{photo courtesy of David Urbanke}

When I went back and looked at the first chapter, I could see so clearly, even sentence by sentence, where it was my authentic, current voice, interspersed with attempts to delight and entertain millions of readers whose names I don’t know, by throwing in stuff that I thought they might like. Strained attempts at humor. Strained attempts at goofiness that wasn’t really going on during the year I was writing about. … It just didn’t sound right; it just didn’t feel right. So I took some time off, and found that my mind kept going back to… ‘I do want to tell this story. I just have to give myself permission to hope that my readers will grow up with me.’ — Elizabeth Gilbert