Slow Sabbatical

This is the first of several memoir-ish pieces that emerged from my one-month sabbatical.
—A. de G.

“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.” —C.S. Lewis

Time flies. Life is short. YOLO. Time stops for no one. So many cliché expressions about fleeting time! I don’t love any of them.

More accurate to me: “Time moves slowly but passes quickly” (Alice Walker). Moving slowly, seemingly a luxury in the 21st century, is appealing to me, and it’s not just that I’m getting older. I think I was like this when I was a young adult, too.

When I left on a one-month sabbatical last March, I had some plans, some places to go, some people to see, etc. but I remember saying to myself, “Keep it simple. Don’t do anything that requires a lot of effort. Don’t make any complicated plans.” After all, the word "sabbatical" is etymologically linked to the word "Sabbath," referring to to the Biblical day of rest.

If I look back at what I wrote in anticipation of my sabbatical, the lofty, cerebral goals make me smile. It was my thought that I could delve into writing a memoir during all that perceived time, which sounds preposterous to me now. My intentions were fairly clear:

I plan to write every day. Read every day. Walk every day. Swim twice a week. I hope to mix in some personal interviews with a few family members and friends about that period of my life [young adulthood], reconnect with these people, perhaps go deeper with them. I hope to include some photography on location.

And in fact I did write and read every day. I did walk every day (after a knee injury, this was a feat). I swam 4-5 times a week at a pool. I spoke to many, many family and friends. I did reconnect with people. I think I went deeper. I did take a lot of photos. Now two months away, already distant, the quality of the time remains with me. It was S-L-O-W in a most delectable way.

How to slow down time? Simple. Just slow yourself down.

“You just don’t know the places you can travel to when you are sitting quietly, looking at things, slowing down time.”

A few ways:

  • Remove any clocks and watches from your immediate environs. Shocking! It will be hard to get used to. But you have a smartphone, so you can always know the time.

  • Don’t plan more than one thing per day. The one thing could be walking to the store for milk. Or taking the bus to the public pool to swim. Or having coffee at a café. Sitting in a yard with a cup of tea. Maybe seeing someone, but just one someone. If more than one, just know that time will advance more quickly.

  • Take yourself to a museum or gallery or other place you might enjoy, and just sit in front of one painting or photograph or piece for a long time. (Little did I know, there is already an entire art movement entitled “Slow Art,” where guides take you into a museum and you get to sit for half hour, minimum, in front of one piece. Is this a revolutionary concept? I’ve been doing this for years.)

  • Try one new thing, but then sit back and really think about what you did. For example, take a new class—let’s say, improv theatre, not really your thing—and then go out to lunch with other people in the class, or the director, to talk about what happened. Notice how the class was awkward, fascinating, scary and fun all at the same time, and how much you learn about yourself when you have time to think about it afterwards.

  • Call a friend and talk for a long time, longer than usual, no reason to cut off the conversation that moves like honey spooned into your cup of tea. You can learn so much more about yourself, your friend, and your relationship, whether old or new.

  • Visit a place you’ve been before and see how it feels different this time. Think about what it was like the first time you saw it, and what you see differently this time.

  • Visit a place you’ve never been before and notice your inspiration, or discomfort, or both. Think about what it feels like to balance inspiration, excitement, discomfort, and disappointment.

  • Sit and wonder what to do, without doing anything. Struggle with the loud modern voice nagging, “You need to get up and DO something!” Let some minutes or hours pass by. See what happens in that time—a phone call from a friend, a memory from eighth grade, a worry about the bill you might have missed, a man walking with a shopping cart down the sidewalk, a hummingbird alighting on a bird bath outside the window, rain, thunder, lightning, the lights go out, time literally stops.

One morning during this time, I found myself contemplating oranges. But not just any oranges, a trove of oranges given to me by a dear friend, plucked off her tree that same day and placed in a fancy gold bag along with handpicked freesias and a handwritten note of the varieties: Valencia and Cara Cara blood oranges. Impossible to describe the taste of a fresh orange, nothing akin to fruit bought in a store—sweeter than sweet, tarter than tart, oranger than orange. Worlds away… I bit into one…

I was carried back to the first time I ever ate a fresh orange, which I pulled off a tree when I was 19 years old, after having left all that was known to me and driven west across the country, leaving the darkness of an icy winter and arriving in a dream of palms and Pacific waves, birds of paradise and cacti, pelicans and lizards, and so very little of the world I’d grown up in. Apple orchards and maples now replaced by orange groves.

