A Box of Memories

How do you decide what to keep and what to throw away?

Zoë Sharp

 

Where do you keep your memories? How do you anchor them to the framework of your life?

 

Those questions have been very much on my mind recently. I was looking back through some old photos and was reminded how long ago it seems that I used to make regular visits to an old friend, Andrew Neale, who lived in Somerset. Ten years ago, when he was in his late seventies, I spent some time down there, helping him pack up his house in preparation for moving into a single-storey home. He was in poor health, no longer entirely steady on his feet, and with a tremor in his hands that made labelling boxes a tiresome task, never mind actually putting stuff into them.

 

Andrew was a retired pilot. During his lifetime he had flown just about everything—either fixed or rotary wing—in all conditions, all over the world. The stories he told of hairy unlit night landings in the African bush, or airborne rescues on South American railway lines, would fill several books. It is one of my deepest regrets that I never managed to persuade him to commit any of it to paper.

 

When I needed authentic information about crashing a helicopter for Die Easy: Charlie Fox #10, who else would I turn to but Andrew? After all, he’d actually crashed them and lived to tell the tale. So, as a thank-you I made him into the laidback ex-military pilot in the book.

 

He also explained to me the finer points of maintaining a difficult hover for book #11 in the series, Absence of Light. And when he very sadly passed away during lockdown, it was an honour to dedicate the new edition of Die Easy to him.

 

On a regular basis, I would travel down to Somerset during the summer so we could go to the annual Air Day at the Royal Naval Air Station at Yeovilton, close to Andrew’s home. The last Air Day was held in 2019. Sadly, this year’s proposed return was cancelled due to ‘commercial reasons’ and they have already announced there will be no event in 2023, either.

 

With Andrew no longer with us, and the Air Day defunct, it feels very much like the end of an era.

We must remember this... 

At the time, I wondered how I would remember the last Air Day I attended, with Andrew, five or ten years down the line. I don’t mean my impressions of the day itself, which were always of stunning skill and boundless enthusiasm; of power and speed and a kind of lethal excitement.

 

I meant where would I place it against events of my life that came before and after? Unless something dramatic happens in a certain year—and unfortunately dramatic often also equals traumatic—the order of things very quickly begins to blur.

All the days of our lives 

I don’t know if everyone does this in one form or another, but I have always had a mental image of the days of the week. In my mind, the days are laid out like an upper case letter ‘D’, with the weekend stacked at the left-hand side and the rest bowing out at the right. Whenever I have appointments or it’s my blog day, or whatever, this is the mental image I pin those facts to.

 

With years, it’s different. I have never pictured a year like the calendars you get in the front of a diary, with each month laid out in a box of days and dates. To me, the years snake backwards in single file, a day at a time, tilting as they go like one of those optical illusion paintings, so that it’s always downhill towards winter. At the moment, we’re almost at the point where the year will turn – and I mean that literally – and start heading uphill towards spring and summer. Then it will tilt again, like cresting the brow of a hill at the summer solstice, and start that downward journey into the darker end of the year.

 

But when someone asked me last week when was the last time I moved house, I had to check the issue date of my driving licence to know for sure. And if I can ever pin down the date of a particular trip, it’s most likely because I create an itinerary document for each trip with a list of addresses and confirmation numbers, and probably stored it somewhere on my computer.

Am I missing out on something?

I don't know. After all, I have no children who might be interested in what I did with my life, so I do not feel the need to preserve a little personal history for future generations. And having been a photographer for years I tend to take very few pictures that are not work-related, although I gradually became more snap-happy as the quality and versatility of camera phones have improved.

 

And yet I am fascinated by other people’s history. I recall leafing through Andrew’s albums of family photos going back before the First World War, I am enthralled by the clothing, the stern faces, the little glimpses into character that people unknowingly show when faced with a camera.

 

One of the boxes I labelled for him, if I remember correctly, was simply called ‘Dates and Memories’. Into it went all kinds of tickets, letters and cards. The anchor points of his life.

 

He put into that box a remarkable array of seemingly disconnected items, and I wonder what has become of it since. Every time I move house, my instinct is to use it as an excuse to de-clutter. But this unexpected wander along memory lane has made me pause and reflect. Did I really want to get rid of all those little aide-mémoire items? The ones that gave structure to the good times, and put the bad times into perspective?

 

So, how do you remember your memories? Where do you keep them? And if you only had space left in your box of memories for one more item, what would it be?

 

This week’s Word of the Week is anchorite, or anchoret, which means a man or woman who has isolated themselves from day-to-day life, especially for religious reasons; a recluse, from which we get anchorage, a recluse’s cell or a place to withdraw from the world.

 

 

Snow Business: Bringing Out the Best and the Worst in People

Zoë Sharp

Last week the UK had a bit of snow. If this was Canada, say, or the French Alps, or Moscow, it would have seemed an insignificant amount hardly worth mentioning.

We English, on the other hand, are never prepared for our weather.

The calm before the (snow) storm

In this case, it wasn’t simply snowfall that caused the trouble, but a combination of snow and wind. The snow landed, and then the wind swept it into drifts that blocked local roads and created utter chaos with supply lines and transport.

First came a reduction in visibility, just to make you feel isolated ...

For two days, the village where I house- and cat-sit over the winter was more or less cut off, so the tiny village shop was raided for supplies vital to withstand this kind of siege—bread and milk, vegetables, soup, and chocolate. (All the major food groups.)

Then came the drifting snow across the roads...

And now the majority of the snow has gone, most people’s patience has run out altogether. It’s gone from a pristine white carpet to dirt-encrusted remnants by the sides of the road. They’ve had enough. It’s nearly Easter, and high time Spring was making its presence felt.

