Monday 30 July 2012

Life imitates art


My next book, ‘At her boss’s command’, opens with a storm scene. I know, Snoopy has done it already, but he sold books with it, didn’t he. In my book, I describe a huge thunderstorm with so many flashes of lightning that they illuminate an office darkened by a power cut. I had to imagine it though, because while I have witnessed many a thunderstorm in my time, I have never seen one with that much lightning – we don’t exactly have extreme weather conditions around here.

That changed last night. At midnight, a storm rolled in from the sea, waking me up, and stayed in place for over an hour. The lightning was exactly the kind I had tried to describe in my book, a constant flashing that made the night sky as bright as a day. I sat on my balcony, watching in awe as Mother Nature demonstrated her power, unable to go back to sleep. And as I sat there, I tried to rewrite the storm scene in my book in my mind, hoping to make it as dramatic as the one I was witnessing.

Needless to say, I couldn’t find the words. I wasn’t depressed by it though. It wasn’t so much about life imitating art as it was the other way round, and for a storm like that, there are no words. I will make do with the ones I have and if they are not enough, I can always borrow from Snoopy. It was a dark and stormy night…


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