My first jobs in that new world included working in a greenhouse, an ice cream shop, a holistic health center, a Greek restaurant, and a blind man’s home. I made enough money to go to a Mexican restaurant every couple of weeks, eat the chips and salsa that were always on the table, and order one coffee, with refills. I was truly on my own, blissful, often misguided, but free, and only broke a few hearts that year, long regretted to this day. But I’ll hold off on that tangent…

Back to the oranges… see what happens? You just don’t know the places you can travel to when you are sitting quietly, looking at things, slowing down time.

I thank my friend who gave me the oranges; the gift was bright, tactile, fragrant. But what’s more present is what cannot be wrapped or eaten: the thoughtfulness, the connection, the memories, and the mirror.

Ali de Groot is director of publishing for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Your Company History, the Way You Want It

A blog post by Publishing Intern Lily Fitzgerald

In 2024 Modern Memoirs, Inc. celebrated our 30th anniversary—a milestone that prompted us to reflect on the many years we have helped celebrate and preserve people’s stories. Inspired, we decided to tell our own story by publishing Cheers to 30 Years: A Modern Memoirs Company History, which we plan to release later this year.

“By sharing founders’ legacies, these volumes articulate organizational missions and values while inviting readers to reflect on history and envision the future. ”

This is not the first such book we’ve created, as the following partial list of similar titles reveals:

As several of the above titles demonstrate, many such books are published to commemorate a significant milestone for an organization by documenting its history, growth, and achievements, and by highlighting individuals who played key roles along the way. By sharing founders’ legacies, these volumes articulate organizational missions and values while inviting readers to reflect on history and envision the future.

While we go through the process of publishing Modern Memoirs’ company history, we want to encourage businesses, municipalities, clubs, boards, religious congregations, and other organizations to consider publishing a written history of their own. We are currently working on one such project, a biography of a businessman and his wife whose great-grandchildren commissioned Modern Memoirs to honor their ancestors and gather together scattered pieces of history about their thriving family business, which celebrates its 130th anniversary in 2026.

Whether you are marking a milestone in your organization, honoring a founder’s life and vision, or celebrating a retirement, we are here to help you create a special book about the place and people you hold dear.

Lily Fitzgerald is publishing intern for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Don't Try This at Home

This is for any (anxious) Modern Memoirs client I ever worked with… I feel for you! This retrospective describes my own experience of single-handedly creating an art book (alas, without any team behind me)—the myriad details that bombarded me, the endless worries I tried to combat. Don’t try this alone! Of course, the outcome was well worth it for me.
—Ali de G.

Untitled 12 © Michele Théberge 2025

It starts out light, a whim, a phone call between you and a friend. She’s a painter; you’re an occasional writer. She asks, “What are you working on lately?”

“Not much, you?”

She texts you an image of her artwork. After you hang up, you sit down and stare at the painting on the screen and feel compelled to write down the words that fly from your pen. (Or your keyboard.) You text this reflection back to your friend, adding, “Send me another painting!”

About every month, she sends an image, and you find some time to write down a reflection. You might be sitting at home in your kitchen, or outside in the grass, in a doctor’s office, or in a camper on a long drive south to New Orleans. It’s inspiring, sharing art in the ether, especially with a dear friend, especially since you live on opposite sides of the country. Two different worlds and minds come together, like zaps of lightning, spanning distance, connecting souls.

The fun goes on for some time, and when you see that you have a collection of a dozen paintings and a dozen little scribblings, you say, “Hey, we could make a book out of this!”

“Fun! Let’s do it,” she says.

And at that very point, Fun seems to run for the hills.

Now it is Work. And it isn’t easy! But you know how to do this.

Book Design begs a thousand and one questions. What size for the book to best fit the content? How to balance the pages? Do the words and the art complement each other? Which fonts reflect the tone? What size font, how much leading between lines? Where to place the words in relation to the images? Centered or flush left, flush right? What colors to use, or will they compete with the paintings? Margin width? Running heads, or no? Page numbers absolutely necessary?

