Today's guest post comes courtesy of Dorah Blume. Her debut novel, Botticelli's Muse has been selected as a 2017 INDIES Book of the Year Award Finalist by Foreword Reviews. This prestigious magazine considers as part of its mission to discover, review, and share the best books from university and independent publishers including Dorah's new publishing company Juiceboxartists Press. I asked her to share a quick recollection of her time in Italy when she was nineteen which went on to inspire her writing and her book. 

“Guida della Basilica Papale del Sacro Convento di San Francesco d’Assisi” were the only words I knew when I got off the boat in Venice in August of 1963. I could say them with perfect Italian rhythm and accent, but I didn’t know how to ask for directions to the nearest toilet. My teacher Barry in Boston had given me “private” Italian lessons and had insisted that if only I could repeat the title of the guide book to the papal basilica of the sacred convent of Saint Francis of Assisi without an American accent, I could learn to speak Italian well. I had sold most of my Filene’s Bargain Basement designer clothing for a profit to my wealthy Bennington College classmates in order to pay for my ticket on the Saturnia that sailed for 14 days from NYC to Italy. 
 
I stayed with nuns in a convent for a few days before heading north to Bressanone in the alps for Italian lessons, then soon made my way to Florence in time to start my junior year abroad at the Academy of Fine Arts inside the building where Michelangelo’s statue of David stands today. I was a nineteen-year-old woman eager to study painting and devour Italy.
 
A broadside on the locked door of the school said “sciopero” which meant “strike.” And there was no opening day in sight. I had rented a bicycle to find my way around Florence. Overwhelmed by the number of museums, I hung out at Upim, the local department store, gorged on Italian pastries—the gooiest I could find, and immersed myself in the language by spending afternoons at the movies. I saw Fellini’s 8.5 three times. It was pretty lonely and my Italian was pathetic. At least I had a good accent going for me, but a very limited vocabulary.

I moved to Perugia and enrolled in language classes at The University for Foreigners and lived with an Italian family. By November, I was fluent in the language so I returned to Florence, moved into a pensione a few blocks away from the Accademia, and was determined to give Florence a second chance. Most of my housemates were Italian architecture students. Their friends became my friends. During Christmas break, they took me to their hometown of L’Aquila where I experienced hospitality in a way I had never experienced in the States. I fell in love, not only with one of the architecture students, but with Italy.

Studying under teachers who had no interest or enthusiasm for expressive art, I soon found myself switching to the printmaking studio where I learned the technique of etching. Outside of class, I im­mersed myself in the music of the Italian language, the suede-like splendor of the terra cotta-colored walls, the suffocating streets, and the flesh made stone in the piazze. The city’s artistic pulse flowed through my veins as though I'd lived there before. The Uffizi— home to Botticelli's Primavera — became my cathedral.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that first year in Italy planted invisible seeds of inspiration in me, seeds that did not blossom until my 50s after my creative passions had turned from visual arts to writing. That’s when I conceived, with the help of the Emerson MFA program, my debut novel Botticelli’s Muse.

Written by author, Dorah Blume.

About the Author:
An Italophile since the age of nineteen when she studied painting at Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy, Dorah Blume has published short fiction and nonfiction in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for “Hunger for Learning.”  Considering herself a late bloomer, she expanded her artistic reach from visual to the written word in her forties with an MFA in creative writing from Emerson, and has navigated between the two ever since.

As a certified Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) facilitator, Dorah has led Juiceboxartists writing workshops for adults in Greater Boston as well as in Tuscany. She divides her time between Boston and Los Angeles with frequent trips to Italy. If she could possess one superpower, it would be to understand and speak every language on the planet.  

You can read more about Dorah on her official website: dorahblume.com

Botticelli's Muse is available for purchase on Amazon.
​Dorah has also designed three separate adult coloring books with images from the novel that can be purchased on Amazon as well, so click above to check those out!

