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Our Modern Memoirs motto is “Your memoir, the way you want it.” We mean it! To that end, we are always on our client’s timeline, at their pace, often despite our best hopes for timely production dates. I might schedule a project with great diligence, hoping to go to print within 6-12 months (average time), but if a client holds on to a draft for an extra week, month, or year (or yes, even over a year), we try our utmost to be understanding. We have to. “Life gets in the way,” founder Kitty Axelson-Berry used to say frequently.
Sue Fuller came to Modern Memoirs in 2008 with her ideas for a memoir that she had not yet started to write. Off we went on a collaborative journey of editorial, design, and production services. We didn’t know at the start that her project would outlive three office moves and span more than a decade. (Looking back in my emails, I found over 450 emails from/to Sue, and that was only since we migrated from one email server to another halfway through the project. Surely another 450 emails came before then!)
It was an unconventional arrangement (not recommended for the average person!): Sue would write and submit only one chapter at a time, starting naturally with Chapter One. We would go through the usual editorial back-and-forths for several months. Once the chapter looked perfect, she’d send the photos, which we’d insert with captions at designated locations. Then there would be more changes. When she finally approved the chapter, we would do a “final” proofread on it. (This even though we told her it would be much more cost-efficient to proofread the entire book once it was complete. No, not an option!) After a few more draft exchanges post-proofreading, she’d move on to writing Chapter Two.
The main problem with this writing procedure was that Sue would be gone for months or a year at a time, traveling, etc. But she would always return and faithfully send the next chapter of her book. There were more than 35 chapters in all. Five years passed and she had only gotten to the year of her marriage in the chronology (and she was now in her eighties). Sue said she still had to write chapters about each of her children and all the places they’d lived. Now that there were grandchildren, the number of which were expanding each year, I begged her to stop so that we could go to print. “You can call this Volume One and put your children’s era in Volume Two.” Not an option!
More years passed. My own kids grew from pre-teens into college students. When our office upgraded to a completely new design software and I had to re-design the whole book, it didn’t faze Sue. She kept writing. More years passed. We would completely forget the content of the early parts of the book and have to read from the beginning again. I used to call her every month on the same date, hoping for a resolution. She kept writing. Finally things began to shift when, somewhat chagrined, she told me: “Most of the people my age who are in these stories have died.” I started pestering her in earnest.
It was 2019. I called Sue on the phone to say, “Kitty is thinking of selling the business and I don’t know what’s going to happen!” This was true, and it also worked. Sue wrapped up all the remaining chapters within two months.
When it came time to design the dustjacket, Sue knew exactly what she wanted, referring to a glossy book about Queen Elizabeth II for design inspiration. On the back cover, she insisted on a photo of her 1997 red Volvo 850, a photo from the shiny dealership brochure she sent. The red background of the jacket had to be the exact same red as the car. (I just love our clients’ idiosyncrasies, which, again, we try to honor at every turn.)
The book was published in fall of 2019. Her long-awaited response:
“The books arrived safely… they look terrific. The dustcover is wonderful, the book and spine are great, and I especially appreciate the quality of the archival paper. The red is perfect! Thank you. I am thrilled.”
Sue’s Story, the way Sue wanted it.
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