Studio City, California
Lucy Maud Montgomery kept a journal for over 50 years. So it seems only appropriate to start one up here on the site for our musical, The Nine Lives of L.M. Montgomery. As of this writing, it’s officially just a working title, but Leo and I like it more as time goes on. It really seems to encapsulate in one simple phrase LMM’s rather complicated existence. The title may change as things go on, but for now it works…and after we fenced over possible titles for months, we’re perfectly happy to have one instead of just calling it “the musical”! For this we thank Leo’s mother, Annabel Marchildon, who suggested it when we had a brief stopover in Toronto on our way back from Prince Edward Island 3 weeks ago.

I guess I should bring you up to date in terms of where I am on the production of this thing. I suppose it’s rather cavalier to say “thing”; my feelings for LMM (or Maud – I may switch back and forth here) and her life and work range from intense fondness to deep respect. That’s not to say I agree with all her artistic choices, but she managed, as she once vowed, to keep the shadows out of her work, which is one helluva feat. See, that’s not me – I like putting the shadows in and grappling with issues in my own work, getting to the meat of things. I guess you’ll see that in the musical. I’m getting off track…I’ll do that once in a while…I do it in my personal journals and I’ll do it here, if you please.

By the way – I will never have my personal journals published the way Maud did! Oh, the humanity!

I’ll talk about the year that led up to the decision to pursue this musical some other time…but it was over 10 months ago (September 2005) that I started reading Maud’s journals. And taking extensive notes – like being back in high school! They’re Leo’s books, so I didn’t want to be marking them up, but I later found that physically writing things down helped me metabolize the information better. Since our thrust is to juxtapose (love that word!) Maud’s novels against her life experience at the time of writing them, I also had to start reading the novels. I’d seen the Anne of Green Gables movie, of course, and before September I had read Anne of Avonlea and Anne of the Island. But even by the time I finished reading the journals in late January/early February, I still hadn’t moved beyond the Anne books. I want to mention that my car died in January so I had to start taking the bus – it sucks, but I was able to be philosophical about it when I realized how much reading I could get done! So you can thank L.A.’s public transit system that I was able to read everything as fast as I did. :)

In February we went to Toronto to meet with Kate Macdonald Butler, Maud’s granddaughter, and Sally Cohen, one of her representatives. We had told them about our idea, but there was still some hesitation until they heard more about our approach. We still had to win over the rest of the Heirs, but when Kate and Sally suggested reading material to us and told us we should attend the LMM conference in Prince Edward Island in June, we felt it was a good enough show of faith to where we would continue our work.

In a way, Leo’s got it easy, at least at this stage. No doubt when his time comes to hammer out the music he will be mired in it for weeks and months, but at this point, as the writer, it’s all about me. For me to write an accurate and entertaining portrayal of Maud, I not only had to read everything she wrote but then read analyses of her, her work…you name it. So, already on the plane from Toronto I set to work reading Maud’s non-Anne novels – one a week for at least ten weeks! I hadn’t read so much since sixth grade! Meanwhile, in early March, I started writing out a treatment, or an outline if you like, suggesting dialogue and songs based on the information I had. It’s very long – so Leo will tell you. For me, we’re attempting something different by using a screen as a backdrop which will allow scenes to flow better, and, as there’s so much ground to cover in Maud’s life, everything has to move and therefore the scenes and songs will be shorter. Still, I will admit I need to do more consolidating. At any rate, I ultimately finished reading the books and the first draft of the treatment in late May. We went a round consolidating Act 1 in early June, but then there was a trip to Prince Edward Island to prepare for…

You wanna talk about hitting the ground running? We flew in and four hours later were were at UPEI for a talk given by Elizabeth Waterston, who was set to teach an abbreviated LMM course with Jennifer Litster as a lead-in to the conference. Time constraints forced us to choose between the course and the conference; we chose the course because its comparison between the journals and the novels pretty well paralleled what we’re trying to do. I not only took a class (and did homework!), but Leo and I also visited several key LMM locales and conducted interview after interview with most of the major Maud heavies – Drs. Waterston and Litster, Father Francis Bolger, Robert Montgomery, George Campbell and Pam Campbell, Carolyn Strom Collins, Mary Beth Cavert, and Elizabeth Epperly.

So what’s happening now is that, after a much-needed Maud break (can you say “oversaturated”, boys and girls?), I’m finally listening back over the interviews and taking copious notes – again. You see, we did what we could with the information we had for the treatment, but now we have so much more information and scores of nuances…well, another rewrite of the treatment is in store, obviously. One thing I’m looking forward to is taking this new information and really three-dimensionalizing the other characters – Maud’s husband and children, and her friends. Reading the journals gives you a good feel for Maud herself – despite the fact that it’s obviously biased – but it’s really easy for the other characters to end up as caricatures, which we absolutely don’t want! So it will be fun to go through and add some depth to them.

But first…I have one more interview to listen to and then a little more reading to do. I’ve been hoping to start rewriting the treatment next week so I can start dialogue and lyrics by the beginning of August. We’ll see. These things always take longer than you think they should, especially when real life works its way in – something Maud knew about extensively!

Speaking of extensive, this entry is pretty well long enough. I just wanted to get some backstory in there; not all entries will be like this. I hope to pop on here often to give you a true idea of the creative process I’m about to undertake! I’m champing at the bit to start writing the actual libretto – of course, I’ve gotta have all the info first. So stay tuned and join me on this journey!

Maud said “biography is a screaming farce”. I not only hope to prove her wrong, but to create something she would actually like and be proud of. How’s that for maudlin? Oh, geez…pardon the pun…I honestly wasn’t trying for one!