Here’s Craig with all the latest news from our most recent meeting.
Present – Abby, Aileen, Craig, Fraser, Kate, Ian, Richard, Rosie, Sandra, Sue
Apologies – David C, David F, Dele, Roddie, Sarah
Abby took the chair this evening for the first meeting since she was elected as the Chair of the group at our AGM. We welcomed Sandra, another new member, to the group this evening so we began by introducing ourselves, and the name plates that Rosie brought along for everyone proved helpful, too.
The first piece of writing we looked at was ‘An Emperor’s Fate’ by Fraser. It was the opening few pages of an historical novel, set in Ancient Rome at the time of Emperor Galerius, and the first in a series. The extract was well liked, getting straight into the action while still retaining an element of mystery. There were a few points of discussion about the changes in viewpoint, and the use of various titles, which may be confusing to a reader with little or no prior knowledge, but the inclusion of a list of characters helped in this regard.
Sue was up next, reading her story ‘Not Ready For Spring’. This was a lovely examination of a woman slowly coming to terms with the death of her long time partner. Some suggestions were made regarding changes to the timing, to make it seem less like someone just telling a story of a past event and instead make it more immediate, but the emotional impact of the story was highlighted by all.
Richard had a story of boyhood adventure, ‘The Roof of The World’, which he described as being ‘fact-tion’. It told the tale of a group of brothers in 1960s rural Scotland, and the dares and delights they had in climbing the roof of the family barn, their own version of Hillary and Tenzing’s famous ascent. It was very well observed, with some lovely period details and brought back happy memories for some of our group.
We then moved on to discussing group business. The first item was our desire to have more pieces of work that were submitted by group members for inclusion on the website. Abby decided to lead from the front on this, and has provided a piece which will be posted here later in the month. Everyone is encouraged to comment and share this, and future pieces, through social media.
We then moved on to discussing whether there is still an appetite for the taught classes that some members of the group had been attending. The general consensus seemed to be that interest was waning, and that if there was an opportunity to increase the regularity of Nethergate Writers then this would be a suitable replacement. It was agreed that David C should be asked if it would be possible to increase our room bookings at the university to fortnightly. Discussion was had over costs, and whether these should be met from group funds or by increasing the subs, but no agreement was reached.
Abby and Sue then discussed their recent visit to the Dundee City Archives, which Roddie and David F also attended. They were impressed by the volume of information available, but it was clear from discussion with the archivist that we would need to be more focused upon a specific topic in order to best utilise the archive. One suggestion was to select a specific street and use that as the basis for our next collection, with the Nethergate being the obvious choice.
Finally, Craig confirmed that he had renewed the domain registration and web hosting for the website for another year.
