Productivity in the name of Doctor Nostrum

Well, another meeting and we accomplished a ton of stuff. I am so amazed at what we can do in such a short amount of time, even as the janitors of Horace Mann glare at us and urge us to leave their shining hallways.

We made some real decisions today. We could have easily stayed sitting at the catch-22 of most start-ups: we have no money for a space, and we won’t make any money until we have a space. What an ugly impasse! However, we decided not to worry just about location, but to move forward with programming at the same time. We’ll work on some killer workshops and a killer presentation while praying that some angel donor gives us $10,000 to fund us for our first year or so. At the same time, we’ll probably hit up some similar local non-profits to see if they might be willing to offer us some free space as we work out these programs and some funding.

The most memorable idea that took flight this meeting, however, was Doctor Nostrum. J had mentioned this before, but he fleshed it out a little more. While waiting for space, we could easily create a kit that could travel around, providing mobile workshops and accomplishing our mission without twiddling our thumbs and waiting for that angel donor. This kit could be a trunk full of supplies, or an outfit that someone wears, or an ice cream truck that unrolls to produce magical chapbooks of student writing. The kit would be a writing workshop, staffed by three volunteers. One volunteer would help out the kids and document the whole production; one volunteer would be the educator, actually running the workshop and providing some legitimacy to the whole operation, and the third volunteer would be Doctor Nostrum.

Doctor Nostrum would appear in full 19th century regalia, boots and all, the traveling medicine man of old seeping down upon the sleepy hamlets of the rural west. He would advertise his miraculous potion to cure writers’ block once and for all. He would sell, straight from his ample cape, bottle after bottle of snake oil, guaranteed to heighten creativity by 750%. He would tell story after story of his near run-ins with Death – as narrator, as reaper, as compatriot. He would let lose The Machine, a trunk containing the most marvelous of puppets, the requisite Hamlet manuscript, and a music box tinkling literary themes.

That said, if Doctor Nostrum intrigues you or if the idea of actual planning some writing workshops intrigues you, come to our next Programming Club meeting. See the minutes for details.