Hello and thank you for looking at our new site!
Northern non-fiction writers are a group of people who originally met at a writing course, in Newcastle upon Tyne.
We all have different levels of experience, expertise and interests, but have a common interest- we really enjoy sharing our ideas, stories, skills and knowledge in relation to writing for the non-fiction market. Research showed us that no non-fiction writing group met in the Northern area (Berwick upon Tweed down to Yorkshire!) so we thought we would set up our own group!
Our meetings will be held on the first Monday of the month, starting on Monday 7th September 2009, at7.30pm.
Dates up until Christmas are:
Monday 5th October @7.30pm
Monday 2nd November @ 7.30pm
Monday 7th December @ 7.30pm
The venue is a wine bar/pub called Nancy’s Bordello (upstairs room) which is on Argyle St, (turn right, then right again out of Manors Metro station), in Newcastle upon Tyne. This will be an open meeting, to get an idea of what topics/subjectareas people would find useful to help them with their writing.
This is a new site, and we aim to develop it as the group develops, members of the group will be welcome to upload comments, articles, pieces of work and ‘thoughts for the day’ - to encourage and inspire!
We hope you will be able to attend, we are really looking forward to getting a group started, so please come, if you have work you would like to share – please bring it - that would be great!
Best Wishes,
Northern Non-Fiction Writers Group
Good luck with the new group!
Hi,
I’d like to join your group but I spend most of the year in Bulgaria. Would you be able to discuss a way of me being an online member at your first meeting? I have written 38,000 words of a non fiction book. The subject is my husband and I’s cycle ride from the UK to Bulgaria in 2006.
I’d really welcome the opportunity to join the group.
Hi Eileen,
great to hear from you! We have our first meeting this evening, so I’ll share your message with the group. It would be great if you could join us – I’ll ask tonight to see if we have any ideas on how we can develop an on-line group – thats a great idea! Your book sounds really interesting, I know one member of the group is interested in travel writing, so it would be good to hook up with him. I’ll get back to you tomorrow!
Best Regards,
Gill
Thanks Gill. I look forward to hearing from you.
Hi Eileen,
just to let you know that our first meeting went well and we had a good turn-out. There was one gentleman there who is interested in writing a book about a train journey from the North East of England to Russia- so I will put you in contact with him when I have peoples permission to put their e-mail addresses on this blog.
Thanks for your interest in the group, Ill let you know our progamme for the next few months shortly!
Best Regards,
Gill
Hi
I’m also interested in joining your group but not sure yet if I can make the dates.
I’m in the process of setting up a new website called Laughter for Women which will be full of funny stories and anecdotes from our everyday lives as well as how to de-stress and great places for women to go to have fun.
I’m keen to involve writers, old and new, and hope to have a newsletter/advertisement ready in the next few weeks which will give more information about the site and how to contribute. I’ll let you know as soon as I have that available.
In the mean could you post up how the first meeting went as I’d love to hear how well you all got along.
Kind Regards
Dawn
Hi Dawn,
great to hear from you! Your new website sounds great fun – what a wonderful idea! I’m sure we would have a few writers who would love to contribute – me included! I work in Adult Education and have developed and written a number of courses for women, ranging from confidence building, to developing new skills and personal autonomy. I would love to contribute something along those lines if you would be interested.
Our first meeting went very well, we had eight people (from small acorns big oaks grow!) with a range of people with different levels of experience and interests. One person was a professional writer, another writes magazines for the web (who you might be interested to meet) another enjoys travel writing, there was also someone who has been commisioned to write a history of the Tyneside Fire Service, someone else interested in writing about Tolkien, and another lady interested in interviewing people who live in Northumbrian villages, who have old stories to tell! So, lots of interesting, fun, nice people to meet and share ideas with! I’m planning to put together a progamme for the next few months over the next couple of weeks, which I will post here, so please have a look, if you can’t make the meetings, please keep in touch via the blog, as your website sounds really interesting, and very worthwhile!
Best Regards,
Gill
Hi Gill
Great to hear how well your first evening went and what a variety of writers!
I’d love to involve you in the magazine in some way so if you want to email me your contact details including telephone number to info@laughterforwomen.com then I’ll be in touch.
Kind Regards
Dawn
Hi Gill,
This is how I would describe my ‘take’ on our first meeting. I hope you enjoy it.
The night before the second meeting, I had told myself that I was not a typical modern student who did things at the last possible minute. And yet this is how it had turned out. I had thought and thought and thunk and thought what to write, then suddenly decided what had to be had to be. I had decided to type whatever came out from my fingertips on the computer.
Nancy’s Bordello is under 5 minutes from an east-west road that runs just south of the old Hadrian’s Wall. It connects to Byker, a place that now has its own great wall which conjures a sardonic smile from some and a proud smile from others.
The little pub is also under 5 minutes from the Tyne and all that is associated with it. Blockaded in the many sieges of Newcastle, it is now connected to the people of Gateshead who have given us the ‘Blinking Eye’ – a bridge that has a beautiful simplicity of curve. Its elegant whiteness of daytime changes to a night-time purple, red and blue, and so provides a background to our quayside partying. It is an eye, but it is also a smile.
We gathered in an upstairs room with the music so powerful it filled out heads. Four of us women requested the powers that be to lower the sound but it was only lowered when a man requested it – a bit like a comic opera based on a seraglio.
The group certainly inspired, encouraged, discussed and gave useful ideas on our various attempts at writing non-fiction. Books were being planned, another book was about to be published, whilst others were planning a website, articles for magazines, and blogs for supporting a health and well-being website and business. The ex-teachers, fireman and managers seemed to have so much to write about. The meeting was delicately structured so we all felt something was achieved. The first assignment was set – it was sensible, and not too challenging. The forthcoming gatherings were going to be interesting.
This is not the 500 words I had hoped for; but I think that something little and new seems in fact just to have begun in the ‘bordello’ between the great east-west road and the Tyne.
Kind regards,
Christine
Hi Dawn,
that would be wonderful! Thank you! Look forward to reading it!
Best Regards,
Gill