A Tangled Blog

So far, the absolute hardest thing I've found about adapting an LMM fanfic to an original novel is NOT removing all LMM references.

It's making sure the story isn't too treacly.

I've been working on adapting Meggie of Green Gables for months now, and it is not going as swimmingly as I expected. I was glancing over some of the chapters just the other day, and wincing. "What a dear little place," Peter says at one point of [not] Lavender Lodge.

This is the 1930s, and Peter is 18 years old. If an 18 year old boy in a small farming village really talked like that, in the 1930s, he would be so beat up by all the other boys.

On the other hand, I don't want to turn it all gritty and dark and bleak. I want to keep the spirit of hopefulness and fun and light, without turning it into a Pollyanna book.

If anyone has any books along the lines of James Herriot, Miss Read, DE Stevenson, etc, to recommend, please let me know! I could use some more examples of light-but-real historical novels for my own reading, to put me in the proper mindset.

I've started a Pinterest "inspiration" board for the new Meggie story (working title, hopefully the final title: Wings of Song). Right now it's just filling up with actors, but I do have a few other links in there as well. I've never done this for any other story (at least not this specifically, because most of my other writing boards are geared more toward research), and it is FUN. Definitely doing its job to inspire me!

In other news, it is HARD finding information about life along the St Lawrence River any time after Jacques Cartier. Especially during the Depression. For the US side, most info is centered more toward either NYC or the Midwest, and for Canada, it seems more focused out west.

Thankfully, I have my grandfather's memoir of growing up in the Thousand Islands region in that era - he was born in 1925, the same year I have Meggie and Matty being born. It's not thick with details, but it does give a vivid image of what everyday life was like for farmers then and there. And I'll keep looking for other resources as well.

Cathy, have you thought any more about adapting some of your fanfic? It would be so fun to think someone else was going along this journey with me! And anyone else getting their creative juices flowing from this enterprise? We could make it a whole Tangled Web project!

(Oh, also - I have Helen Mirren picked as the inspiration for Grandmother Linwood, the Anne alter-ego. But I'm stuck for Gilbert's doppelganger. Any suggestions?)

... a house!

Many of you know that I plan to rewrite my Meggie of Green Gables series, take away all the LMM references, and publish them as original novels. I have a fresh setting ... the Canadian side of the Thousand Islands (my dad's family is from Clayton, along the St Lawrence on the American side, so I have family roots in that area, and it's also a whole lot closer and more accessible for me to visit than PEI, to get a feel for the setting). I have fresh names for the Blythes (and also eliminated some of the periphery characters ... weep, weep!). I've even already planned to split Weeping May Tarry into two books, since it stands right now at over 100,000 words and still feels rushed in parts. The plots of all the books will stay mostly the same, since they are not reliant on Anne at all, and I've already made notes on where they will need adapting.

What I don't have? A name for the new "Green Gables"!

It needs to be something a little old-fashioned, definitely comfortable and homey feeling, but not cheesy or trite or eye-rolling-inducing. That's not too much to ask, right?

Unfortunately, I'm almost as bad at coming up with house names as I am with book titles - which is to say, really bad. So any suggestions from my fellow LMM fans would be so helpful!

Need added incentive? If I pick your suggestion, I'll name a character in the first book for you!

And ... go!

I'm sort of sorry that Rilla's kids are such brats-but part of me loves the
probability of drama that will follow (I love fictional drama, but hate it in
its other forms!) Chloe really is a little beast, but it rings true-you can
see all of Rilla's worst traits in her. I kind of hope you don't reform her!

I wonder how much of their attitude is based on the fact that Rilla always
seemed to sort of resent Di's closeness to Walter? It's an interesting rivalry
I never considered before, that she might pass on to her own children, and
vice versa.

I'm so, so excited you picked up on this, Cathy (and another example of "kindred spirits," I suppose, that you figured out the background without me having to say much of anything at all).

Chloe is, to me, Rilla without the tempering effects of her family and the War. Kenneth, too, is portrayed as a somewhat selfish, self-indulgent character (or at least that's one way to read him), and so in their three children I see all their worst traits coming together. I think I can safely say without fear of spoiling anything, that while some reformation happens to one of them, they won't really change much throughout the story. I do think that, if I write a war-years sequel, we will see that Chloe does have some strengths to her character, and that even some of her flaws can be turned to good use, but she'll never really be reformed.

But back to the part that really excited me, that you caught - the rivalry between Rilla and Di. I only started thinking about it with this story, that the two of them must have had some issues after Walter's death. First Di was his favorite, and then Rilla, and both must have felt some bitterness toward each other. Plus, their personalities are so very different, as are their priorities. I've also imagined that Di must have harbored some anger toward her parents for not letting her go overseas to work as a VAD, whereas Rilla might (just might) have been a little bit smug when they all returned home, about HER virtue in staying with her parents and comforting them while Nan and Di were "gadding" in Kingsport. Nan would have shrugged this off, because Nan is able to ignore those sort of pricks, but Di, already frustrated about not being able to do what she wanted, would have resented it.

So basically, I see a fairly fundamental gap between those two just widening and widening over the years, and while Di and Jon are very careful to never say anything negative about their siblings around the children, Rilla is not so cautious.

So there's the backstory! One of these days I might even write some Di stories, from the Rainbow Valley days through the war years, and expand on that a little bit. It's so fun taking established characters that I've already used once, and turn them around and make them different, while still trying to remain within what LMM wrote regarding them.

Do you guys have songs you listen to again and again while you are writing, songs that are forever part of that story, that inform how you write? I am working on the first chapters of Blythe by Nature now, and there is one band I keep going back to while writing it.

Originally, when I began writing Blythe By Name I had a whole story arc planned out for Claire Meredith and Sally that would continue in Blythe By Nature, and it was really very touching, I thought. I wanted their friendship to be rather enduring and sweet and strengthening through their shared turmoil. But as I started writing Claire, she became more and more catty, somehow. And then I started getting reviews about how you guys weren't so sure of her, and I realized that I wasn't either. And I decided that her and Sally's relationship would grow a little more troubled than I planned--and the cousins naturally began to grow apart from one another, from there.