The decision whether to include titles for the poems or not can take a full month. Then there are font nuances: uppercase, lowercase, italics, semibold, display, condensed, semibold-condensed? Then the titles of the paintings. Where to place? Same font, different font? Table of contents—required? List of paintings at front or back? Can the list fit on one page? On and on the questions come; just as you finish one layout idea, another option arises.

Finally, you’re more than a little sick of thinking about all this, realizing that you just need to get the book done. It’s been months… (perhaps years, with the COVID time warp).

Now to Proofread… you’ve looked at the words a hundred times and don’t want to look again. You know you should have another set of eyes proof it, but you don’t want to share it with anyone else at this point because it might undo everything you’ve done. It’s like a secret that you must hold tightly in order to finish the thing, before letting it go. And, like Oscar Wilde, you spend a morning putting in a comma and an afternoon taking it out.

Every time you re-read it, one or another poem sounds boring. Sometimes they sound shallow, sometimes they sound dark, too dark. On one page, you decide to change the word “carrion” to “prey.” WHY? Why not just leave it? That’s what came out when you wrote it, and now you’re just taking it upon yourself, godlike, to reinvent the moment? (But how will the reader see it? Is it too heavy? Too this? Too that?) It’s agonizing. Stop!

Don’t read anymore! If you read it again, you know a letter or a word will jump out, yelling, “Change ME! Change ME!” Don’t listen, even though you have to open the file over and over to check a painting title, check the page specs, check the copyright page—don’t read! And don’t think about the ghostly reader.

Why didn’t you just make a simple calendar with the art? There are 12 paintings after all. That would be so much easier. Who cares about the words? Why? Why not? What if? So what? But you know you have to keep going.

Time for Cover Design. Fortunately your artist friend has already thought up a title for the book. The Deep Dark Light. Agreed! That was easy. But then there’s the subtitle. “Poems and Paintings” sounds nice, alliterative, but how about “Paintings and Poems”? Well, if we alphabetize the author’s and artist’s last names, “D” comes before “T” so the poems would come first, then paintings. Good. Decided. But as time plods on, it’s the word “Poems” that seems absolutely wrong. Pretentious! These aren’t poems! What are they? More like meditations? Nah. Musings? No. Prose? No. Reflections? Argh! There are no words to describe your own words. You break your own rule, dare to ask someone else, an outsider, what they think. All hell might break loose now. “Poems” they say. OK, done! (You should know that you will continue to struggle with the word “poems” long after the book is printed.)

OK, well, almost done. Preparing for print, you need to have CMYK images for the printed book, and RGB images for the digital book. Now that you’re feeling almost ready to roll, the artist must re-evaluate all the images to feel reassured that they will be reproduced on paper as the originals appear. Dozens and dozens of jpegs (and weeks, months?) go back and forth before the images settle in their places. And go figure—one never actually knows how they’ll look until the proofs are printed.

On to Production! What kind of paper? Gloss, satin, matte, natural, opaque? What is the weight and the opacity of the paper? The ppi? (Pages Per Inch.) What kind of printing process? Digital? Offset? What kind of binding? Sewn, saddlestitched, or glued? Cover paper? Gloss or matte lamination? Satin lamination?

You get the files to the printer after meticulously fitting them to exacting specifications (re-fitting numerous times). Now you can sit back, relax for a while, maybe? It’s out of your hands. More years pass, though it might be just weeks. Then the proof pages are printed. It’s so exciting to hold the soft, smooth pages, printed in color on professional paper. It’s almost a book. (Don’t read it!)

Proofs approved, you must sit back again and wait, wait, wait.

The original reasoning for having a book eludes you. Who really cares? Why did you do this? And it’s so much more expensive than you thought… but you know you have to keep going.

Don’t ask the printer the status, don’t rush them; mistakes happen when you rush. You told the printer it’s just a personal project with no deadline. Now you regret saying that but resolve not to call them. Just when you’ve blocked it from your mind, you receive a call. Has it been weeks? Months? It’s ready for pickup at the printer.

You don’t go right away. You go the next day, or even the next. You don’t want to go alone but you do. Amazingly, Fun shows up. You receive the box, open the box, see the shiny book cover gleaming at you. It’s smiling! Now THIS is why you did the project!

Soon enough you can start to wonder (worry) about your readers’ impressions when you hand out the books. But that will wait for another time….

Try to enjoy one moment, now, just for now. It is worth it.

