I’m back from a delightful biennial conference on the work and life of L. M. Montgomery, best-known as the author of Anne of Green Gables, hosted by the L. M. Montgomery Institute on Prince Edward Island.
The theme of this year’s conference was “Montgomery and Change.” I was on a panel with wonderful children’s lit scholars Dawn Sardella-Ayres and Ashley Reese. Our panel explored how changes in Montgomery’s life led to changes in her writing. Dawn: how Montgomery’s portrayal of ministers and ministers' wives changed once she married a minster! Ashley: how Montgomery’s portrayal of mothers changed once she became one! Me: how the volume of writing advice in the books exploded from the Anne of Green Gables series to the Emily of New Moon series, providing a defense by Montgomery of her own creative choices as a writer.
- “For heaven’s sake, girl, don’t try to write what you can’t understand yourself,” and similarly, “Don’t try to write anything you can’t feel.”
- Avoid didacticism: “You’ve no right to try to teach until you’re old – and then you won’t want to.” Montgomery wrote of her creation of Anne: “I cast ‘moral’ and ‘Sunday School’ ideals to the winds and made my ‘Anne’ a real human girl.”
- Don’t put “cleverisms” into your writing, Mr. Carpenter scolds Emily. In a separate essay on writing, Montgomery elaborates: “When you find yourself getting more pleasure from the way a writer says a thing than from the thing itself, that writer has committed a grave error.”
- Don’t try to imitate other writers. The one Mr. Carpenter mentions by name is Kipling, unlikely to be imitated much nowadays, but we certainly have own idols who exert undue influence on our style.
- “Things aren’t convincing if they’re too true to life.” In a different piece, Montgomery explains, “Any artist knows that to write exactly from life is to give a false impression of the subject . . . The writer must create his characters, or they will not be lifelike.”
- Treat your characters – all of them – with kindness. Mr. Carpenter rebukes Emily for a mocking portrait of a deceased neighbor: “Be merciful to the failures, Emily. Satirize wickedness if you must – but pity weakness.” Anne’s neighbor Mr. Harrison speaks up to Anne even for the wicked: “If I had to have villains [in a story] at all, I’d give them a chance, Anne. I’d give them a chance. . . Most of us have got a little decency somewhere in us.”
- Don’t be seduced into thinking that “realism” commits you to writing only dark, disturbing stories. “Don’t be – led away – by those howls about realism. Remember – pine woods are just as real as – pigsties – and a darn sign pleasanter to be in.” (Montgomery repeats this point over and over in journal entries as well as published pieces.)
- Write only to please yourself. On his deathbed, Mr. Carpenter tells Emily, “promise me – that you’ll never write – to please anybody – but yourself. . . No use trying to please everybody. No use trying to please – critics. Live under your own hat.” Here, too, Montgomery elsewhere expresses this in her own voice, asking herself, “Does this story interest me as I write it – does it satisfy me? . . . As for the others, I couldn’t please them anyhow, so it is no use to try.”
- Finally, persevere despite rejection. Montgomery shows both Anne and Emily achieving publication after failed tries. Emily’s first novel receives an editorial rejection noting that their readers “had found some merit in the story but not enough to warrant an acceptance”! This is word-for-word identical to one Montgomery herself received for Anne of Green Gables, the book that a hundred years later still has ardent fans from all around the world!
As
a reader or writer, maybe one of these tidbits will especially resonate with
you. At one time or another, they have all resonated with me.
