The Story

In 1938, with another world war looming in the future, and with her personal problems threatening to overwhelm her, the author, L. M. Montgomery, begins to write what she has decided will be her final Anne-novel. As she works on the new novel, she recalls the days when Anne of Green Gables became a world-wide literary phenomenon, and the dilemma which she faced at that time: whether to write a series of Anne-novels in which Anne would remain the perpetual child which the world had come to know and to love, or to allow Anne to grow to adulthood, with all the agonizing torments of the one who had given her life – L. M. Montgomery.

The Making of I Gave You Life

This journal records my reflections on the process of the crafting of the novel as it evolved through the stages of planning, writing, editing and polishing. It constitutes an effort to be as conscious as possible of the process whereby the single idea that suggested the topic of the novel was expanded into a complex work of art. Topics range from the nuts and bolts of novel-building to the nature of the novel as an art-form.

Planning I Gave You Life

During the writing of the novel, I kept a hand-written notebook which records the day-by-day development of the novel as it found its shape and style. The notebook – now in print form – reveals how a vast cluster of thoughts was sifted, selected, structured and polished into novel-form.

The Project

Together, this novel, journal and notebook comprise the twenty-fourth installment in an on-going novel-writing project in which I am exploring the concept of form and meaning in the novel, and of the novel as a form of expression in the 21st Century. All of the published journals and notebooks are available for free download.