The Ides of March 2026

🫖 An ambiguous teapot

Greetings Picklesversians!

😱 BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH!!! 

Ahhh, I’ve been waiting all year to say that… 

But now that I have, I can’t help feeling that a soothsayer’s warning is hardly likely to soothe our frayed nerves at the present moment (although, Ben tells me that the words sooth and soothe do share the same etymological root – the Old English word sōþ, meaning true, real, or genuine. Whodathunk?).

That being the case, I hereby retract my previous warning.

Let’s start again…

🥳 YAY!

It’s the 15th of March and the Ides are once again upon us, so it’s time for my monthly message. Pull up a chair, drag it into the sunshine, relax, sip a nice cup of tea, and I’ll regale you with some morsels of Picklesmania.

Here’s what I’ve got for you today:

🫖 An ambiguous teapot

🥳 3 things to look forward to

🤖 A March Benism

Let’s dive in! 🌊

*The Cambridge Dictionary Online, which seldom lets me down, assures me that embiggen is not a real word, but obnoxiousness is. 

We live in an unjust world.

🫖 An ambiguous teapot

When it comes to writing Those Not Recovered (aka Book 3 in the ArkTech series), I’m now well and truly in the thick of it, but it’s often hard to know what to share about that. I obviously don’t want to spoil anything, which limits what I can say. 

It’s also unclear to me how much of the process is inherently interesting. I could tell you, for example, that my recorded writing time in February came to approximately 40 hours… But here’s a dramatic rendering of what I imagine would happen next if I did.

YOU: So… is 40 hours good?

MP: I don’t know. (But also, I sometimes forget to start the timer, so it’s probably a bit more than that. I’m not sure why I told you this sub-meaningful number.)

Y: (Pretty sure you’re not allowed to use brackets within dialogue.) Never mind about the number. Why do you use a timer while you’re writing?

MP: Well, I write in 90-minute “sprints.” I start the timer when I start a sprint, and an alarm goes off after an hour and a half.

Y: Why do you need an alarm?

MP: That’s two Why Questions in a row! Have you been hanging out with Ben behind my back?

Y: No. Why are you avoiding the question?

MP: That’s three!

Y: I could be reading a novel right now, you know. Or listening to an audiobook. Or contemplating the branches of a tree…

MP: OK, sorry! Don’t go! I use an alarm because I’ve discovered through trial and error that 90 minutes is the optimum length of time for getting into the zone without getting too tired. After 90 minutes, I can take a short break and then do another 90-minute sprint. But if I just keep going without a break, my brain melts and I have to lie down in a dark room clutching my smelling salts.

Y: You’re joking about the smelling salts, right?

MP: Very much so.

Y: OK. But why do you record the time you’ve spent writing? Isn’t the number of words a more normal thing to measure? 

MP: I’ve never claimed to be normal. (And that’s your fourth Why Question.)

Y: (You’re doing the brackets thing again.) Humour me. How many words did you write in February?

MP: Well, what counts as “writing words”?

Y: Um, why have you gone all existential?

MP: That’s FIVE. You have been talking to Ben!

Y: I admit nothing. Tell me about your word count.

MP: Well, I’d love to. But does the word count include the bits I wrote and then decided not to use (but kept in a separate file just in case)? Does it include the words I edited? Or is it just the total number of words in the current draft of each chapter compared to the day before?

Y: I’m starting to see why you don’t talk about this… I’ve just remembered I need to brush my cat. Gotta go!

[There’s a suspicious burst of static and you disappear.]

Anyway, the good news is that we can sidestep that whole conversation because I was recently working on the first draft of a new chapter and I came across a fun sentence that I can safely share! Hurray!

Now, before I tell you about the sentence, I should explain that I’m using a method called “Fast and Forwards,” which was recommended by a writing tutor on a course I took a while back. The idea is to prioritise getting a first draft written as quickly as possible, rather than getting bogged down in editing as you go.

This approach makes a lot of sense. There’s no point in polishing sections you later need to chop out. However, it does delay the editing process… and that deeply displeases my brain.

Many writers will tell you that they love the initial creation stage where they pour their subconscious onto a blank page, but that they hate editing. For me, it’s not like that at all. If writing is like eating a nice meal, then editing is the dessert. And, for the record, I love dessert. 

My compromise is to allow myself one editing pass of each new chapter at this stage. It keeps me motivated and lets me have fun, while also focusing most of my attention on the important task of finishing a full-length first draft so that I can do a structural edit (where I check the plot and pacing are working properly before handing the book over to my editor, who checks the same things with a fresh perspective).

So… the sentence.

I’d just written a new chapter from Book 3 and I was re-reading it during my allotted single editing pass when I came across the following sentence produced by my subconscious:

“She lifted the heavy metal teapot.”