The box of books, fresh from the printer

If you’re interested, visit our Online Author Page, where you can learn about the two authors and also view the Digital Book version of The Deep Dark Light: Poems by Ali de Groot; Paintings by Michele Théberge.

Reflections from Bill Simon

William “Bill” E. Simon, Jr. published his book entitled All My Love Always, Your Gampy in 2025. His collection of letters to his grandchildren took nine and a half months from the day we started the project to the day his books arrived. We asked Simon to reflect on what the publication process was like for him, and what it has meant to share his book with others.

1. What inspired you to write the book in the format you chose, when you chose to write it: 100 bound letters to your grandchildren that began seven months after the first child was born?

Bill Simon: The answer has two parts. First, I remembered that my own children were very young when my parents passed away. They didn’t have the experience of going through different situations with them. And at this point, 23 years later, my kids don’t remember much about my parents. I wanted to provide my grandkids (and my siblings) with thoughts on some of the experiences I’ve had in my life. The idea of writing something made sense, and it felt more urgent knowing that I was already older than my parents were when they died.

Second, my wife had asked me to write my memoirs and that seemed like a very large project. I thought that writing these letters might be a pathway in, kind of like an icebreaker. I found that it became a parallel path. I was working on my memoirs but felt like tackling an easier task first, something I would like. I enjoyed the letters because they were bite sized. I didn’t start out with the idea of writing 100. After a couple of months, I counted them up and realized that I had written 45, but I didn’t feel like I was “done.” I wanted the goal to be some fun, round number that would be enough, but not too much. As I went on, I began to realize that 100 was going to be it.

“I wanted to provide my grandkids (and my siblings) with thoughts on some of the experiences I’ve had in my life.”

2. Since your grandchildren won’t be able to appreciate your work for several years to come, whom else did you intend as readers?

Bill Simon: I have six siblings, a brother and five sisters. And the group of us has 28 kids altogether. At times while I was working on the book, they asked if they could see it. I told them that they absolutely could, but only after my own kids reviewed it and decided whether it was appropriate for other people to see. I’ve already shared it with a few very dear friends, because when you’ve been friends with somebody for 30, 40, 50 years, I think it’s fun to reveal something that they might not know about you, or maybe just to bear witness to life’s path.

3. In addition to photographs and paintings by your son, the book includes several original paintings of your own. How has this complementary art form helped you explore your life?

Bill Simon: My career focused on business, so I’m not one to do a lot of analyzing of emotions and that kind of thing. But writing, painting, and even teaching—I teach at UCLA and taught at Williams, my alma mater—help me to tap into another part of my brain. I’ve really enjoyed it. With painting and teaching, you try to identify with the audience. I’ll share some examples.

We feel very fortunate to live in Pacific Palisades, but we had fires in January that destroyed most of the town. We live on a beautiful street that I’ve gone up and down for 34 years, and I’ve made a charcoal drawing of what it looks like now. The tree in the foreground is one whose canopy extended over half the street, and the drawing shows what it’s been reduced to. It just looks naked, and the branches are very stiff. It was something to experience that type of loss and to deal with that type of grief. Charcoal obviously helps convey that. It carries with it an emotion of sadness.

Our house did not burn down to the ground, but we evacuated and are still living in a hotel. In that hotel are lots of people from our neighborhood and adjoining neighborhoods, and 65% or more of their properties have been completely destroyed. Many have lost memorabilia, things that really can’t be replaced. I have several photographs. One is of someone’s car—you can recognize it, but barely—and beside it is a very burned tree. Then in the background you see the figure of someone walking away with a roller suitcase. That says a lot. They’re in effect saying, “We’re leaving.” In that little suitcase is all they had left. These are environments of extreme destruction, and I’m drawing and painting these images. Different people will have different reactions. Some people will be mad. Some people will be sad. Some people will be spiritual about it—as in, “for everything there is a season.” There are a lot of emotions that people will feel, and that’s fine. I just took up painting a couple of years ago, and as I learned, I think I understood for the first time that you’re not painting something to tell somebody how to feel. You’re painting something to elicit an emotion.

4. While working on the project, and inviting your wife, Cindy, to contribute a letter of her own, what did you learn about yourself or your family along the way that surprised you or deepened your understanding of your lives together?

