Complex sentence: Eager to launch her writing career, Smart quit the "Journal" and left Ottawa for good, and began to travel on her own, visiting New York, Mexico and California, joining a writers' colony at Big Sur.
Split into simpler sentences: Eager to launch her writing career, Smart quit the "Journal" and left Ottawa for good. Traveling on her own, she visited New York, Mexico and California, joining a writers' colony at Big Sur.