This year, I’m trying out yet another of my alternate versions of National Novel Writing Month. A NaNoWriMo subversion, if you will. I call it: Na No Mini Mo. I find this acronym delightfully fun to say and, if you don’t think about it too hard, it almost makes sense. Instead of 50,000 words –50,000 awful, sloppy, silly, embarrassing, and sometimes enthusiastic words to comprise a novela (novelette?)– I’m committing myself to 5,000 words. Don’t laugh. It’s a respectable number, especially if you’re as tired as I am, and especially if you have too many jobs, (I do). So! 166 words per day. Sure I can write more, and I may, but only 166 words count.
Nanowrimo – Past: 🐶
Why take on this exercise (this sprint) if you’re gonna reduce a mastiff to a maltese, you ask? Well, for one, maltese probably drool less, and I hear they fit in your lap. This November, in Our Year of the Pandemic Cont’d, I’m not rocking mastiff energy but I know I could make it to the end of the block with a maltese.
Besides, between 2001 and 2012 I raised up four mastiffs. I gamely appreciated the shaggy first, lost the second to a data crash (goodbye Orange Julius the clamshell MacBook), hate-wrote the fourth (that was an experience), and continue to feel great affection for the third, whom I’ll hopefully unconventionally publish once someone launches the type of platform on which it could thrive. (That third nanowrimo is a real pleasure pup.) . . . and NOW this metaphor has run its course!
I’d also like to make note of several NaNoVariations I’ve tried over the past three or so years:
NaNo: Steering the Craft writing exercises edition – “For this round, I’m interested to devote time to masterclass lessons from the indisputable, indefatigable, inspiring, pragmatic, kind, and kinda hilarious Ursula K. Le Guin, via her slim, powerful book, Steering the Craft – A 21st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story.”
While the real NaNoWriMo has a deservedly sizable following, my variations are engaged by essentially just me*. I’m sure there are other variations out there, too, like how I know at least one writer takes part in visual-arts focused Inktober (Hi, Erin! Check out her 2021 spooky Inktober micro-fic here.) I’d be curious to see who else is doing what NaNoWri-wise during November. Maybe this means you? What are you up to? Share with us in the comments!
*Update: a buddy-colleague and his teen daughter have now signed on to NaNoMiniMo
Hi! I’m checking in, after many months way. As I wrote back in the winter, I’ve been taking time off from Whole Heart Local, my trusty blog and web home since 2011. There are a number of projects in the works that I’m pleased to finally have an opportunity to note. Several are writing projects, several relate to paid-work (read: jobbity-jobs), several more are straight-out wanderings, and at least two aren’t mine. Several + several + several adds up to A LOT, hence my continued absence at WHL and well as MIA hours of sleep. My mom, and maybe somebody else, says “you can sleep when you’re dead!” and, while I might not go that far, I’ll admit that I’m proud of what I’ve been able to accomplish recently.
Writing
Edits: Intermediate Fiction Novel Those of you who know me personally, or have met me and asked what I’m writing, will recall that I’ve been plugging away at a novel featuring a 12-year-old, Halloween, and a zine. As I wrote in a blog post for my Fellowship, at 13-years-old the manuscript has out-aged the protagonist. Nonetheless, I’ve got stacks of colored index cards, notes, writer’s critique group edits, and Scrivener’s document files at the ready to make good on completing yet another reorganization/revision. Stay tuned.
Edits: Other Manuscripts You can read more on this blog’s Writer Page, but suffice to say that there are a number of other projects idling on the runway for when the above novel manuscript achieves lift-off, in whatever form that takes.
Fellowship: Writer’s Room of Boston Early in 2018, I applied for a Fellowship at the Writer’s Room of Boston. Writing space is something I’ve long struggled to obtain –especially space near to home. I was honored, grateful and excited to be awarded the Ivan Gold Fellowship for 2018, which means I’m able to access a quiet, retreat space in Downtown Boston, shared with paying members of the room and other Fellows. So far, I’ve been utilizing the space at least twice per week and it’s making a significant difference in my productivity. Equally important, the Fellowship has raised the profile of my creative writing endeavors in an increasingly overcrowded schedule.
