No Wonder I Take a Drink

by Laura Marney

  We were born to it. I first got drunk at age thirteen-and-a-half. It was illicit and new and liberating, and I loved it. We swore we’d never end up like them, they were a different generation, spoiled baby-boomers who’d never had it so good. As we grew up some of my friends drank like the normal Scottish working class people we knew, that is to say, a lot, and some became bona fide alcoholics. There but for the grace of God. I realised that alcoholism wasn’t generational, it was genetic and some of us were doomed.

  To this day I worry constantly that my kids will carry the alky gene and that was my motivation for writing the story. Luckily the book was very well received and has always sold well, but if I had sold no copies whatsoever, if the only people ever to read it were my family, I would have achieved my objective: to write a cautionary tale for my children.

  The importance of setting and sense of place in No Wonder I Take a Drink

  AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR: BONUS CREATIVE WRITING MASTERCLASS FOR E-BOOK READERS

  As publishers we are aware that many readers have an interest in developing their own writing. Laura Marney has years of experience in helping other writers hone their work. As well as being a novelist, Laura is a creative writing tutor at Glasgow University and Scotland’s creative writing centre, Moniack Mhor. We asked her to share some advice on writing, and as Inverfaughie village features prominently in this novel we asked about the importance of setting and sense of place in No Wonder I Take a Drink: what exactly is setting, and how important is it in a novel? What can it bring to the book?

  CREATING A VIRTUAL REALITY

  Sara Hunt: I really enjoyed reading about the Highland village and it seemed to me that Inverfaughie was instrumental in both the plot and the character development.

  Laura Marney: I enjoyed writing about Inverfaughie, if only it really existed! And yes, it was integral for setting.

  SH: Can you start by explaining the concept of setting in a story?

  LM: I suppose setting is everything that describes the location where the story takes place, up to and including the year, the politics, society and culture of the time and place, the season, the flora, the fauna, even the weather – and all of these elements are interdependent.

  SH: Ok, let’s go through each of these various elements. To what effect have you used location in your storyline?

  LM: Location can have a huge influence on the plot and character: for example, the differences between urban and rural locations, in this case Glasgow and Inverfaughie. A city or country setting might affect pace of life, whether the environment is crowded or isolated, whether neighbours are anonymous or nosy.

  SH: You’ve included several examples of comparisons between city and country. When Trixie considers how Jackie drives her to Glasgow, she compares this against her experience of her Glasgow neighbours:

  ‘If I’d asked my neighbours in Glasgow if they’d take me to the west Highlands in the middle of the night, even with this emergency, I knew the kind of response I would’ve got.’

  LM: Yes, and the isolated location means a lack of shopping options, which forces Trixie’s relationship with Jenny.

  SH: Did you deliberately give Trixie all these problems with Jenny:

  ‘Jenny’s was the only shop for miles and she knew it... For McSpor, read limited choice and damned expensive. She only had one wee tray of knackered old carrots and turnips, and she was charging an arm and a leg for them.’

  Following a dispute with Jenny, Trixie is forced to back down:

  ‘I held out two days but the freezer was getting empty and I realised that if I wanted to eat I was going to have to face her.’

  Worse than starvation, Trixie is dependent on Jenny for alcohol and must suffer repeated humiliation.

  ‘I’d have to go to her for drink. My face burned when I thought of her mock sympathy for me. She never said anything, but sometimes when I bought drink, or more drink than Jenny considered reasonable, she tilted her head to one side as she served me... The look on her face when I bought a few bottles of wine!’

  LM: Poor old Trixie! Setting is crucial; if the story took place in the city, it’s unlikely that Jenny and Trixie’s relationship would even exist. Trixie would simply go elsewhere, end of story, but their conflict is part of the story.

  SH: What about the significance of time? Why did you decide to set your novel in a contemporary environment, and is this important to the story or characters?

  LM: When the novel is set provides context. Geographically it might have changed little, but Inverfaughie in the twenty-first century is probably a very different place from, for example, Inverfaughie of the nineteenth-century Highland clearances. Some of the topics I wanted to discuss in the novel: divorce, single parenthood and sexually liberated older women, required a contemporary twenty-first century setting.

  SH: The season also seems to work on a symbolic level in the book. Can you tell us more about that?

  LM: Absolutely. It’s no accident that Trisha arrives in Inverfaughie in early spring – a time for new beginnings. The seasons move from spring into summer, mirroring Trixie’s self-discovery and development as a character.

  SH: Yes, I remember a passage about the changing of the season:

  ‘The sludge greys and browns became greens and then yellows and blues. What I had mistaken for weeds were coming through as daffodils and bluebells. I could hardly believe how cheerful it looked compared to a few weeks ago. Even before I’d come to Harrosie, when the ground was ice hard, the flowers and leaves were here. They’d been here all the time, hiding under the ground, biding their time.’

  LM: I was keen for the story to climax on Inverfaughie’s summer gala day, by which time Trixie has had time to develop into an excellent cupcake baker and gardener. For many reasons, including the depiction of the bias against incomers in competitions, Trixie’s overlooked roses and the coming together of the community for the ceilidh, the plot dictated the summer gala day setting.

  SH: You mentioned earlier the physical environment – weather, flora and fauna. What effect do these have?

  LM: Well, for instance, the warm, damp weather is a perfect environment for the Highland midge, and despite Trixie’s ‘anti-midge manoeuvres’ their disfiguring bites make her a virtual prisoner, increasing her loneliness. But, perversely, the midges also provide her with a suitor. Remember, Jan returned to Scotland because of the midges. No midges, no romance.

  SH: Throughout the novel you comment, albeit obliquely, on politics, culture and society. Are you making political points or are these also part of the setting?

