There is a sequel to The Story Girl – the novel that inspired certain characters and scenes in Road to Avonlea. The Golden Road was written by Montgomery in 1913 and, though she stated before that writing The Story Girl was one of the happiest and rewarding experiences for her, The Golden Road was a different story. It seems that the pressure of being a mother and being away from her beloved home in P.E.I. affected the pleasure Montgomery normally took in writing. And her frustration over this was recorded, in the heat of the moment, in her journal.
She says:
“To-day I have finished my new book ‘The Golden Road’ –a second Story Girl volume. I have not enjoyed writing it. I have been too hurried and stinted for time. I have had to write it at high pressure, all the time nervously expecting some interruption—which all too surely came nine times out of ten. Under such circumstances there is very little pleasure in writing. I often think wistfully of the quiet hours by my old window ‘down home’, where I thought and wrote ‘without haste and without rest’. But those days are gone and cannot return as long as wee Chester is a small make-trouble. I do not wish them back—but I would like some undisturbed hours for writing.
Nevertheless, the book is done and may be quite as good as those written more pleasantly. I am too near it yet to judge and having written it under stress and strain I have not that intimate sense of having lived it which made my other books seem so real to me.”
However, only a few months later, when the book was published, Montgomery’s feelings changed dramatically.
“‘The Golden Road’ came out on September first…it is my sixth book. Can I really have published six books! Some readers and critics think ‘The Golden Road’ is the best since Anne. I rather like it myself now that I have got far enough away from the turmoil of writing it—the odor of its brewing.”
Obviously, this proves the theory that a person is often too close to their work to recognize its true merit during the creation process. Do you think an author can ever really stand back and see their work for what it is?
Source: The Selectred Journals of L.M. Montgomery- Volume II: 1910-1921
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