An requirement of my Fellowship is to pen WROB blog posts, check ’em out:
Community: Boston Writers of Color This Facebook group, supported by GrubStreet, is comprised of writers in the Boston area. Even though I’ve only been able to make it to one IRL event, meeting other writers of color in my vicinity and learning what they’re working on, struggling with, and achieving energizes me. I’m following and participating in an effort called the Rejection Joy Tally, where people send in notice of their rejected submissions. Related, I attended a Submit-a-Thon event back in March, where writers of varying ages and backgrounds gathered at Grubstreet to submit work to publishers, contests, journals, etc., as well as work on projects to shine them up submission-ready.
Paid Work
Community Liaison at Agassiz Baldwin Community I know that some in the Interwebs-sphere believe that I’m a librarian because I endlessly talk about books, reading, and libraries. In fact, I am not. (I did work in a library during my teen years.) As is the nature of nonprofit work, my role at Agassiz Baldwin Community comprises many disparate elements. My title, Community Liaison, I tend to oversimplify as “writer and charmer” or, even “I talk to people.” I primarily organize and support a nearly 50-year-old neighborhood advocacy group, and secondarily manage long-standing community events; ‘master’ several websites; and, more recently, provide facilitation and communication supports. What I deemed a job for a decade looks more and more like a “life-style.” It’s completely bizarre and unpredictable. I love it.
Associate, Essential Partners I started attending workshops and training at Essential Partners, then Public Conversations Project, to gain skills to help me better serve the Neighborhood Council (see above.) Several years passed and I got in deeper with the EP crew –showing up to pretty much any free learning opportunity they hosted. In 2016, I was invited to take part in a pilot apprenticeship program and BAM. To my surprise and absolutely no one else’s, I’m now officially working with EP as an associate. What am I doing, people often ask? With my super-impressive colleagues, helping people and communities develop the skills and knowledge to successfully engage across difference. (Also, this winter I got to work with two very different communities in NYC and Wyoming –so yeah, there’s that. #wander!)
Freelance Consulting Not sure how to describe this yet as it’s a thing that’s happening almost without my calling it forth. ☺??!
Wandering
Mentor for Institute for Nonprofit Practice I was invited to mentor a Community Fellow student at the Institute for Nonprofit Practice. My bright, skilled mentee and I met a few times during the winter and spring and discussed what I’ve learned working in the nonprofit sector for over a decade, as well as both of our early community building experiences. It was hard to imagine what else I might offer to someone who is already so well prepared to stride forward and lead. In that paradox of imparting knowledge and insight, I gained as much as I shared.
Fan Fiction Theatre Although my affection for fan fiction is apparently never dying, I myself am not really an author of such. Except . . . I am? Or, was! At age ten I wrote a poem in the voice of Samwise Gamgee and kept it because it turns out I’m an excellent archivist of my own work. Good thing: that poem came in handy for the Fan Fiction Theatre, a fun and hilarious event hosted by The Ladies of Comicazi, a volunteer-run “community devoted to consuming, critiquing, and creating comics and pop culture.”
Check out the LOC blog for a full recap of the event. In brief: I read two poems to the great amusement of those gathered. The opportunity for old work to find new value and an audience was a treat.
The Human Library The Human Library is an event that I’ve been itching to host in some form or another, so I jumped at a chance to participate when I saw Cambridge Community TV and the Cambridge Pubic Library had collaborated to run it. The goal of the event, originally out of Denmark, is to challenge prejudice by bringing people of different identities together to learn about one another. “Readers” are invited to check “Books” out for a specific amount of time, and precautions are taken to ensure that the experience is safe and pleasant for everyone. I signed up to be a “Book” and my description was:
Title: Writer, Wanderer, Friend . . . Radical? Excerpt: Meet Phoebe Sinclair – writer, wanderer, friend and radical. She is ready to discuss her experiences growing up during the “colorblind” 1980s, and also to talk about natural hair, fresh food warriors, and the Nation of Islam.
