Stratford, Prince Edward Island
Well, we're back on the Island after a month's absence. And it seems to have turned into winter over here. The plan was to film some fall colours for the screen, but the Fates seem to be consipring against us in that regard. Between the drop in temperature and the remnants of Hurricane Noel blowing through here, and then the wind and rain (and snow!) since we've been back, I haven't seen much in the way of yellow, orange and red!

Word is The Confederation Centre of the Arts has to make their decision about next season by the end of this month. Of course, you can imagine there's a certain amount of suspense there...

There's so much going on, I barely know where to start. I won't bore you with details about our attempts to get funding, which are continuing. The main thing - and I know I keep going on about it - is the rewrite. I thought I was mercenary back in August - this time I've really had to take a weed-whacker to the thing. But you know what? I've been able to make cuts in places I had thought was impossible before. I guess I'm just seeing things a bit clearer. We met a couple of dramaturges in Toronto (a "dramaturge" being a theatre professional that helps to shape a libretto into a more theatrical form and helps you get the kinks out of it), and, although I wasn't necessarily crazy about certain suggestions, others really seemed to make sense once I had a chance to process them. It looks like I'll be done with this latest version by the end of the week, at which point it will be sent to said dramaturges, and we'll see what they have to say.

Remember before I said I knew the answer to shortening down the libretto was in the back of my head, and it was just a matter of setting it free? Well, it happened - and without outside assistance! The one comment that kept coming through during and after September's workshop was how much people enjoyed Maud's fictional characters coming to life. People enjoyed acting it, people enjoyed watching it. And so it became apparent to us that the answer lies with them - with Kilmeny, Anne, Sara, Emily, Valancy, Marigold, Pat and Jane. We'd had an unwritten rule before about the characters only being seen when they were interacting with Maud. Even in one scene where three of them show up, they reference each other, but never interact with anyone but Maud. So we broke that rule. Or, rather, changed it. Does it work? I'd like to think it does - but I haven't yet had a chance to read through the new version as a whole, and I won't be able to do that or show it to Leo until I clean a few things up, check for continuity flaws, etc. But it's definitely a start!

The other thing is that I've tried to cut some of the extraneous characters out - characters that either only show up a time or two and don't drive the story forward in a major way. More of them may end up on the cutting room floor yet. But it's making for some new challenges. For example, we decided to take out Grandfather Montgomery - while he was a Senator, and essentially responsible for bring Maud out to live with her father in Prince Albert, he died shortly after, and he'd had only one line in one scene and maybe two in the next before we don't hear from him again. But we'd put him in the "train" in the An Orphan No More sequence. Extracting him physically isn't that big a deal, and he still gets mentioned. But, with him not there, I have to rewrite a few lines in An Orphan No More. Most of the other missing characters don't leave that big a hole. But, the way this was structured, if you change one little thing it can reverberate in unexpected places. Fortunately, I'm a bit of a continuity hound - it's no fun watching movies with me because I'm always catching these kinds of mistakes! But I'm an even worse critic with my own work. Call it quality assurance!

So, I don't know how it's going to play out. All I can do right now is finish up this version of the libretto, and hope it meets with that much more approval. I have no way of knowing yet how long the thing is - but I think the changes are significant enough that we're almost within range, if not actually there. It's definitely a difficult process - especially knowing that a lot of this is riding on the length of the script that I'm responsible for! No pressure there! :)

And so, we shall carry on. We'll probably have an interview, or at least a feature, up soon on the web site for The L.M. Montgomery Literary Society. I'll let you know when that happens!

Back to the libretto...of course, getting you guys up to date is also very important to me, especially after such a long gap!