Two dozen beads of Romano-Celtic jet

In my closing email of 2025, I talked about cliff jumping – growing your wings on the descent – accepting that you have to embark on your novel-writing project knowing that, right now, you don’t have the tools to deliver it.

In this, the first email of 2026, I want to pick up that theme of taking flight, but in a different context.

Novels cover a lot of space. They have big jobs to do. You have to herd your characters from here to there, reveal information, generate and delineate conflicts, mention settings and all that. Most of the time, your prose just needs to pull its boots on and get those jobs ticked off your immense and ever-growing list.

But for what? Why?

Yes: because a well-constructed, well-told story generates emotional power all of its own. That’s a win. But your prose doesn’t always have to wear boots. Everyone now and then it can do a hop, skip and a jump. A little leap into something higher, lighter and wider.

Here’s what I mean. Here’s a passage from one of the Fiona books (this one concerned with the archaeology of Dark Age Britain) as I could have written it:

At one point, I have to go back to Cardiff to receive my Formal Written Warning from Bleddyn Jones and some pretty blonde bob in Human Resources. And when that happy ritual is complete, I head home for some fresh clothes and find, waiting on my doormat, some padded envelopes with my eBay treasure.

My Roman glass. A silver bell. Some beads of Whitby jet.

When Katie tells me that she’s arranged for the dig at Dinas Powys to be re-opened, just for a week or two, just so the initial exploratory project can be completed as planned, I give her six of my Whitby beads. She will scatter them into the trench and cover them over with soil. When they are ‘found’, they will be logged, analysed and uploaded to the project website.

Eighteen beads left.

That passage does literally everything that’s plot relevant: Fiona secures some ancient jet beads and inserts them into a dig-site, for reasons that only become clear later in the book.

So far as Prose-Wearing-Boots is concerned, this passage is a perfect tick. No words wasted. Job done. Move on.

But?

Every now and then – and certainly not too often – we want something higher, lighter and wider, no? Something like this (with additions underlined.)

At one point, I have to go back to Cardiff to receive my Formal Written Warning from Bleddyn Jones and some pretty blonde bob in Human Resources. And when that happy ritual is complete, I head home for some fresh clothes and find, waiting on my doormat, some padded envelopes with my eBay treasure.

My Roman glass. A silver bell. Some beads of Whitby jet.

When I go back to Oxford, to interview more academics or sit across a table as Oakeshott’s grieving students explain to me how utterly surprising and mysterious and inexplicable his death was, I keep one hand in my pocket, where I keep my two dozen beads of Romano‒Celtic jet.

Roll those beads round and round, little emissaries from a distant age, and I remember that nothing is for ever.

King Arthur was not for ever.

His defeat of the Saxons was not for ever.

Inspector Jones of the Irritating Beard: he too is not for ever.

When Katie tells me that she’s arranged for the dig at Dinas Powys to be re-opened, just for a week or two, just so the initial exploratory project can be completed as planned, I give her six of my Whitby beads. She will scatter them into the trench and cover them over with soil. When they are ‘found’, they will be logged, analysed and uploaded to the project website.

Eighteen beads left.

And nothing is for ever.

That’s 100 additional words, but those words give us a vastly expanded view of the moment. All of a sudden, Fiona has reduced the present moment to a tiny dot on a vast historical timeline. First Arthur and the defeat of the Saxons – then Inspector Jones – then who knows what? Nothing is for ever.

That’s a bland truism of course – we all know that nothing is forever. The sun will explode, the turtles holding up the world will get tired, or whatever else. But because Fiona calls our attention to this truth, stretching history out for us to see, we also come to feel how small our place in it is. That sudden change of perspective lifts the whole passage.

And one more thing. Fiona has been investigating a death – Oakeshott’s. His former students and colleagues find that death surprising and mysterious, and so it is. But it also a tiny dot on a vast timeline. Fiona considers his death and her Romano-Celtic beads in the same moment.

We feel something different about this death, about Fiona and ourselves because – just for a moment – Mr Prose-In-Boots gave way to Ms Prose-with-Wings.

You don’t have to do it.

You can’t do it much or often without seeming dull and self-important. But? It’s fun to do sometimes – and it can be the handful of herbs that scents the whole pot.

***

FEEDBACK FRIDAY / Nothing is for ever

So: wings.

Give me any passage where Ms Prose-with-Wings takes over (however briefly) from Mr Prose-In-Boots. Sometimes, that might just be a phrase or sentence. Sometimes, it could be a chunk of 100 words or more.

But dig it out and let’s admire. When you’re ready, log into Townhouse and share your work in this forum.

Spread joy. 

Til soon. 

Harry