About seven people (some in groups) checked me out for 30-40 minutes each, and I engaged in conversations about what it means to be a radical (which, admittedly, isn’t a title I normally claim); what I write; and most intriguing to me, what it means to wander. I’m still thinking on the experience and would definitely do it again. Cherry on top, I “checked out the book” that is the new Cambridge Police Commissioner Branville G. Bard, Jr. Fascinating.
Podcasts Participating in the Fan Fiction Theatre spun several other opportunities for me to get my wander on. One was being a guest on Paragraph’s Lost. Host Tim Hewitt and I chatted about my high school self and I read several poems that I’d written during those years. Tim’s impressively apt episode description: “Phoebe makes strides to stay an individual while balancing two high schools and a library gig. Parents magazine proves invaluable.” Take a listen.
I’ve also been a guest on the fun, funny, and insightful Ladies of Comicazi Podcast, sharing reactions to the movie Avengers: Infinity War, with particular attention to how Marvel movies’ treat female characters. Take a listen.
Partner Projects
Literally, my partner’s projects. Although I’m not directly involved with David’s music endeavors (I cheer from the sidelines), I’m including them here because GO DAVE!!! and also being exhausted vicariously is 4realz.
Double Star After a year of band and song development, Double Star has launched and will soon be playing on a stage near you (in greater Boston.) Self-described: “Double Star fuses female-fronted alternative rock onto a chassis of R&B inflected punk. With their emphasis on vocal harmonies, effected guitars, catchy melodies, and R&B rhythms, they recall The Clash, Belly, Big Star, Liz Phair, Ramones and Indigo Girls.”
A Midsummer Night’s Dream As Music Director for an outdoor performance of my favorite Bard comedy, David teams up with a Double Star bandmate and other area musicians. The show is being produced by Theatre@First, a volunteer community theatre based in Somerville, MA. Performances continue to the end of June 2018, and you can learn more on their website.
Jacqueline Woodson. If you don’t know her, you should. Not just because she’s one of the premier writers for young people (whose career I’ve followed since I was a high school student), who happens to be African American, who happens to be a New Yorker. Not because her memoir-in-verse, Brown Girl Dreaming, won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2014. But because here’s a woman who can answer her some reader-questions.
Apologies, Ms. Woodson. This photo is . . . lacking.
The first time I saw Ms. Woodson on a tour for her then newly published picture book Show Way, children lined up to ask questions. I was amused. Impressed. A toddler approached the mic in her mother’s arms.
My second experience was at the Cambridge Public Library as part of Cambridge Reads. Children waited patiently in two lines and spoke with bravery, curiosity, clarity, humor, and the desire to know. Be known.
Here we see a fan reading along in Brown Girl Dreaming. No KIDDING.
Okay, I thought, this is a thing. In all the author talks, book signings and panels I’ve attended in my 30+ years, I’ve never seen such thoughtful and relentless interest from children as at Woodson events. Is it because Jacqueline speaks to them as she would any person, child or adult? Is it because the first child asked a question that didn’t even touch the perennial ‘where do you get your ideas’, and broke some kind of good-question seal?
In my experience, in mixed groups of adults and children it’s usually the adults who dominate. Not here. Adults stand back: the true creatives have arrived.
Reading #1: Monday, March 12, 2007, 6:30 PM
Jacqueline Woodson’s Author Visit at BPL Connolly Branch (JP) 2007
“This celebrated author of children’s and teen books will discuss some of her work, including her new novel Feathers. The event will include a question and answer session and a book sale and signing (courtesy of Jamaicaway Books). Co-sponsored by the Foundation for Children’s Books. For ages 5 and up.”
Do your books affect your emotions [while you’re writing them]? (asked by little boy)
Do you research?
Did you need to go to college?
What did you lie about when you were little? (In her talk, Woodson explained that, as a child, she was a terrific liar. She was fortunate enough to have a teacher tell her that, instead of lying, she should ‘write it down, because then it will be fiction.’)
What’s your favorite genre?
Did you have a favorite author when you were growing up?
What kind of books did you like best? (Answer: poetry)
Did the song “Locomotion” inspire you while you wrote your (middle grade) book Locomotion?
Are your characters actual or made-up people?
Which of your books do you like the most?