If you enjoyed this guest post, you may also like to "dare un'occhiata" at these ones:
​Guest Post: How I Followed My Dreams of Becoming a Writer in Rome
Guest Post: My Story with the Italian Language​
​THE ITALY EXPERIENCE: Canadian Expat vs. American Exchange Student

If you books and Italy are what do it for you, check out these posts:
​Book Buzz: Return to Glow by Chandi Wyant
Book in Progress: Italian Ways by Tim Parks
Recommended #Italy Reads: At Least You're in Tuscany by Jennifer Criswell
​Recommended Reads: A Zany Slice of Italy by Ivanka Di Felice ​
​
And finally, if writing intrigues you, read ten very short stories which are now available as a cute collection in my first eBook: This Sweet Life. You can download it for FREE in my store! Or read the included pieces as individual posts:  
​
​Creative Writing: The Butterfly Effect
​Creative Writing: The Letter R (Explicit)
​Creative Writing: Dear Italy (A Love Letter)
Creative Writing: Airport Arrivals
​Creative Writing: Tanqueray and You
​Creative Writing: A Thousand Lives
​Creative Writing: A Sunday Kind of Love
​Creative Writing: Perfect Strangers in Switzerland
​Creative Writing: Rooftops and Rome
​Creative Writing: The Morning After in New York
​Creative Writing: Mulberries in Sicily
​

“What are you going to do next?” was the question everyone was asking during the last year of university. I was coming to the end of my degree in English Literature at Oxford, and most of my friends were either staying in academia, or moving to London to get jobs – entering the real world, in other words.

To anyone who asked, my answer was simple: “I’m going to move to Rome and write novels.”
​
I’m not sure that anyone took me seriously. It sounded like a fantasy rather than a realistic life plan. But I’d fallen in love with Rome during a 3 week internship at Keats-Shelley House in Piazza di Spagna the year before, and I’d been trying (and failing) to write novels for years. I’d even joined the Failed Novelists Society at Oxford. Now, at the age of 21, I was ready to combine my two passions and become a writer who writes, rather than a writer who daydreams.

In 2013, after a year of working and saving up in London, I moved to Rome. I lived in a grotty little apartment in Testaccio, with a bathroom the size of a shoebox that flooded regularly, and flatmates with whom I was unable to communicate. I was ecstatically happy.

Most people choose their apartment because of the price, or the proximity to public transport, or some other practical reason. I’d chosen mine because of the cemetery. I was just around the corner from the Cimitero Accattolico (the Protestant/Non-Catholic Cemetery), burial place of my idols and literary inspirations, the Romantic poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Keats and Shelley had both left England to live (and die) in Italy. Shelley produced some of his greatest works while living in Italy, before drowning at the age of 29. Keats, on the other hand, was already dying of tuberculosis when he came to Rome, and wrote nothing in the last few months of his life. He was just 25 when he died, in a room overlooking the Spanish Steps.

Of the two, I hoped to be more like Shelley, taking inspiration from Italy and writing as much as possible. Although I didn’t plan on dying an untimely death, I often thought about their ages – 29 and 25 – and felt I ought to be writing more, and ideally producing some kind of masterpiece before I got too old.

In the mornings I would work on my novel, either in my bedroom or sitting on a bench in the cemetery, and in the afternoons I taught English at a private language school. A side note – although you’re unlikely to get rich teaching English in Italy, it’s a great way to earn a living while still having time to work on your creative projects. Many of the English teachers I know in Rome are also writers, musicians or artists.

I wrote a novel. Hyacinth I, the story of a king faking his own death and escaping to Venice, was rejected by every literary agent I sent it to, though the harshest critics were my own parents. Eventually I gave up, and decided I would have to write something else. Something set in Rome – something about ruins, foreigners, heatwaves, a past on the edge of the present…

In Exile was born on the metro, somewhere between Sant’Agnese and Conca d’Oro. I imagined Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, being reluctantly re-born in 20th century Rome, and waking up amongst the tombstones in the Protestant Cemetery. He would meet a teenage girl, Grace, who would overcome her fears to become his most devoted follower. This would be the start of a new cult, a Bacchae for the modern era set in the ruins of Rome.

