George Gunn
The Open Fund award has allowed me time to think and write the first draft of my second novel, The Vinegar Wind. Although the story is set almost entirely on Dunnet Beach in Caithness and takes place between the Autumn of 1847 and the Summer of 1848 and features a limited number of character the events and themes of the novel are both universal and revolutionary. A young Free Kirk minister brings his wife and six year old daughter north to his new parish of Coombs Kirk on the western shore of the Pentland Firth. The Great Disruption is only four years in the past and the seismic shock is still being felt throughout Scotland. Locally the clearances are well under way and the potato famine is exacerbating the population drain of emigration to America and Canada. 1848 is the Year of Revolution throughout Europe and the north of Scotland does not escape the political fallout. The young Reverend Allan Allardyce is torn between his faith and belief in the cause of the Free Kirk and his growing awareness that religion alone cannot solve the social inequalities he finds rife in his parish. The arrival in the spring of 1848 of over three hundred refugees, evicted from their crofting townships in the north west Highlands brings all these things to a head.
I have been hard at work on the book from January and I am due to have the first draft completed by the end of June. One thing I have found, yet again, is that coming up with an idea and writing a synopsis is the easy bit of the process. What the book becomes as you work on it is another thing. But that is art. The process of creation is a mixture of planning and mystery. As the characters develops — and the narrative’s direction depends on the characters — so the story evolves, more often than not to my great surprise. Having said that, the first thing I did was to create a structure; the novel will be in four parts. So far I have completed the first three, with the fourth still forming in my mind. This represents 93+ thousand words, so far. I estimate it will be over 100+ words. So the novel will be epic in the scale. But you do not weigh works of fiction. You carve them out of your imagination. The secret is to enjoy the journey.
The Vinegar Wind may be set in 1847/8 but it is a novel for now. Everything that happens, every day, influences me. “Now” is a perennial thing. But it moves forward, continually. I am trying to get the poetry of Scotland’s past into the imagination of Scotland’s future readers.
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