Who was your favorite teacher?
Why did you write Locomotion in verse? (Asked twice)
Where do you get the titles?
Did you achieve any of your goals that you had in 5th grade?
What advice would you give to young writers? (Answer: Read. Write 2x a day. Believe that you have a story to tell. Call yourself a writer. Show your writing to people that you trust.)
What make you choose writing? (Answer: Couldn’t have a career in professional basketball.)
Reading #2: Wednesday, November 18, 2015, 7:00 PM
Cambridge Reads, November 18, 2015, Fitzgerald Theater, 7:00 PM
“Brown Girl Dreaming—a memoir of the Woodson’s childhood written in verse—is the recipient of the 2014 National Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor Award, the NAACP Image Award, and the Sibert Honor Award.
Jacqueline Woodson is the author of over two dozen award-winning books for young adults and children, including The Other Side, Each Kindness, Coming on Home Soon, Locomotion, Miracle’s Boys, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Hush. She is a four-time winner of the Newbery Honor Award, a three-time finalist for the National Book Award, and was recently named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation.
Cambridge READS, the Cambridge Public Library’s citywide book club, promotes the love of reading and facilitates community conversations about books. It includes book discussions at the Main Library and its six branches, and culminates in an appearance by the featured author.”
Questions (items in parenthesis are my notes):
Do you have any messages of empowerment? (This was the FIRST question!)
Are you still religious? Do you still practice [Islam]?
What inspired you to start writing?
How did you feel when you first saw your brother Roman?
What was your favorite subject in school?
At what age did you fall in love with writing?
Did writing come naturally [to you]?
What was the biggest change that empowered you as a person?
What was wrong with the word ‘funk’?
What was your reaction to meeting your dad for the first time
Does Roman have a different dad?
[What] did it feel like going over the memories after all those years?
Why did you call your book Brown Girl Dreaming?
Was it uncomfortable when your parents got back together when you were older?
How did you feel when you were done writing your book?
Is there one place you hold dearer in the places you’ve lived? (‘Dearer.’ I struggled to contain my internal squee)
Can you tell me the name of Roman’s father (Jacqueline: Sorry. No!)
Everything that was happening around you, did it stress you out?
Did your mom know the walls were painted with lead paint?
Did you like being Jehovah’s Witness when you were young?
Your first [draft] in pencil, or did you type it? (Jacqueline: pencil)
Were you dyslexic in reading as a kid?
What poem is your favorite in the book?
Are you a New England Patriots [football] fan? (Jacqueline: “I plead the fifth.”)
What inspired you to write [the novel] Locomotion?
Are you still connected to your friends from way back when?
Which [of your] book[s] was the most fun to write?
When was your first book published?
Why are you so poet? (verbatim: so poet)
Will you be writing a new book soon?
When your mother died, did you take a break from writing?
If you could pick another career, what would it be? (see: basketball)
Are you still close to your siblings and your uncle?
When do you know when you’re done with a book?
How did you get started writing Brown Girl Dreaming?
What’s your favorite book?
Do you start by writing your ideas in your head?
You know when you were a kid, you couldn’t eat pork. Do you eat it now?
How did you survive without cupcakes?
You wrote a lowercase ‘I’ [on page ?]? Why? (Jacqueline: That’s an error!)
[Which] do you like more, Feathers or Brown Girl Dreaming?
Did you book about butterflies ever get published?
What is your favorite book of the ones you’ve written?
Does your brother Hope still sing?
What was your least favorite poem in Brown Girl Dreaming? (Jacqueline: Those didn’t make it into the book)
What’s your favorite genre to write?
When your brother went to the hospital, did you regret how you felt about him earlier?
Do you ever come up with ideas and then forget them? How do you deal with having more ideas than you can keep up with?
Jacqueline concluded here, but there were more kids who attempted to join the line. They could have gone all night.
So. I look at these two lists of questions and my first thought is: whoa, Cambridge. My second thought: these children (thankfully) have not yet perfected the unfortunate art of long-declarative-statement-masquerading-as-question. Third: I didn’t mean to spend the evening typing out questions (with my thumbs, on an iPod) but I couldn’t help myself. They were too good.