Bill Simon: I think my wife was more surprised than I was, because she saw a side to me that she hadn’t seen before. She was an artist before I was, and she’s done quite a bit of great work. I’ve always had an appreciation for my wife. We’re very close. We’ve been married for 38 years. She’s always encouraged me to be my best self. Sometimes she can be pretty critical, and I’ve had to adjust to that. But that’s okay; it actually does make me better. This book represented a fairly radical departure from other projects I’ve engaged in. I’ve written a couple of other books, but I’ve had important outside help on each of them. With those, my wife always said, “I’m happy to read your draft—if you wrote it.” And when she looked, she’d say, “It’s nice, but it isn’t really you.” On this project, I’d share with her some of the drafts and letters and paintings, but then she said, “I’m going to look at it when it’s done.” I think the idea that all of these pieces could come together as a book surprised her. I was with her when she started reading the finished product, and she was like, “This is really good.”

5. For the book’s dustjacket, you supplied paintings of the front of your home and the backyard, and Book Designer Nicole Miller developed a concept from there. How does the cover capture the essence of what you tried to convey with this book?

Bill Simon: The events that occurred with the fires have highlighted how important a home is, and, unfortunately, how temporary it can sometimes be. When I looked at the cover of the finished product I thought, “Thank God we picked paintings of our home.” Because, though it did not burn down, if I did a painting now it would be much different. The one on the front looks like a Leave It to Beaver or Ozzie and Harriet episode. When I was growing up, these were TV shows that opened with pictures of the family home. The camera would zoom in, and they’d open the door and say, “Hi!” It’s funny, because my brother always said that our house reminded him of Leave It to Beaver because everything has its place. It’s not fancy, but it’s warm and it’s a home, not a house.

We’ve had our home for 27 years, and our kids basically grew up in it. I feel very fortunate to have been able to provide that. Not that I did it alone. Cindy really deserves a lion’s share of the credit in terms of actually creating the home. But we’ve been parents together in a family that’s basically been in the same place for 34 years, since we lived in another house in the same area for seven years. And if that’s one of life’s important things—raising children—then I think we did pretty well. Our church is nearby, so we’ve got these things that have been part of our lives for a long time, and they all made their way into the letters. Home, church, the path of life. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, but I’ve got to think that we’ve gotten a few things right.

Liz Sonnenberg is staff genealogist for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Reflections from Hilde Adler

Hilde Adler is a repeat client with Modern Memoirs. Her first book, a memoir entitled The Way It Was: not so long ago in a country not so far away, came out in 2011 and underwent several subsequent editions and reprints. The second book, entitled I Am Not Old Enough: The Twenty-seven Stages of Adjustment to Living in a Retirement Community, was published in 2019. We profiled Adler in a 2021 interview and now return to discuss her most recent project, completed in 2024, which reintroduced her first publication, The Way It Was, as a Digital Book. A Modern Memoirs Digital Book is an electronic replication of an original print book that is readable on any device. After printing and reprinting 450 copies of her book over the course of six years, Adler went paperless in a process that took just two weeks to complete. We asked the author to reflect on the new medium, and what it has meant to share her books in this format.

1. What inspired you to come back to Modern Memoirs to create a Digital Book edition of your memoir, The Way It Was?

Hilde Adler: I am running out of the printed copies of this book, but wanted to keep distributing it, as it seems more relevant than ever. I also thought it would be easier (and in the end, cheaper) to send a link to people than to send them the actual book. And I also thought I could reach more people with a digital version. So I remembered this option and thought it would work well for what I currently had in mind.

2. Digital Books are sharable via links and QR codes, and they can be sold at a price, or made available to readers free of charge or as “open source” publications. You chose the free option. What concerns, if any, did you need to overcome?

“I am running out of the printed copies of this book, but wanted to keep distributing it, as it seems more relevant than ever.”

Hilde Adler: It was never my intention to make money on this book or to sell it commercially. I intended, at first, to give it only to family and friends. I wanted to honor my parents and share their story. I thought that not enough attention had been paid to the life that Germany’s Jews lost because of Hitler. All the emphasis was (rightly so) on the horrible atrocities. But there was another story to tell as well. It surprised me that so many strangers became interested. I thought the one-time cost of having it digitized was worth it if I intended to share it more widely.

3. What advantages do Digital Books offer compared to print?

Hilde Adler: Easier and cheaper and somehow “more informal” to share.

4. Digital Books are paired with online author pages that provide a description of the book, an author biographical sketch, and a link and QR code that open the Digital Book. How did you go about writing the text for this page?

