November 8, 2024
The Making of a Story Girl
L.M. Montgomery made me a story girl. Throughout so many of her novels, the characters showed me what being a writer entailed, the practical matters, beyond the mere precociousness of declaring oneself as such (though I did that too). It wasn’t simply that Anne and Emily were themselves writers to the marrow, bursting with romantic ideas and florid vocabularies, but that they were unabashed in pursuit of this vocation. In Emily of New Moon, Emily is devoted to practicing writing vivid descriptions in her “Jimmy-books,” which were blank notebooks provided by her supportive cousin. Anne and her friends begin a Story Club in Anne of Avonlea, writing and sharing their own creative works, a conscious act of “cultivating” their imaginations. And I was always fascinated with (and envious of!) the cousins in The Golden Road who manage to create their own household newspaper, full of tales, tips, and teasing, inside jokes and local gossip, and spent my childhood coming up with inferior imitations. Through these different narratives, Montgomery demonstrates not only that a writer is someone who writes, but also how this is done and how storytelling can connect us to each other and the wider community….
Thank you to Sarah Emsley for inviting me to be part of your Maud 150 celebrations.
Read the rest of my post over on Sarah’s blog.