I knew how it started, and I knew how it ended (bloodily, of course). I didn’t have a middle yet. But over the following year I worked steadily on the novel, filling up notebooks with illegible biro scribbles, and somehow a story grew.

When I finished In Exile I went through the usual routine of submitting to agents and getting generic rejections. Somewhere around rejection #65 I had the idea of trying independent publishers instead, and sent the book to the UK publisher Unbound. They accepted it immediately, and said they would publish In Exile as an e-book and paperback. The catch? I would have to crowdfund the publication, finding around 200 people to pledge to buy the book in advance. A daunting challenge for an unknown debut author... I don’t have 200 friends, regardless of what Facebook says, and trying to convince total strangers to buy a book that technically doesn’t exist yet is no mean feat.
​
I’m now 26. I’ve outlived Keats and haven’t yet been published, let alone written a timeless masterpiece. But I’m proud of In Exile, which is the product of years of compulsive reading and writing, and the result of my love affair with Rome. It’s a story that should appeal to italophiles, fans of The Secret History, and anyone who’s ever wondered what would happen if a Greek god started a modern-day cult while going through an existential crisis.

To find out more about In Exile, and to pledge to buy a copy, check out the page on Unbound. Supporters will get their name in the back of the book, and the satisfaction of knowing that they’re helping a debut author to achieve her dream.

(And if you happen to find yourself in Rome, the wine is on me…)

Alexandra Turney writes about life in Rome on her blog, Go Thou to Rome.
​You can also find her on Instagram and Twitter.

If you enjoyed this guest post, you may also like to "dare un'occhiata" at these ones:
Guest Post: My Story with the Italian Language​
​THE ITALY EXPERIENCE: Canadian Expat vs. American Exchange Student

If you books and Italy are what do it for you, check out these posts:
​Book Buzz: Return to Glow by Chandi Wyant
Book in Progress: Italian Ways by Tim Parks
Recommended #Italy Reads: At Least You're in Tuscany by Jennifer Criswell
​Recommended Reads: A Zany Slice of Italy by Ivanka Di Felice ​
​
And finally, if writing intrigues you, read ten very short stories which are now available as a cute collection in my first eBook: This Sweet Life. You can download it for FREE in my store! Or read the included pieces as individual posts:  
​
​Creative Writing: The Letter R (Explicit)
​Creative Writing: Dear Italy (A Love Letter)
Creative Writing: Airport Arrivals
​Creative Writing: Tanqueray and You
​Creative Writing: A Thousand Lives
​Creative Writing: A Sunday Kind of Love
​Creative Writing: Perfect Strangers in Switzerland
​Creative Writing: Rooftops and Rome
​Creative Writing: The Morning After in New York
​Creative Writing: Mulberries in Sicily

INTRODUCTION
I'm excited to introduce Bryce, the creator of the multilingual blog Finite Languages. He has kindly written a guest post on the topic of how he learnt Italian and how his learning process lead him to create an innovative way to blog in your target language, have it corrected, and then even published online! Everyone please give a warm welcome to Bryce! *cue virtual applause track*

Ciao e benvenuti nel mio primo guest blog! Scrivere in generale è un compito piuttosto nuovo per me.  Mi ero ripromesso dopo essermi laureato che non avrei più scritto, ma eccomi qua… a scrivere di nuovo.  Suppongo che c’è sempre stata un parte di me che amava scrivere.  C’è qualcosa di veramente speciale quando si è capaci di mettere insieme i propri pensieri su carta (oppure sul computer in questo caso).  Ho riscoperto questa passione quando ho deciso di studiare una nuova lingua.

Hello and welcome to my first guest blog that I have ever written!  Writing in general is a rather new task for me.  I promised myself after graduating that I wouldn’t write anymore but here I am… writing again.  I suppose that there has always been a part of me that loved writing.  There’s something special when you are able to see your thoughts in front of you on paper (or on the computer screen in this case).  I hadn’t discovered this love again until I decided to learn new languages.