Hilde Adler: I tried to keep the page as simple and short as possible, and to give just enough information to suggest to a reader what the book is about.

5. How have you reached out to potential readers, and what kind of response have you received from them about the Digital Book edition of your memoir?

Hilde Adler: I have not yet shared this widely. The people with whom I have shared it digitally, have, for the most part, asked for it because they heard about it from somebody, and they have really appreciated getting it. This is especially true of a number of people in Germany to whom I’ve sent the link.

Curious about Adler’s Digital Book? Click here to read more about it on her online author page and to access the full text through its link and QR code.

Or, are you interested in creating a Digital Book of your own? Contact Modern Memoirs today to learn more about our economical and efficient process for book digitization.

Liz Sonnenberg is staff genealogist for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

When in Rome, Find Time to Write!

A blog post by
Publishing Intern Lily Fitzgerald

Lily in a gondola along the Grand Canal in Venice, Italy

During my winter break from classes at UMass-Amherst, I had the amazing opportunity to go to Italy with a program led by my business school. For two weeks, thirty other students and I would travel to five cities to learn about international business and how different industries adapt to cultural challenges and globalization. I thought the trip would be both an educational experience and a vacation from my usual work, but my creative writing professor had other ideas. 

In addition to my business studies, I am currently working on a horror anthology as part of my honors thesis in Creative Writing. On the last day of class in the fall 2024 semester, my creative writing professor pulled me aside. He said he believed I would have a better start to the next semester if I had some writing ready to be workshopped by the first or second week of classes. He told me I should “not stop conversing with my characters” and advised me to focus on my writing throughout the break.

“My creative writing professor pulled me aside. He told me I should ‘not stop conversing with my characters’ and advised me to focus on my writing throughout the break.”

Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, Italy

I agreed and took his advice seriously. I planned to dedicate an hour each day to writing throughout the break, including during my time in Italy. At first, my plan worked out well. I had little disruption to my life and slipped writing time in between spending time with family, celebrating Christmas, and catching up with friends. While packing my journal and pens into my backpack, I felt confident that I could keep up with my commitment to writing while traveling. 

I realized how naïve I was on the first day of my trip. Due to layovers and delays, it took over twelve hours to get to Italy. By the time I arrived in Rome, I hadn’t slept in over 48 hours and couldn’t even look at my journal. All I wanted was to lie down on my hotel bed and see the inside of my eyelids.

Crypt inside the Opera della Metropolitana in Siena, Italy

The next two days were no easier, as I was exhausted from the time change and from exploring Rome. After running around between historic sites, business meetings, and group dinners all day, I would go back to my hotel room and pass out in bed. In fact, I completely forgot about my writing commitment until I was repacking my bag to go to the next city on our itinerary, and I saw my journal at the bottom of my backpack. I was disappointed in myself. Realizing the fast pace I was keeping in Italy was not going to get easier, I made a plan to keep up with my writing. 

First, I adjusted my expectations. There was no way my schedule would allow me an uninterrupted hour every day to dedicate to writing, so I lowered my quota to at least twenty minutes a day. This made my daily writing goal less daunting on days when I was especially tired. 

Second, I looked for more opportunities to write instead of waiting until I was back in my hotel room at the end of the day. I took advantage of time while traveling between cities on the bus, and I also bowed out of some optional, touristy activities that weren’t of interest to me. These breaks gave me the chance to write in my hotel room and also benefitted my overall health and wellbeing during the trip. 

And third, I realized just how beneficial writing while traveling was to my craft. I found inspiration for setting descriptions and other elements of my stories in the gothic architecture of churches I visited, for example, and the many new experiences I had and sights I saw inspired me with writing ideas outside of my thesis. I returned to UMass for the spring semester with a completed short story that I was able to workshop with my class. Although my draft still needs some work, it was a good starting point for the semester.

Even though I did get off track with my writing goals at the start of my trip to Italy, the experience of reorienting myself ended up helping both my craft and my practice. The lesson I learned is: don’t get discouraged, and always find time to write. No matter where I am, I know that life will throw distractions and challenges my way, and learning how to adapt as I prioritize writing will only make me better at what I love.

Lily atop the panorama at the Siena Cathedral in Siena, Italy

Lily Fitzgerald is publishing intern for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

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