When a Dream Comes True

We feel cold but we don't mind it, because we will not come to harm. And if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldn't feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the aurora, or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin. It's worth the cold for that." -- Philip Pullman, THE GOLDEN COMPASS

I've been obsessed with the Aurora Borealis for as long as I can remember. Those dancing lights in the night sky seemed magical to me, something larger than myself. I saw pictures of them and promised to seem them for myself...someday. Years went by, the Aurora Borealis living in my imagination, triggering an inexplicable yearning so deep I couldn't talk about without crying. So I didn't talk about it. Except to my partner Anne, and we promised we'd one day see them together.

In September Anne read somewhere that the brightness and visibility of the Aurora Borealis was waning, as part of an ongoing cycle, having been at peak in 2013 and not due to peak again until 2024. That day I made us reservations to go to Iceland for our anniversary, which falls in the middle of December, and planned a four-day getaway, making reservations for three different Northern Lights tours for all three nights we'd be there. 

The weather and conditions didn't align the first two nights and we didn't see anything but stars or clouds in the night sky. Then on the third night--the night before we were to travel home--we were loaded into two 4x4 jeeps and trundled out to the southwestern-most tip of the island, the snow- and ice-covered beach of Reykjanes Peninsula. Our enthusiastic guide consulted satellite images of clouds, set up a powerful telescope for stargazing between the clouds, set up his camera and tripod, and asked us to be patient. As the wind howled and sleet-filled clouds spiraled over us, the black-dark was filled with stories of trolls and hidden people, of Vikings and Yule Lads, of the extinct Great Auk of Iceland--and we waited. 

This is what the beach looks like during the day!

Clouds parted, giving us hope, then clouds rolled in bringing more wind, more sleet. We'd started out at 9:00PM and as we neared Midnight we had just enough night vision to explore a bit of the shadowy, rocky beach, not sure where the shore ended and the ocean began. We could just make out huge rock formations, could hear but not see the crashing waves. Would we keep waiting? the guide asked. Yes, we would. Because it was magical. Because we knew we had to. Because we had hot chocolate and kleiner (Icelandic donuts) to keep us warm.

Our guide explained that on the right settings, including a 30-second shutter speed, the camera will catche colors and movements behind the clouds--something our naked eye can't see --and shortly after 1:00AM, the camera started to catch a bit of color. Consulting his satellite images once more, our guide trundled us back into the jeeps. We left the beach, driving slowly, with the guides using their handhelds the whole time. Ours were the only vehicles on that road. Suddenly the lead jeep stopped. "Get out! Get out!" And this is what we saw:

The Aurora Borealis danced for us. We didn't move from that spot for two hours. I cried. I laughed. We were in awe. We toasted with a glass of Brennivin, or Black Death, growling "Skal" the way the Vikings surely would have done.

Someday had come. December 16, 2017. The fourteenth anniversary of the exact day my dad died. I think he was with us that night. And there we were, among the stars, seeing the Aurora Borealis. A dream come true. It made me remember anything is possible if you're patient, if you're hopeful, if you're willing to be disappointed along the way, if you're open to the possibilities. This, I believe, is as true when it comes to our goals for our writing and our art as it is for our goals for our own lives.

We've created an album of a few of our many Iceland photos here.

 (c) emma d dryden, drydenks LLC

A Difficult Read: Who's Responsible for How a Story Makes A Reader Feel?

An author with whom I've been working on a YA novel due to publish in the fall heard from a reader who essentially was asking the author to explain whether and how the teen protagonist in his story is reconciled in any significant way with the horrific antagonist figures in the story. The reader wanted to know this in order to understand in advance how "difficult" this book would be for her to read.

This situation raises the question of who, ultimately, is responsible for how a story effects a reader. In my opinion an author is obligated only to tell a story that is whole, to tell a story that is true to the characters in that story. But an author is not obligated to give readers a comfortable or happy experience, nor is an author obligated to give readers an uncomfortable or difficult experience. An author is obligated to offer readers an experience, yes, but what that experience is going to be for a reader is not something an author can know. Whether the author's story is difficult or easy, comfortable or uncomfortable, how that story makes a reader feel is controlled solely by the reader. Every reader experiences a story differently.

What one reader may find beautiful, another reader may find strange. What one reader may find emotional, another reader may find bland. What one reader may find difficult, another reader may find run-of-the-mill. Putting the responsibility for the reader's emotional reaction to a story in the hands (and hearts) of the reader is exactly what a good storyteller does.

And if a story ignites emotional response in a reader at levels that reach "difficult" or "painful" or "beautiful" or "unforgettable" proportions? If a story makes a reader cry or laugh or anger or wonder? if a story, in fact, makes a reader uncomfortable? Then the storyteller has done their job. They've provided a reader with an experience that makes a reader feel something. And the more a reader feels--even if it's discomfort--the deeper and stronger that story probably is, the closer that story is probably coming to expressing some universal truths about humanity in all its forms--the beautiful and the comfortable, the ugly and the difficult.

If emotions are getting too high, if discomfort levels are getting too intense, a reader can stop reading the story that's causing such feelings. But the brilliant secret about great stories, of course, is that sometimes they're impossible to put down no matter how much we want to put them down. And why? Because most of us want to have deeply emotional experiences when we're immersed in a story, most of us want to feel a whole array of feelings when we're in the world of a story, even if that means we're knowingly being taken out of our comfort zones, knowingly being faced with things we would rather not face. 

The thrill of story can be the thrill of the amusement park ride: Sometimes we love the ride and detest the ride at the same time, but we love that juxtaposition of extreme feelings the ride raises in us and we buy our ticket knowing that's the experience we're going to have. We have no choice but to ride it out to the end (face it, we can put a story down if we need a break; no such luxury with an amusement park ride!) because we also love how we feel when it's over—alive! Even if we are shaky and mad and swear we'll never do it again!

We all tend to take stories personally. And when a story has moved us in any sort of extreme way, it's may be easier for us to blame an author for surprising us, or angering us, or melting our hearts, or making us uncomfortable rather than looking at something in our own lives and experiences to figure out why a story has had such a significant effect on us and has left us reeling with feelings hard to control or manage. Experiencing story can be messy; and when we're experiencing stories that touch our humanity in good or bad ways, experiencing story can be as messy as life itself. That's a mess some of us would rather avoid at all costs. But we can't avoid it in real life, and rather than avoid it in stories, I suggest we allow ourselves to experience the mess by means of the very best guides we have to get us safely through: Authors. The people who pour all of life into stories that in turn give us what we need to feel wholly and deeply.

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The novel referenced in this post is BREATH TO BREATH by Craig Lew, to be published in November by Little Pickle Press. And I won't lie—the story is a graphic and tough one. It is also whole and true to the characters in the story. I have no doubt readers are going to feel something as they engage in the story experience Lew is offering. Some will find it difficult, some will find it sad, some will find it angering, some will find it positive. Whatever a reader feels as they read and experience this story is the right feeling for that reader to feel--and the depth and range of feelings felt by readers will be testament to a story well told by an author whose only obligation has been to move readers by sharing one story that touches a side of our shared humanity.

(BREATH TO BREATH can be pre-ordered: https://pubslush.com/project/6751)

(c) drydenbks LLC 2015