Dovrei spiegarvi meglio dall’inizio.  La mia ragazza mi comprò un’applicazione quasi 3 anni fa per l’apprendimento dell’italiano.  Ero determinato a parlare bene italiano entro l 'anno.  Ovviamente non capivo bene cosa significasse parlare veramente bene una lingua straniera.  Come ben sapete non si può ottenere un livello fluente in una lingua senza parlare con le persone, ascoltare la musica e vivere immersi nella lingua.  Non lo sapevo.  Continuavo a  studiare solo 30 minuti al giorno e finalmente dopo un anno al computer finii il corso. Pensavo di essere pronto a parlare con madrelingua italiani.  Ero entusiasta e orgoglioso di me.

I should explain better from the beginning.  My girlfriend bought me an application almost 3 years ago for learning Italian.  I was determined that I would be able to speak Italian within a year.  Obviously I didn’t understand very well what it meant to really speak a new language.  As you well know you cannot obtain a fluent level in a language without speaking with people, listening to music and living with the language all around yourself.  I didn’t know that.  I continued to study just 30 minutes every day and finally, after a year at the computer, I finished the course and I thought that I would be able to speak with Italians.  I was excited and proud of myself.

Capii molto presto che non era così. Per imparare una lingua straniera era necessario molto più impegno di quanto immaginassi! Dopo aver finito con quest’app, scaricai un’altra che si chiama HelloTalk, in cui potevo fare tandem di lingua con persone italiane, che stavano imparando l’inglese.  Scoprii subito che la mia conoscenza dell' italiano non era sufficiente per parlare con qualcuno che non avesse dimestichezza con l'inglese.

I soon had my first realization.  Learning a foreign language takes more that I would have been able to imagine.  After having finished this app, I downloaded another called HelloTalk where I could have a language exchange with native speakers that learned English.  I discovered immediately that my Italian knowledge wouldn’t be enough to speak with someone that didn’t speak English.

Direi che la mia avventura con l’italiano inizia proprio qui.  A questo punto mi sentivo come se fosse impossibile imparare una nuova lingua senza trasferirsi  in quel paese,  ma sono testardo e cominciai a parlare con quante più persone possibili che non conoscevano l’inglese.  Era difficile e spesso non riuscivamo a capire quello che stavamo dicendo, però giorno dopo giorno capii che non avevo più bisogno del traduttore.  Allora cominciammo anche a chiamarci al cellulare… e potevo capirli!

I would say my Italian adventure started here.  At this point I felt like it would be impossible to learn a new language without moving to the country where they speak the language.  But I am stubborn.  I started to speak with more people that didn’t speak English.  It was difficult and we often couldn’t understand what we were saying to each other.  However, day after day I realized that I didn’t need to the translator anymore.  Then we also started doing phone calls… and I could understand them!

Cosa vuol dire questo? Non vale la pena studiare da solo!  Certo è comodo sedersi di fronte alla TV con un app e studiare da solo.  Quando siete da soli non farete mai brutte figure, e nessuno vi correggerà se fate spesso errori. Siete felici. Imparare veramente una lingua è una strada in salita però.  La vostra mente cambia.  Cambia come funziona, come pensa, e come reagisce ai suoni che non capisce.  Quando imparate da soli, oppure in una lezione piena di madrelingua italiani eliminate questo aspetto: tutto sembrerà semplice e non vi sentirete mai a disagio.

Do you understand what that means?  It’s not worth it to study alone.  Sure it’s comfortable to sit in front of the TV with an app and study alone.  When you are alone you won’t be embarrassed, you won’t make many mistakes.  You will be happy.  But to really learn a language is a ferocious process.  Your mind changes.  It changes how it functions, how it thinks and how it deals with the sounds that it doesn’t understand.  When you learn alone or in a classroom full of Italian native speakers, you remove this aspect.  Everything is easy and you’re never uncomfortable.

