozen years
ago—and divvy up the pages/towns. I originally wanted to collaborate
with this other writer—let's call her Adele since that's her
name—because she does a lot of travel writing and I wanted
to explore that.
I do
live
in
a
tourist
state,
after all.
Why
the heck don't you take Susan Farewell's Travel
Writing course,
you say? Well, I did read it over years ago when she first
started teaching. But you are right; I should take the actual
course. After all, I get it at a discount. You don't get the
discount but I highly recommend the course. Travel writing
is one of the few nonfiction genres that are fun to research.
And we all live in some place others want to know about, even
other locals.
Adele
and I
put together one book proposal that is making the rounds. Our
first stop, Globe Pequot Press, rejected our idea. Then they
called us and asked if we would do an update to one they already
have in stock. Well, sure. Any time I can get someone to pay
me to do research, is a good time.
But
updating their book has been interesting. Seeing how their
book was put together, what is involved in writing up entries.
What entries to write up at all; their book is a bit differently-slanted
than the one that Adele and I have in mind for ourselves.
Some
observations:
-
Go-kart tracks and miniature golf courses located on prime
beachfront real estate are vanishing fast. Got so I was almost
surprised when I telephoned one with a working number and still
in business.
-
The original authors advised families to "bring a bag
of money"
with them to Florida. That was twelve years ago. Today, bring
two bags of money. One day at The Mouse for two adults and
two kids can run more than $450 and that's if you do not eat
or drink or park your car. And Disney is not even the most expensive
daily ticket. Try the various "swimming with dolphins" parks.
Trust me, it would be cheaper to buy your own dolphin.)
-
Nobody in their right mind buys tickets at the gate. Buy 'em
online ahead of time, almost all the big attractions have special
internet prices. Of course, they are hoping you won't actually
show up to use them...
-
Locals sometimes get breaks, mostly because we can come multiple
times and even in the off seasons. lots of attractions sell
"Come one day, get all year free" packages. Well, sure. I belong
to the local science museum and the local zoo and have not
been to either in a year or more. Free money for them. I live
two miles from
Busch Gardens and cannot recall when I was last there. I know
I have not been to Disney World since 1984 because that's
when I left my old job, which included frequent trips
to The Mouse to entertain clients. Frankly, I was sick of the
place and when I learned that for another bag of money I could
hire a guide to take the businessmen off my hands for the day
while I sucked down rum punches at a hotel bar, I added that
to the expense account. When you take a Lear jet from Tampa
to Orlando and then a limo from there to Mouseland—a process
that takes fifteen minutes longer than just driving over there
on I-4 but which impresses them more—who cares what it costs
to hire some college kid to be your surrogate
mom for the day?
-
Smaller attractions may be cheaper. Or free. Some are silly;
did you put your family of four on a plane to Florida so you
could
play
miniature golf? Or ride a horse? But the beaches are mostly
free and the state and federal parks are cheap.
- But
kids, let's face it, are not interested in, say, the Marjorie
Kinnan Rawlings
historic site, where the author of The Yearling and Cross
Creek lived. They want The Mouse or Universal
Studios/Islands of Adventure ((Adults $71.36, kids 3-9 only
$59.64). They might be reasonable about the Kennedy Space
Center, with
giant
rockets
to look at, or
St. Augustine's really cool fort. But how does that compare
to the Pirates of the Caribbean, with its distinctive
smell of CO2-fired cannons.
-
One of the worst ideas I ran across was a place that let you
feed the alligators OR take a ride on their river in a paddleboat.
The 'gators here were fenced in and, obviously, must be fed
by someone. But letting tourists feed them only encourages
the belief that it is OK to feed alligators, perhaps someplace
else. It is not. It's illegal. It's often fatal. What the 'gator
sees
is
a large
piece of meat tossing a small piece of meat. That's a no-brainer
for a 'gator and 'gators are all about no-brainers. Now, if
the attraction offered a paddle boat ride AND feeding the 'gators,
I might pay good money to watch that.
-
Alligators are not the only Florida natives with IQs of
one. A few attraction owners hung up on me, and Adele reported
that
some
did that
with her too. The usual reason was they they had no time to
talk to us. Now, when someone calls you and says they wish
to update your entry in a family travel guide to Florida—and
you hang up because you are too busy processing customers that
free mentions in books like that brought to your door—well,
that can be fixed. And often is.
But
all in all, a fun experience. And getting to know the state
better is great.
FEATURED
COURSES:
Mentioned
a few up above. But also:
Screenplay
Writing,
by Beth Danasco. This class is designed to help beginning screenwriters
navigate the important pre-writing work of organizing
the story of their potential screenplay into the time-tested structure
almost all screenplays follow.
We
will examine the specifics of this structure and see it at
work in some great films, act by act. At the same time, students
will begin to lay out their own
script ideas using various pre-writing techniques including paradigms, informal
outlines, sequences, and finally, detailed step-outlines.
By
the end of the class, students will have a blueprint for their
first drafts. Better yet, they will have a method for planning
any script projects they may
work on in the future.
Needed:
access to various films on DVD or VHS. Optional reference:
Syd Field’s
Screenplay; Robert McKee’s Story.
I'm
not sure how much longer we can hold onto Beth. She is a
talented writer with other irons in the fire.
She has already
hinted that she may have to pull this course from our catalog.
So, if you were thinking about screenplay writing, jump on it
now.
SCHOOL
NEWS: Nothing this week. |
