The Northern Lights and Unexpected Additions

The Northern Lights

There’s chatter on the internet that we might be able to see the Aurora Borealis tonight due to severe sun storms. We tried to see the colorful spectacle in October but had missed the initial alert so didn’t see the lights in their glory the first night, That turned out to be the only night they actually showed up. The second evening we went to a park on the far side of town where it was very dark and waited and waited but the lights were a no-show. Maybe we’ll get lucky this time, if I can stay up late enough. A night owl, I am not.

I saw the Northern Lights years ago when my older sister and I visited friends in Oulu, Finland. I was standing in a patch of weeds at the edge of the lake taking pictures of the midnight sun while waiting for the light show. It was back in the day when I used a Minolta SRT 101 SLR and took a lot of photos. I didn’t capture the Aurora Borealis on film that night, however, because I suddenly had severe itching and burning on my feet (I was barefoot) and legs and went inside to see what was biting me. Turned out I had been standing in a patch of stinging nettles that I hadn’t noticed in the dark.

Unplanned events happen in real life, and in books as well. That’s why it’s so fun to write something totally unexpected into a story that will catch the reader unaware and take my protagonist down a different path than was maybe anticipated. It surprises even me sometimes! When I wrote Rembrandt Rides a Bike, I didn’t have a conscious plan to add the journalist to the story. He just showed up when I was writing about a day trip and insisted on being in the rest of the book. And he added a spark that I hadn’t thought of earlier.

Until next time, happy reading!