Vi invito invece a provare il metodo che scoprii più tardi.  Con internet è possibile trovare persone madrelingua nella linguaprescelta  senza pagar nulla.  Vi consiglio HelloTalk e Finite Languages.  Ne esistono altre gratuite, ma preferisco queste due perché ci ho passato un bel po’di tempo e funzionano.

Instead, I invite you to try the method that I discovered a little late.  It’s possible with the internet to find native speakers of your target languages without paying a thing.  I suggest HelloTalk and Finite Languages.  There are other free resources that exist but I prefer these two because I’ve spent a good amount of time with them and they work.

Sono parziale nel consigliarvi Finite Languages, perché l’ho fondato io, ma con questo sito web potete diventare blogger, scrivendo nella vostra seconda lingua. L'articolo verrà corretto gratuitamente da un madrelingua, e poi pubblicato online!  Questo sito non è nato come piattaforma per altri blogger.  All’inizio volevo scrivere solo io nella mia seconda lingua, per raccontare come ho fatto ad imparare l’italiano (e il tedesco).  Allora capii un'altra cosa fondamentale. Scrivevo senza chiedere l’aiuto di nessuno, e i lettori italiani  ebbero subito da ridire:  non erano felici di vedere la loro lingua sullo schermo con cosi tanti errori.  Avranno probabilmente pensato: “E questo vuole insegnare come apprendere la lingua italiana!? Mamma mia!”

I’m biased toward Finite Languages because I started it.  With this website you can write a blog in your secondary language and it will be corrected for free and published online!  This website didn’t always exist as a platform for other bloggers.  In the beginning I wanted to write alone in my secondary languages to better share how I leaned Italian (and German).  Here, I received by second realization.  I wrote a couple of blogs without asking help to correct them and my Italian community turned immediately. Obviously they weren’t happy to see their native language on their screen with so many mistakes.  They thought “And this guy wants to teach about language learning!?  Wow!”

Finalmente chiesi aiuto anch'io e cominciai a pubblicare blog in italiano e tedesco senza errori.  Non ricevevo più messaggi di madrelingua infuriati.  Subito dopo alcuni  miei amici mi chiesero se anche loro potessero scrivere per Finite Languages. Naturalmente accettai, avendo compreso quanto sia d'aiuto scrivere nella lingua straniera prescelta per migliorarsi.

Finally, I asked for help and I was able to publish the blogs in Italian and German without errors.  I didn’t receive any more messages out of anger from native speakers.  Soon after some of my friends asked me if they could write blogs as well.  Of course after having realized how much help it could help to write in one’s target language, I accepted.
​
Trovate un amico oppure una amica che non parla bene l’italiano, e lavorate insieme per aiutarvi.  Sarà spaventoso e imbarazzante. Farete spesso degli errori e ci saranno volte che non vi capirete. Ma più di tutto il resto… ci saranno progressi.

Find a friend that doesn’t speak Italian and exchange with them.  Work together to help one another.  It will be scary and embarrassing.  You will often make mistakes and there will be times that you don’t understand each other. But above all… there will be progress.

​Scritto di Bryce, corretto di Federica
Written by Bryce, corrected by Federica

Connect with both Bryce and Federica here:
Bryce at Finite Languages
Federica at The Travelling Book YouTube

​If you enjoyed this post, you may also like to "dare un'occhiata" at these ones or head over to the "Language" category:

​The Relationship Between Loving Someone and the Language You Love With
​A Day in the Life: Someone Who Will Learn Italian versus Someone Who Won't
An Open Letter to Native Speakers of the Language I'm Learning
The English Stare and Getting "Englished" Living Abroad and How To Deal
What I'm Really Thinking While Speaking Italian as a Second Language
Taking Risks in Language Learning
Language Burnout
The Gift of Language: Italian and Beyond
The Neverending Story of Learning Italian
Living in Italy, Speaking in English 
Parli Italiano? 
​How to Keep Learning Italian in Italy

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