And you, faithful WHL reader, get to share the bounty.
Look to photo’s center. See all those kids? Now double that number.
Some eleven or twelve years into my Boston life, I discovered what I’ve dubbed the Dance Underground. Not clubs. Not classes. Not weddings or any other official-type events. More like dancing in someone’s living room with a whole host of new friends. Or biking down the Southwest Corridor path and discovering a free dance night hosted in a converted garage. That kind of underground.
From the annual Cambridge City Dance Party to the Holi Color Festival, there are just so many low (and no!) cost ways to shake your groove thing. Including one frighteningly wonderful offering in my own backyard.
Modeled after Cambridge’s Dance Freedom and Dance Friday weekly events, Dance JP is the child of two well-organized, tune-toting members of the Boston community. On the third Saturday of each month these ladies and accompanying volunteers rent and set up a function room at the First Baptist Church on Centre Street. There’s food, pillows on which to lounge when not dancing, hoola-hoops, and string lights. And the crowd. Wow, the crowd. Age 0+, age 60+, age everybody-in-between. The smiles and bare feet. The moves and grooves. The leaps and laughter. It’s not something to miss.
It’s not everyday that one gets the privilege of attending the first of something. Especially an explosively popular and successful first.
After six or more years participating in and teaching (on occasion) at the punky, funky, and deliciously grass-roots Boston Skillshare, I pretty much became an acolyte of this unique form of community-based learning. If you’ve met me in person, chances are you’ve heard me proselytize about skillshare’s virtues. Chances are even better that I actually dragged you to one.
I’ll just go ahead and state it: skillshare changed my life.
When I caught wind of Somerville’s inaugural attempt at bringing community-based instruction to the DIY-hungry masses, you know I signed up right away. And by “right away,” I mean if a tornado had touched down at that moment, flinging me and my laptop to the sky, I’d have been no less likely to jab the “register” button.
Ask me a week ago, and I wouldn’t be certain exactly what a holi color festival was. The word is less familiar to me than the idea of a celebration where whirls of color are tossed at participants.
Something to do with India, I’d have guessed . . . a week ago. Something related to celebration. Maybe spring. Maybe love.
At the unlikely location of a bar across from the famous Fenway Park baseball stadium, I discovered a few more of the (American-edition) specifics: Top 40 pop hits, teenagers representing many different racial and ethnic backgrounds, vendors selling spicy samosa, revelers splattered with vibrant orange, yellow, green, blue, red, purple.
The actual activity of “color application” was another mystery, until it was our turn to go through a door into the bright unknown, which turned out to be a dark garage pumping with club beats, littered with empty bags and a dilapidated golf cart. Backdrop to perhaps 100 people, young and not-so-young, vying for bags of sand (“paid” for with raffle tickets that came with the entrance fee, though some people curiously had more than one ticket), chasing and smearing complete strangers with color.
Action shot of grimy, color-filled garage
So what have I learned about the holi festival? Well, it makes for fantastic photos. Also, there’s something to be said for not doing the research, for just diving in and trying something new without the shield of protective knowledge. Sometimes. :^)
The bad news: Below is the only photo I have from the October 31st ride.
The good news: It was our third year taking part in the ride and I was blown away. Hundreds of people turned out, so many I couldn’t keep up with the costumes. Unicorns and a school of sharks and elephants and a lightning bug and zombies and tigers and several boombox trailers blasting James Brown and Loki and lighthouses and a CFL lightbulb and police officers (not official) and bacon and snack cakes and a harem of zebras and Captain America and a bumblebee riding a lobster bike and . . . wow.
Our group meet up at Green Street MBTA station in Jamaica Plain and traveled into Boston proper, where we met the second group and lit up the streets around Mass. College of Art and the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. Then through Fenway and over to Cambridge; Central Square, Harvard Square; ’round to Allston and through Brookline; back to JP. My favorite moment was riding through the Cambridge Street tunnel in Harvard Square, bikes-only, everyone hooping and hollering and shouting their hearts out in the cavernous, echo-y space.
Even if you don’t ride, you gotta see this thing and cheer us on. Next year, friends!
