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Travel, Travel books, Travel to Prague

Travel Books

Mona Alvarado Frazier

I deemed today as ‘Traveling Thursday.” One of the things I mention in my profile is that I love to travel. Next month, in 33 days, I will be on my way to Prague, Vienna, and Budapest-in that order via LAX then train between the cities. That photo up there is the Charles Bridge with the spires of Prague Castle up on the hill; in the background.

Few things are more relaxing to me than having a glass of wine and watching Rick Steve’s travelogues or PBS’s aerial travel series. Now I didn’t say the most relaxing, but it’s in the top 5.

For months prior to the trip I’m a madwoman on TripAdvisor and Frommer’s. If I’m booking my own flights and making my own itinerary it’s a 6 month project with fare alerts from Kayak and Bing, in addition to the TA and Frommer’s.

The hunt for the appropriate travel book begins three months before the trip. If Triple A cuts me a good deal I get the book there, but that is few and far between. They don’t have a big selection and they like Rick Steve’s’ books. Now I don’t have anything against RS, in fact see the 1st paragraph, I love watching his show. But his books are 5 pound weights.

I need all available luggage space for my own stuff because I haven’t checked bags for 3 years, after landing in Paris without my luggage for the entire 8 days.I didn’t even need to check the damn thing, but my sisters checked their two suitcases, each, and I’d have to end up waiting at the carousel anyway. Bad decision. But half way lucky for me, I had an extra set of undies, blouse, and shawl in my carry on tote, with my toiletries. Their luggage was also lost, but for only 3 days. British Air shipped my bag to me a month later.

I went through a period of cutting and pasting info from various travel sites onto MS Word and then folding the 3 or 4 pages into my purse. Triple A has some great maps called ” MapEasy’s Guide to…” They’re awesome and the Travel Agent usually gave them to me for free or half off. But this method is cumbersome. The map is 10 inches tall and folds out three times the width.

The perfect travel book has to have a pull out map, not too thick and not papery thin. A transportation guide for the metro, bus, train has to be included. The book has to weigh less than 1 lb and smaller than 8×8 inches. And it has to have pictures, in color and have print that is at least 10 font (really 12 is better or I have to don my 99cents reading glasses). Organization is very important as well as the highlights of the area. If the book throws in history, culture, helpful phrases, and all that stuff then it’s a keeper.

With all that said, I do have one favorite and that is DK Eyewitness Travel Top 10: Your Guide to the 10 Best of Everything. The book is a little over 4×6 and contains all of the above material. The books are approximately 152 pages and less than 1/2 inch thick. With my Borders coupon I usually buy them for $10.

So on Traveling Thursday’s I’ll share some tips and stories about my travels throughout my life, from the first time I went to Tijuana with my friends, when I was 18, to my trip to Costa Rica last year. If you want you can grab a glass of wine, cup of tea, bottle of beer or water and meet me here next Thursday.

books on writing, Renni Brown, Sol Stein, Writing

Sol Stein and Renni Brown- Books on writing

Mona Alvarado Frazier

Did I mention that I’m going to another boot camp for writers? I guess I like being a grunt and going back for more.The Basic Boot Camp, or BBC, took place in October 2010 and the one I’m taking in late March is an advanced BC ( cue the horn for a rousing blast of celebration). A couple of weeks before BBC we submitted ten pages of a manuscript in progress or from a completed manuscript.

During the three day critique and write fest we used two books, “Stein on Writing” and “Self Editing for Fiction Writers,” by Renni Browne and Dave King. I swear I read most of both books before we started BBC, but after the first critique I knew I was in the running for Poster Child of Brown’s Chapter 11: Sophistication. Now this sounds like a good thing-it is NOT.

In writing, a few stylistic tricks lend sophistication to your writing. Two of the big no-no’s if you want to appear ‘sophisticated,’ is the avoidance of the ‘as’ construction and ‘-ing’ additions:
    As she… and
    Pulling off her dress…
Chapter 11 also cautions the writer to avoid -ly adverbs and exclamation points. It might be permissible to have one adverb per page but only one exclamation point per novel.

Now I’ve seen these no-no’s used many times and that’s the point, they are overused, abused, and now no good for novice writers to use. Our BBC instructor cried out “Hack, hack, hack,” when she heard the grunts using these devices.
“But best selling author’s use them…” someone’s voice whimpered.
“Are you a best selling author?” was the response.
Good point.

That night, after BBC, I spent an hour on my ten pages, cleaning up my non-sophisticated ways and went to day 2. After the second critique, our instructor smiled and said I had a ‘point of view’ problem, didn’t I read Chapter 2 of Brown and Chapter 13 of Stein? I’m not easily frightened but I did laugh out of nervousness. She showed me where I moved out of one characters head and spoke out of another one’s body. Once it was pointed out I could see it (at that precise time, because I’ve submitted more work since then, and it has pov scribbled on several pages). Before the day was up each person wore the non-sophistication crown or was the POV queen. It was not all good.

One the third day we spent time on Chapter 2 of Brown’s book. A new phrase entered our writer’s language: RUE- Resist the Urge to Explain. This means when the writer describes a character’s emotion when he/she has already shown it by dialogue and action. The writer comes off as explaining too much to the reader as if he/she doesn’t get the point. If the emotion is shown, the explanation isn’t needed. Made sense.

My personal choice for best of the two is Stein on Writing, as my dogeared text can attest. It’s a large book but useful to have in your arsenal. The glossary of editor and writer terms in the back are handy and there is a chapter on “Triage-A Better way of Revising Fiction.”

It has been two hours since I sent in my 10 pages for the Advanced BC. I await the red line edits and brace myself for more critiques and comments. It’ll be fine, unless the instructors spring more books on writing on us. I can only wear so many crowns.