'Mad Men' cocktail hour: copywriting tours for Viator and creating Mad Men avatars on the side

This week marks my first foray into my new role at Viator, where I've held a copywriting contract for more than one year. I recently received a non-promotion promotion to copy editor, now dividing my hours between writing online tour brochures and editing them. It's great adding more to my skills set and expanding my reach in armchair travel from my Asia and Latin America/Caribbean 'products' (as we call them) to--thus far--the wine chateaux of France and the Gardens of Versailles (or: the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Versailles Gardens, as I noted for style consistency and SEO). Of course, the process of copywriting already incorporates copy editing. Each time I set out to write the introductory summary, highlights and descriptive itinerary of a tour, I reword and rearrange information from the tour supplier, often supplemented with online research. Sometimes I receive nonsensical sentences, such as: "Explore with us the treats of yesteryear with the humble Penang Lobak, the Appoms and Kuihs found only in the Penang backstage." 

That itinerary was supplied for a street food tour that, with some help from the web, turned into this:

Explore the back lanes of Penang off the beaten track, where you’ll taste delightful snacks, drinks and desserts. Infused with spices, Malaysian food showcases a unique cultural fusion of Malay, Chinese and Indian flavors. Try Penang lobak, a spiced deep-fried pork roll, among other savory snacks.

When it’s time for dessert, taste a sweet Indian pancake called an apom — deliciously crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. Or sink your teeth into a bite-sized kuih, a traditional sweet treat made of sticky glutinous rice. Along the way, listen to your foodie guide describe the street-food phenomenon of Penang.

Once in a while I'm given an extra project, like when my editor asked if there were any "Mad Men" fans among us to write a Mad Men cocktail tour of Manhattan. Admittedly, sometimes my online research takes me a bit off the beaten track, as when I discovered this Mad Men Yourself Avatar Maker--an easy-to-use design complete with a choice of clothing, accessories, props and backdrop.

The good 'ole days: chain-smoking and bloody Mary's in the boardroom

Peggy writes new copy while smoking Joan wonders who's that gray-haired pregnant girl.

Don and Megan are hamming it up on another beach business trip. Uh-oh! Here comes Betty!

Ah, yes, back to the task at hand. Here's a screen shot of the final copy, now a 'live' tour on the website and available for purchase. Some of the snappy prose, such as 'chain-smoking, booze-soaked debauchery,' came straight from the tour supplier whereas other phrasing like 'the good old days at the office, sipping a Bloody Mary in the boardroom or taking your clients for cocktail-hour martinis at the swankiest spot in town' are my own.

Continue reading this Mad Men Tour at VIATOR

Ann Patchett incites a riot

I recently read an article in the travel section of the Wall Street Journal by novelist and travel journalist Ann Patchett. Her piece, Did I Kill Gourmet Magazine?, bemoans the loss of a decade of opulence when Patchett was sent to report on worldwide destinations on the now defunct magazine's expense account. With tongue in cheek, she doesn't hesitate to implicate herself in having taken full advantage of her position:

"When I told Sertl [her editor] the trip should include Venice, he reminded me that the opera house in Venice had burned to the ground ten years prior. I said that I still thought it was important, you know, spiritually. He understood."

My girlfriend had set aside the article for me, thinking it both illuminating and funny. I did too. Guilty as charged! And though, as of today, 243 Facebook fans also "like this," less fortunate readers were "infuriated by this self-absorbed, self-congratulatory article."

Even professional travel writer, Kara Williams, aka 'ColoradoGal,' who usually sticks to blogging on destinations, resorts and hotels at The Vacation Gals, devoted her October 17 post to her furor and offense at Patchett's stance. Admitting her envy over the author's good fortune while the rest of us are working piecemeal, Williams is "just shocked and incredulous that she’d put these words on a screen."

Williams calls Patchett "boastful, attention-seeking, and arrogant." Most readers (of the original article and the blog) follow suit with their name-calling. Patchett is cocky, off-putting, obnoxious. Vain and vapid. Self-interested, self-absorbed and self-congratulatory. And to think she made me laugh.

Williams insists Patchett is "not funny to the hundreds of other freelance writers who are also lamenting the demise of good-paying magazines in recent years." While I'd like to count myself among the mourners, Patchett failed to incite in me the hostility engendered by so many others for her "blithely unconcerned tone."

With a hint of irony Patchett does point to her own fallibility: "Did I think about the fact that I was probably bankrupting the magazine?" She reveals that "magazine work was a beautiful party and we all just figured it would go on forever," admitting to her own greed within the context of an industry not unlike any other corporate culture of excess. Call me whatever you want, but I enjoyed the comic glimpse of the heyday and its absurdity.

Patchett's article is "a snapshot of a mostly bygone era," responded Tim Leffel, award-winning travel writer, author of Travel Writing 2.0 and editor of Perceptive Travel online magazine, "the same way you read about the decadence of Studio 54 or Apple Records (the latter having an office with regularly refilled bowls of hash in each office). Or when you watch Mad Men and go 'Hey, my dad’s office didn’t have all that free booze and hookers on call for clients. No fair!' "

Now you're talking. Show me the martinis and shrimp cocktails!