On Vacation? Try this Challenge!
Explore, Pitch & Sell a Story in Two Hours.
My writer’s mind spins with ideas from the moment I wake up; I learned long ago that it doesn’t matter if I’m on vacation–I’m still going to walk or run around my new surroundings and find stories everywhere.
In Rochester, New York, last week while my teen was at a dance intensive, I gave myself a little challenge. I spent an hour walking unfamiliar streets, peering into shops, studying the architecture, talking with strangers. I promised myself that at the end of the hour, I’d come up with an idea for either a magazine article or an essay.
People, it worked! I strolled past Rochester’s magnificent public library and discovered a sandwich board outside the Foodlink Community Cafe
I remembered a recent call for urban innovations submissions from Sonia Weiser’s marvelous newsletter, Opportunities of the Week, and so I walked into the cafe to get a sense of ambience and employees and clients. Then, I walked back to my Airbnb and researched Foodlink and their culinary fellowships and the cafe which offers full meals to anyone with $2 and invites those with surplus income to donate a few extra dollars above the cost of their own meal.
I spent another half hour researching the publication that put out the call for urban innovations submissions, then crafted a query letter and sent it off to the editor. An hour later, on another exploratory walk down Pride-flag festooned Park Avenue, I received an email from the editor accepting my pitch. I’m so looking forward to talking with Foodlink Fellows and staff and patrons at the cafe this week!
Travel provides us with amazing opportunities to find and tell new stories. Over two decades, I’ve trained my brain to spot ideas that answer these three questions:
Is the story new, or is the angle or my style of telling it new?
Is the story relevant to the readers of a particular magazine or newspaper?
Is the story surprising?
Here are a few other stories I’ve spotted while on vacation; I probably won’t have time to get to all of them, so if one strikes your fancy, go for it!
Who is the man behind CatVideoFest, which my teen and I saw at Rochester’s Little Theater, and why does he spend part of his life culling from, and compiling, hilarious cat videos each year?
How and why did Rochester, New York become a safe space for queer folx more than half a century ago?
How do you rework the city’s iconic “garbage plate” into something palatable for vegetarians or vegans?
How many cat cafes (business model–buy latte/pet cats) can one city sustain?