The mogs were fascinated by the white stuff, and found their usual hunting camouflage remarkably unaffected, sadly.

I am always fascinated by what happens when the normal order of things breaks down, even to a small degree. Two days, I concluded, was about the maximum length of time that most people’s patience could stand the disruption. Any longer than that and it went from novelty to serious inconvenience. A day or so off work was fine. More than that and deadlines would be missed, and the scramble to make up lost ground was not worth the enforced downtime.

For a while, everything looked pristine and beautiful.

How people behave when they find themselves in a situation that is one of overall rather than personal adversity tells you an enormous amount about them. It pares down human nature to a more fundamental level. Some people take a step up, and others a step back. Light and shadows.

It doesn't take long for everywhere to look dirty and churned up. The snow in the lane was thigh-deep in places.

It is also why setting any kind of crime fiction during a period of upheaval can be so intriguing to explore for the writer. Setting ABSENCE OF LIGHT during the aftermath of a major earthquake was a deliberate decision and one that gave me a chance to put the best and the worst of human nature under a microscope.

I am currently reading Andrew Taylor’s THE ASHES OF LONDON, set during and immediately after the Great Fire of 1666. Although this book does not use the fire itself as a major part of the storyline, the fact that it caused many Londoners to be ruined and made homeless, not to mention those who died, brings out the worst in people. Quite apart from the fact that a number of tenants found themselves financially responsible for the rebuilding of their home, despite not owning the building, and still liable for the rent as well. Desperation breeds ever more desperation, and that’s where the writer comes in.

The last remnants of snow-bones in the fields.

Needless to say, no fires broke out in the village here during our minor blizzard. All that's left now are a few snow-bones in the fields. As soon as the thaw started, naturally there were burst pipes aplenty, causing the water supply to be shut off, but only for a day. There weren’t even any power cuts, nor did the phone lines or cellular masts fail. 

But if they had …

This week’s Word of the Week is pusillanimous, meaning to show ignoble cowardice or contemptible timidity. It dates back to the 16^th century and comes from the Latin pusillis, very weak or little, possibly connected to pullus, a young animal, from pau few or little, and animus, courage or spirit.

How Many Words? How long should a novel be?

Zoë Sharp

I find myself at the moment in the midst of writing the next novel in the Charlie Fox series. The action for this book starts directly where the last instalment – the novella ABSENCE OF LIGHT – left off. At the start of this next one, Charlie even still carries the injuries she sustained during the course of A.O.L.’s storyline.

The previous full-length novel – DIE EASY – was number 10 in the series. Now I’m faced with the question of do I call this latest book number 11 or 12?

ABSENCE OF LIGHT could rightfully be called book 11, although labelling it as a novella was a deliberate decision on my part. It finished up at almost 60,000 words, which would make it a novel to many. But, the other Charlie Fox books ranged between 92,000 and 128,000 and I didn’t want anyone to be disappointed to suddenly find this one shorter.

As far as I know, nobody’s complained that it’s longer than they expected.

I’m a great believer in writing to the end of the story, then making at least one pass through to see how many extraneous words I can cut out. I’ve usually aimed roughly for 100,000 +/-10%, but I know some crime authors who rarely write past 50,000, and others who do at least 130,000 every time.

Equally, I’ve come across readers who are put off by weighty tomes, and others who, if they’re stuck between a choice of two books for a holiday read, will measure the width of the spine and go for the thickest.

Personally, if I’m enjoying being immersed in the world the writer has created, the more of it the better. Especially now I tend to do a lot more reading in digital format. It’s easier on the hands and – if I’m reading last thing at night – I know if I nod off with the ebook in my hands the device will eventually just switch itself off. There are no end of times I’ve fallen asleep reading a paper book and lost my place as it’s slipped from my hands.

But, there are general guidelines on the length of various different types of fiction, and I suppose it’s as well to know what the rules are before you decide to break them.

Of course, when I say ‘general guidelines’ these do vary enormously. Some have the length of a novel starting from as little as 40,000 words. Others specify a mystery novel as 60,000-80,000, with thrillers up to 100,000.

Below a novel comes the novella at 17,500-40,000; the novelette at 7,500-17,500; and anything below 7,500 counting as a short story.

Or does it?

The digital publishing revolution has caused a mix-up. When Kindle introduced their Kindle Single, they specified a work of fiction with a word count between 5,000 and 30,000, straddling short story/novelette/novella territory.

New writers who go straight into the indie market tend to want to build up their bookshelf space as quickly as possible, and there can be a tendency to put out several novelettes or novellas rather than a full-length novel. One just has to be aware of the old ‘quality before quantity’ maxim, but I can well understand the pressure to be more successful simply by publishing more work.

If a new writer is going down the traditional route into publishing, many agents and publishers prefer that their work falls into generally accepted word counts for the market they wish to enter. There’s nothing to say a debut crime novel of 150,000 words will fail to find a publisher purely because of its length, but busy editors do look for the obvious ways first to trim down their reading list, and cutting out a submission simply because it is too big is a danger, no matter how brilliant it might be.

So, I find myself left with more questions than answers. Does the length of a book have any effect on your reading choices? Are you reading longer or shorter books than you used to, or has there been no change?

Has the way you read changed the length of books you go for? Do you tend to read longer books in digital format because they’re lighter and easier to carry around with you for that spare five minutes in the dentist’s waiting room?

Do you read more short stories than you used to, purely because they’re now available more widely on line rather than in anthologies? Do you yearn for a return to more regulated sizes of novel, or do the new freedoms inspire you to try new works of varying lengths by your favourite authors?

This week’s Word of the Week is prolegomenon, meaning a preface to a longer work, usually a formal essay or critical discussion. The plural is prolegomena. It comes from the Greek verb prolegein, meaning ‘to say beforehand’.