  LM: A bit of both really. The wider contemporary issues are reflected in the silent acknowledgement of the problem of alcoholism and a general lack of local ownership. Like the fact that the area is replete with produce but it’s all contracted to the supermarket giants. It’s the village’s local politics that dictate Trixie’s ‘incomer’ status and exclusion from information, and thereby drive the plot.

  CREATING A SETTING THAT WILL WORK FOR YOUR STORY

  SH: You have pulled all these elements together to form a unique setting in your novel. Can you provide any general advice to new writers on how to create a setting in their own work and use it to equally powerful effect?

  LM: Characters need a backdrop to give them context, to position them in a time and place. You can tell a lot about a character by how they interact with where they are. How Trixie adapts to living alone in a Highland village helps reveal her character. It can create empathy; the reader can identify with Trixie’s isolation and her inability to make friends.

  As readers we are voyeurs, but we want to do more than to peek through the keyhole, we want to be standing in that room or hanging from that cliff with the character – we want to be transported into the world of the book. It is the writer’s job to create that virtual reality for the reader.

  Years ago on television there was an advert you might remember: a man is sitting in a glamorous room reading a book. Behind him a beautiful
woman is preparing a cocktail. The man can’t see her but she opens her ring, pours a poisonous powder into the drink and watches it dissolve. She puts it on a tray and brings it to the man and he holds out his hand to receive it. He is seconds from certain death when his phone unexpectedly rings. There is a close-up on him speaking to the caller as he explains that he was engrossed in a good book. As the camera pulls out we see that this is not the glamorous location we first saw but an ordinary living room. The girl, the drink, the poison and the fancy decor were all imagined, virtually real, and came from the fiction the man was reading.

  SH: Backdrop in films, plays and television is obviously supplied by images. In a book the task of creating a backdrop relies on writing skills: an author needs to be her own set designer, providing everything from the panoramic views to the close-up details. But how much description do you need? And do you have any practical tips on how to achieve this effectively?

  LM: This is a tricky one. Description has to be at the same time full and economic. An effective approach to creating a strong setting can be to write everything you can think of, allowing impressions, lyricism, flights of fancy, poetry and every sensation you can possibly imagine in that setting, e.g. quality of light, flavour, mood, atmosphere, real or imagined. Give yourself permission to write things that might seem cheesy, because they might lead to something wonderful. If you can’t physically go to your location, close your eyes and go there in your imagination; try to get a 360º view.

  It’s always a good idea to draw on your own experience to make your setting vivid. You may never have been in a fetid medieval dungeon, but you’ve probably been in a basement or dirty enclosed space.

  New writers tend to focus on visual description, but you want your reader to feel and taste and smell the setting. Describe it in glorious Technicolor; use all five senses.

  Try to find new ways of expressing familiar things, but don’t force it, let it flow and it’ll get better with practice.

  SH: When do you decide whether you’ve created the setting adequately? Is this part of how you edit yourself?

  LM: Yes, you need to be able to take that step back. After your initial flurry, I find the best way is simply to put it in a drawer and forget about it for a while. This is what I call ‘letting it cook’ – you might be too close to it at this point to be able to edit it immediately.

  When you’ve almost forgotten about it, dig it out of the drawer. You will have a much clearer idea of it now; you might be a little embarrassed at some of the more purple passages you’ve written, but no matter, go through it now with a pen excising anything that is repetitive, extraneous or just plain silly.

  Writing is all about rewriting, so edit it and edit again until you have kept only what works.

  As you continue to work with this setting, gather or create pictures of your setting or places like it: views, maps, everyday objects, colours, anything that helps transport you there. Keep a scrapbook or put the pictures on your wall so that you and your characters are familiar and comfortable in the setting. If you create this setting to your own satisfaction, you, and inevitably your reader, like the man who nearly drank poison, will be fully immersed and can spend many dangerous/exciting/happy hours in your virtual reality.

  SH: Thanks, Laura. One of the reader reviews I’ve seen says: ‘[Other reviewers] go on about how funny this book is, and it is really funny, there’s no doubt about that, but it’s also very warm and real and sad and true too. I wanted to go and live in a Highland town after I’d read it.’ I think that comment demonstrates how effectively you brought Inverfaughie to life in this story. Thanks for sharing your tips with us.

  About the Author

  Laura Marney tries to do a good deed every day. Occasionally bad deeds do accidentally slip in, but there you go, nobody’s perfect. She is the author of four novels: No Wonder I Take a Drink, Nobody Loves a Ginger Baby, Only Strange People Go to Church and My Best Friend Has Issues. She also writes short stories and drama for radio and the stage. She lives in Glasgow and holds a part-time post at Glasgow University.

  Acknowledgements

  Loads of people have given me help, friendship, inspiration and encouragement with my writing. My children Holly and Max, and my friends and colleagues Zoe, Louise and Zoe, Francesca and Jenny are owed a huge debt, but none more so than Colette Paul who always believed in me.

  Also by Laura Marney

  NOBODY LOVES A GINGER BABY

  ONLY STRANGE PEOPLE GO TO CHURCH

  MY BEST FRIEND HAS ISSUES

  Published by Saraband

  Copyright

  Published by

  Saraband

  Suite 202, 98 Woodlands Road

  Glasgow, G3 6HB, Scotland

  www.saraband.net

  Copyright © Laura Marney 2012

  A complete catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library on request.

  The right of Laura Marney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Copyright under international copyright conventions. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage-and-retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Brief passages (not to exceed 500 words) may be quoted for reviews.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 978–1–908643–04–9

  First published in 2004

  This edition has been ‘digitally remastered’:

  revised by the author and re-edited.

  Editor for this edition: Craig Hillsley

  Cover illustration and design: Scott Smyth