Studio City, California
Argh! But first the milestone...

Anne has bid her adieu and Emily has made her début. Anne's "last" scene (you know she shows up later when Maud continues the Anne series at the behest of her publisher and readers) was one I was looking forward to writing for a long time and, even though the writing of it was incredibly rushed (it's been that kind of a week; work is busier than usual and I had my best friend's wedding to contend with), it came out very well if I do say so myself.

The way I'd set up the scene where we first see Emily, there's a bit of an unrelated song that happens first, which I haven't had the energy or the inspiration to write. So yesterday I skipped it and moved on to the Emily part. That section I was pleased with as well.

I'm tired and my back has been hurting for 4 days, so today I thought I would skip the song again and move on to the next scene. Instead, I got an idea for a very different song incorporating the same information, but presented in a way I hadn't originally envisioned. And that's fine. Frankly, as I've gotten this far into the libretto, I've started wondering if I'm using the same devices too often. So I'm willing to experiment a little. I had to stop midway because I need more information from a journal volume I don't have with me and I'm too tired today to assimilate so much info about her years-long lawsuit, let alone make it sound interesting. But that's not what's bothering me.

It seems I once again have screwed up a bit of chronology. I rather pride myself on remembering dates and keeping events in order - my intimates don't call me Chronology Boy for nothing! So imagine my dismay when I find out that I have again dorked out the chronology in my treatment. How I could have thought their lawsuit-triggering car accident happened in 1922 instead of 1921 is beyond me. And somehow I thought most of Emily of New Moon was written in the earlier part of 1921; Maud didn't write the first chapter until June! D'oh!

Now, I know that when movies, musicals, whatever are based on history and actual events, chronological liberties are taken all the time. "Let's move this, let's move that, no one will know." I will full well admit right here that I have moved a few things around, but not by much, and only to fuse together themes so that these scenes have a focus and a natural flow if there's more than one subject in them, which is often the case. But to get years mixed up? How did I manage that when I was so careful putting the treatment together? I know I've been a major space case this year, but this is the second time I've discovered an error like this and it bothers me.

It's easy enough to fix. I will simply switch the scenes. I think it can be done and it might even flow better than originally planned. It's just that, when I run across goofs like this, and more than once, I start thinking "What else did I screw up?" Maybe it doesn't matter to the average Joe when what happened, and I know this is an adaptation of someone's life and doesn't necessarily need to be taken so literally. But it matters to me, and I think it would matter to many of you. I don't want y'all to be looking at this thing going "That's not how it happened". I vowed accuracy from the beginning, and accurate it shall be. Besides, I feel I have a responsibility to Maud herself to get this thing right. Biography will sure enough be a "screaming farce" if I'm mixing years up!

One other thing I want to point out, in terms of accuracy, is the concept of consolidation. By this, I mean characters. You know how, when you see a movie version of a book, one character is really a composite of two or three? I have sworn not to do that here. God knows there are hundreds of people mentioned over the course of Maud's five journal volumes. As I told Leo from the beginning, either someone's in our musical or they're not - I'm not going to combine anyone. I've done things like make congregation members virtually anonymous and interchangeable, but I wouldn't do anything like combine Amanda and Penzie, for example, or Frede and Stella. We're already going to have a ton of characters as it is, but they'll all be who they're supposed to be, not fused-together pieces of multiple characters! I'll swear that on my stack of Anne books!

Well, let's see if we can switch 1922 and 1921. I feel like I'm falling behind this week, but I'm doing the best I can.

And, although last week I was sort of feeling like I was losing "it", Leo read the Frede/Ewan scenes and said "Wow". That made me feel much better!