The Room to Write

Since a picture says a thousand words, I'm going to let the photos from this past year do most of the talking for this blog--which I am just getting to the "presses" by the skin of my teeth. The fact that I am writing this entry on the very last day of the very last month of this year sums up how this year felt: FAST! Every month swept in with plenty to do and plan to do during the next month, which usually had arrived already. It's hard to believe that The Room to Write had only just emerged out of a pandemic-encouraged-self-imposed 1-year sabbatical on September 1st of 2021. Since then, we have covered a lot of ground and more than made up for lost time.  We brought the wonderful and talented Linda Malcolm onboard to focus on our efforts to support seniors and veterans in the north of Boston community. That focus resulted in the building of some great relationships and programs from as nearby as Wakefield's Senior Center to as far away as Hamilton's Patton H...

On November 16th the Wakefield Senior Center was brimming with enthusiasm and conversation between two generations that don't always have an opportunity to connect and get to know each other in impactful ways. After several years on hiatus, Seniors to Seniors had made a welcome comeback! “Seniors to Seniors” is a cross-generational event that brings high school seniors and older adults in our community together to get to know each other.  The twenty adults and students who participated in the event had an opportunity to get to know each other over lunch. Each adult got to share some of their lifetime's supply of stories during an interview with the Wakefield High School student senior they were paired up with.   The event was so well received by both the adults and the students involved. Aside from the need to spread tables further apart in the future to make it easier to hear, the feedback was nothing but positivity. Adult participants really enjoyed the opportunity to ...

Wow--hard to believe it's been almost a whole week since the Local Author Fair took place at Wakefield's Lucius Beebe Memorial Library . This has been a very busy week for The Room to Write , but we want to be sure to celebrate having been asked to partner with the library and Whitelam Books for such a wonderful event that brings authors living among us out of the woodwork and into everybody's favorite place: THE LIBRARY! Karen Stern, Wakefield Library's  Head of Reference & Information Services, decided it was about time to give local authors a central place where they would be able to sell and sign their books while connecting with the readers that are so important to them. She asked for our help and we asked for Liz Whitelam's help and it swiftly became a great collaborative event. With a total of 16 authors (four of which doubled as illustrators as well), the library was a-buzz (wink, wink--bees are kind of a theme of the library's:) with local inspira...

We are waist deep into our Senior and Veterans Writing Workshop series taking place at the Wakefield Senior Center and we are happy to say that fifteen participants showed up for that first introductory session and then returned even after being warned that poetry would be on the menu for the second session. Colleen Getty facilitated the Portrait Poetry workshop and we hear from a reliable source that she is very fond of the poetic form. She actually thinks it's fun and at the very least cathartic .  Participants were walked through a simple brainstorming process and then invited to put words down on paper. It was that simple. Getting what is in your head or heart down on paper where you can shape it in a tangible way using words. Sometimes you really have to hunt for the right word. Throw one out, pick another one up or pull something away so that a word that really works is allowed to shine and make a point. That's poetry. It's the whiskey of the writing world, if you w...

 

Anytime you can try to block all else out and focus on your writing, that's a good thing. If you can do it with other writers--that's even better! One way to try to surround yourself with other writers and creative minds is to join various groups and participate in creative events or opportunities. SCBWI (Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) is one of those groups that people don't always hear about and then don't know how they didn't know about it after they do. Often times you will need to leave the confines of your home, go out into awkward situations where you don't know people, do your best to be friendly, ask questions and share a bit of yourself. Sometimes you're simply networking, and other times you're actually making friends or colleagues that will be a consistent presence on your journey.  This past weekend I had the good fortune to participate in a Writers' Retreat organized by the wonderful Shawn Anderson , a volunt...

We had a great time at the Middlesex 4-H Fair in Westford, MA on Sunday, August 28th. The weather was perfect with some sleepy morning clouds breaking way to blue skies and sun that gave us a good excuse to get one of those shaved ice treats they were serving at one of the tents.  Yum!  David Watts, Jr. and Neil Lander , of the Boston Pen People , invited The Room to Write to share their table this year at the fair. They brought their amazing pens and were joined by another pen aficionado named Karen about halfway through the day. She added some glass dip pens and glitter to their already amazing collection. We sat, we ate, kids dipped into various colors of ink and wrote, then typed and went away smiling. It's always fun to present writing and creative drawing through a few more unexpected avenues than young people are always used to. My daughter, Alice, helped out at the table and enjoyed trying out the various pens and typewriters as well. As people tried out the pens we ...