Nick Cook

Mary Woodward

Nick, until 2003 the (often cunningly-disguised) chair of Verulam Writers, began his writing career editing his school magazine and also producing characteristic science fiction short stories such as 'Robot Rebellion' in which successfully rebellious robots then went rusty and met disaster.

Led by this youthful love of science fiction he studied Chemistry at university and was by then reading the big names - Asimov, Heinlen, Ray Bradbury and Philip K Dick. However, Nick refers to his choice of Chemistry as turning out to be 'probably the biggest mistake of my life' when he realised it was not going to lead to the exciting and mysterious worlds held out by the science fiction he'd been reading.

Instead he entered the more terrestrial arena of industrial research chemistry with a first job with Proprietary Perfumes Ltd. By the 70's, married and settled with a family near Liverpool, Nick began again to write fiction seriously and joined a writers' group in Southport. The tutor did little except read out his own pornographic fiction for admiration but he did, however, introduce Nick to the work of Clifford Symak who has been a big influence on him. He now began sending out short stories to agents and magazines.

He then went on to join a writers' group in Crosby and succeeded rapidly in winning their Writer of the Year award, a prize given for work of a consistently high quality over the whole year. More achievement followed with a fantasy story read on Radio Merseyside.

By now Nick was starting work on a novel - finding time to work on Saturday mornings in the Brown Library in central Liverpool. He also became a correspondence student of Bill Stanton, a writer who had led a workshop on style and technique at the annual writing symposium organised by the Crosby group with other Northern writing groups. This course was brilliant and taught him a great deal, says Nick, until he realised he was beginning to write too much like his teacher.

By this point career organisation meant Nick had moved to work for Kodak in Harrow and was living where he lives now in Hemel Hempstead...where one day he noticed a publicity poster for Verulam Writers in the local library. He rang - the number was Colleen's who said he sounded young - this alone, he says, was enough to commit him to Verulam Writers. In the early eighties the group was meeting, as now, in St Michael's though it was different in other ways...particularly in the gender balance, then mainly being made up of women writing women's fiction.

Nick, by now settled into his new job and home, expected to pick up his writing where he'd left off...with short fantasy and science fiction. Developments at work meant, however, that he had become more deeply involved in Health and Safety issues; through this he became acquainted with journals such as ROSPA's Occupation Safety and Health (OSH). This new professional responsibility coupled with fresh insights into the possibilities of non-fiction writing gleaned from reading Creative Non Fiction encouraged Nick to start writing a new type of material which applied the techniques of fiction to non-fiction writing.

His first piece in this area - 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes' - was on the history of environmental pollution. It was published in ROSPA's newspaper format publication WRAP (Work, Rest and Play). However Nick had been bitten by the desire to have work in OSH itself and a phone call to its editor then led to a commission for a series of articles on people with disabilities in the workplace, looking at how they coped and management strategies to help them. The first of the series focused on arthritis and included an interview with Marge Proops. Nick simply rang the Daily Mirror and asked her to help. From then he has gone from strength to strength and is now a regular contributor of well researched articles in this area.

He has also, of course, been Chair of Verulam Writers (2001-2003) and will be remembered for his spectacular fancy dress appearances at certain key meetings, the polar bear outfit being particularly memorable. More seriously he also oversaw a lively period of expansion and consolidation for the group. When he took over there were only 13 paying members and the finances of the circle were not in a strong position. New marketing and publicity initiatives helped to remedy this state of affairs. An extra publicity officer was appointed and innovative methods of publicising the group now followed. A new post of liaison officer was created to make sure that first-time visitors to the group were welcomed and encouraged to feel involved; by the end of Nick's first year as chair, membership had risen to twenty one.

Nick, however, with characteristic modesty, attributes much of this success to the work of those on the committee at the time, including Lyn Cramphorne, Jean Gardener, Rosemary Woodland, Colleen Richardson, and Amanda Smith. More visitors meant more revenue. At the end of 2002 the first profit for five years was made. Other improvements in organisation, particularly in the structure and approaches used on manuscript evenings, also helped to develop members' sense of these sessions being worthwhile and helpful. Yet more significant new projects during Nick's second year as Chair included the setting up of the Verulam Writers website which was pioneered by Linda Walsh and put on a professional footing by Chris Lakeman Fraser, Bill Hammond, Kevin Bennett and Ian Cundell. Chris went on to inaugurate alternative evenings at Cafe Monsoon which took the pressure off the regular manuscript sessions and helped to fund the initial launch of the website.

Nick says he feels now that those two years were the happiest and most exhilarating of his life. But he has not given up the Chair to have an easier time...at the moment he is busier than ever - balancing the demands of his job at Kodak and babysitting his grandson in order to find the time he needs to write, as well as for the first time teaching a creative writing class in an F.E. college...all this achieved with the good temper and reliability so well known to Verulam Writers. Recently, he resigned from the post of Chairman but was persuaded to continue with the Circle as President, librarian, reserve secretary etc. He is simply not being allowed to escape.

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