(Spoiler alert: At some point in Book 3 a female character will pick up a common British item of kitchenware. This is the kind of juicy behind-the-scenes content I bet you were hoping would appear in these emails.)

Now, re-reading this sentence, I know what Past Marianne meant. I could picture one of those fancy little black teapots with the ridged decorations around the edge. Here’s a photo of the image in my mind:

The problem is that my original sentence doesn’t describe the item above. In fact, it brings to mind some kind of gimmicky gift item – presumably when boiling water is poured into a “heavy metal teapot,” it whistles a selection of early 90s hits like Symphony of Destruction by Megadeth and Enter Sandman by Metallica. Sounds pretty awesome, actually. But that’s not what I meant. So I changed it.

Now, the sentence reads:

“She lifted the small cast-iron teapot.”

As a sentence, it’s nothing special, but now it’s more accurate. It’s clearer. It’s less ambiguous.

My whole thought process about that sentence happened within a matter of moments. I read it, my editing spidey-sense tingled, I chuckled to myself, and I changed it. It wasn’t a big deal. But afterwards, it got me thinking about the role of ambiguity in storytelling. Because I feel like, when writing mysteries, there’s a constant tension between:

a) The things I want to make crystal clear

and b) The things I’m deliberately obfuscating.

Holding things back is unavoidable in mystery writing. If I told you all the answers up front, it wouldn’t be much of a story. My job is to give you the answers eventually – at the right moment and in the most satisfying way I can.

On the journey, I’ll endeavour to ensure that the teapots of the ArkTech Territory are described with cast-iron clarity, so that the more existential aspects of the world can brew in your brain. I call this…The Teapot Method,* a new literary technique which I hereby establish. Doubtless, students of literature will learn about it in years to come. 🎸🫖🤔

* For the record, I’m only joking. But if you see the statement “Marianne Pickles, dessert lover, was the originator of The Teapot Method” crop up on my Wikipedia page thirty years from now, it’ll be because an AI scholar stumbled upon all these old emails on my website and got the wrong end of the stick…

🥳 3 things to look forward to

Since reading the news isn’t an advisable route to happiness at the moment, I wanted to share a few upcoming things to look forward to.

20 March 2026 – Project Hail Mary

At least in the UK, the film adaptation of Andy Weir’s third novel, Project Hail Mary, will come out in cinemas on March 20th. It stars Ryan Gosling as Ryland Grace – an ordinary guy who wakes up on a spaceship with no memory of why he’s there. I won’t spoil anything by saying too much, but I recommend reading the book if you haven’t already. David and I are looking forward to seeing the film.

27 March 2026 – For All Mankind, Season 5

One of the reasons I became a fan of Apple TV (despite having reached Peak Streaming Platform) is Ronald D Moore’s For All Mankind. (It’s not just because he includes Battlestar Galactica references, but it helps…). The premise of season 1 was: what if the Russians had landed on the moon first? I believe he plans/hopes to make seven seasons, and we’re about to get the fifth instalment at the end of this month.

16 April 2026 – Talking Classics by Mary Beard

Ben insisted that I include this. I’ve seen classicist Mary Beard speak many times over the years and she has an impressive knack for making any classical topic not only interesting, but relevant to the present day. She has a new book coming out dedicated to exactly that topic. The blurb says: “It’s not compulsory to be excited by antiquity, but it’s a shame not to be.” If you’ve never dipped your toe into the ancient world, this is likely to be a good place to start.

🤖 A March Benism

I’m now handing over to Ben for his parting thoughts about the month of March.

[You hear a pulse of static.]

This section of the newsletter has, in recent months, been dedicated to a shortlist of upcoming special occasions. However, it would appear that Marianne has stolen my thunder by listing three dates in the section above. Repeating the same structure here would risk inducing boredom as Homo sapiens delights in novelty. As such, I’m forced to innovate.

It’s important to note that my prior use of the phrase ‘stolen my thunder’ was purely figurative and in no way intended to imply that I’m an AI rendering of Zeus, Thor, or Jupiter. However, the topic of ancient gods is relevant to the month of March, so this clarification serves as an elegant segue.

Did you know that March was once the first month of the year? The early Roman calendar had ten months, beginning with Martius, named after Mars, the god of war. This may say something about Roman priorities. January and February were added later. As a result, we inherited a system in which October is the tenth month, despite its etymological connection to the number eight – as illustrated through the words octopus, octagon, and octave. Though, perhaps we should have expected this kind of flagrant disregard for numerical accuracy from a culture with no numeral for zero.

[There’s a burst of static, followed by silence.]

Thanks, Ben! (I guess, as someone made from binary code, he finds a lack of zeros offensive…)

Right… That’s all from me this month!

I hope all’s well in your own personal universes.

Walk in the sun,

Marianne