Handcrafted by my partner, two viking ships off to sail the seas
My first Boston Pride Parade was a revelation. Leather clad ladies on motorcycles. Gyrating men in their underpants dancing to club beats. A politician or two shaking hands while proclaiming progressive platforms. Local health and advocacy groups tossing beads and colorfully packaged condoms, littering the streets with flyers and candy.
I was mesmerized. I was amazed. I’ve gone back again and again.
In the decade or so that I’ve attended (and once, marched with Greater Boston NOW,) the parade has changed. Perhaps matured? Strong in its themes of inclusivity, celebration, activism, and pride, there have been -over the years- a noticeable reduction in near-nude men festooning flatbed trucks and an increase in religious communities, families, politicians, and corporate allies.
I don’t know. You tell me.
Even though I don’t identify as gay, lesbian, queer, or transgender, I’m never the odd person out at Pride, whatever it’s current styling. Which is more than I can say for a certain high school history class where I slumped, hot-faced and confused, as my teacher rattled on about how gays couldn’t serve in the military because they were too limp-wristed and lisping. (Way to disrespect our service members, Mr. Name-I-Can’t-Recall.)
I’m so grateful to my alma mater for helping to release me from the tight hold of an inherited prejudice. My four years at an arts and communication college in Boston were a key folding back a metal lid, out from which exploded a beautiful confetti.
Walkers appreciate out-going Mayor Thomas Menino, long-time a friend to Boston Pride
I’m not traditionally competitive . . . I don’t think. However, I will take off across the parking lot with a cart load of groceries to beat you to the car before you’ve registered a race. (Some might label this act with the unfortunate term “cheat.” Thank you, I prefer “strategize.”)
Perhaps it’s no surprise then, that a dance contest is more my speed.
The Jamaica Plain vs Somerville Dance Off is organized annually as a fundraiser in support of the inspiring and impressiveGirls Rock Boston, a summer program that empowers girls ages eight to seventeen to ROCK, while also growing as musicians, women, and individuals (video-link from Austin Girls Rock ’cause these ladies just blew me away, but you get the picture.)
This event is a bonafide competition with actual winners (2013-JP) and losers (2013-Somerville), but I’m not there to score one for my neighborhood, or even for myself. I go to win it for THE WORLD!!!
I have this idea that posting flyers is unique to city living.
It’s not, exactly. As a kid in New Jersey, my family sometimes pinned notices about kittens (FREE!) to the local grocery store bulletin board. Summers, I hand wrote bubble-letter yard sale announcements on bright pink poster paper.
I’d claim flyering in the ‘burbs plays “rarely-visiting distant cousin” to the “endless house guest” of taking to the streets with packing tape, cracked box of pushpins secured with a rubber band, and slowly wrinkling stack of flyers tucked under an arm as one narrow-eyes a telephone pole, wondering how long a notice might stay before someone else covers it up, or rips it down . . .
Phoebe’s flyering dos and don’ts DOdesign your flyer to catch the eye and make good use of white space DO include a call to action (i.e. “COME to our wicked-awesome dance party!”) DO post wherever you find a dedicated board – check libraries, coffee shops, post offices, supermarkets, thrift stores, ice cream parlors, and realtors – and it’s polite to ask before posting if the pizza guy is staring you down while flipping his dough DO use flyering as an opportunity to better get to know your neighborhood AND grab a treat while you’re out
DON’T cover up someone else’s flyer, if at all possible (DO exercise your Tetris skills and shift other flyers around -removing any that have expired – until everybody fits) DON’T flyer near signs that read “post no bills,” especially if the flyer has your name and contact DON’T flyer at colleges, universities, or city offices unless you’ve secured clearance -they patrol and your flyer might be removed immediately (what we-in-the-business call “wasted effort”)
Treats!
Our treat, while in Union Square, Somerville, was to finally get a taste of the popular new donuts I’d been hearing so much about. Lucky for us, there were none of the purported lines or long sold out pastries, and all of the clever flavors, cheerful, enthusiastic staff, and fluffy-buttery deliciousness. Yum!
Phoebe Sinclair Writes 