When her mother’s Parkinson’s had progressed, Patricia Hassler quit her job and became her mother’s caretaker.  Realizing she needed a creative outlet, she answered an ad in a local paper for a columnist to write about a nearby suburb where her husband was teaching. The newspaper editor also wanted features about what was going on in the town.   Patricia thought that she could successfully network for leads in the area and applied.  When she got the job, she titled her column “Inside Hinsdale.”  Once she started fulfilling her mission to find people who were doing interesting things, she wrote about a man who owned his own airplane, women sewing and selling their handiwork and schools and churches participating in the community.  During the three years she wrote the column, she learned how to write tight, using interesting angles as well as snappy beginnings and endings.  She also wrote extended features on some of the people she found and this taught her how to fill out her personal essays with interesting detail.  Then as her mother’s health declined further, Patricia used her well-honed skills to create Dear Mom: Remembering Our Mothers. This book is a marriage of memoir and guided journaling.  In it, Patricia reveals a blueprint for adult children who want to capture memories of their mothers.  Of course, the techniques can be used to capture memories of anyone.

In writing Dear Mom, Patricia also put her experience writing book reviews to work.  With degrees in English and library science, she reviewed books for Booklist, where she specialized in memoir, biography, education and pop culture. Having read many nonfiction books, she was familiar with multiple authors’ strengths and weaknesses in presenting their material.  Buoyed by an experience she’d had after she reviewed a book called Show Me the Way to Go Home, a memoir by a man in his 50’s who developed Alzheimer’s disease, she got serious about getting a book of her own published. The man’s caregiver wrote Patricia that the author was very excited about her book review and wanted to thank her for what she had written. Patricia noted how strangers connect through memories and redoubled her efforts to complete Dear Mom as a guided journal as well as a memoir. Another of Patricia’s motivations was the way after years of reviewing, she felt like “a bridesmaid and never a bride” despite the fact that she had won essay contests sponsored by The Illinois Women’s Press Association.

To help finance her project, she applied for  and received a grant from the Illinois Arts Council and the book bears the Council’s logo on the back cover with the words, “Support for this publication was provided by the Illinois Arts Council, an agency of the State of Illinois.”  She arranged for a print run of only 500 books because of the cost of production, the limits on how much storage space she had, and the idea that “realistically, it would take a lifetime to sell more than 500 books.”  She is now marketing her book using Amazon.com and her own webpage (http://www.home.earthlink.net/ ~rayjh/index.htm) from which she makes more money per book.  Her marketing plan includes visits to local libraries, stores, bed and breakfasts, book clubs, and organizations while seeking speaking engagements, reviews, and slots at book festivals.

Here’s what Patricia has to say about the process of self-publishing:

I didn’t want to become a 90-year-old lady with a moldy manuscript in her dresser drawer. I wanted to tell my mom’s story because I felt many adults of the Baby Boom and Beyond generations were experiencing similar situations and emotions. They might be helped by seeing that someone else empathized with their memories of a seemingly ordinary Mom who was extraordinary to them. The writing prompts would provide an incentive for them finally to get those thoughts on paper. Writing the “Dear Mom” letters for each chapter proved cathartic for me as well.

I selected National Writers Press (NWP) because I am a long-time member of their parent organization, The National Writers Association. The company is in Colorado so we conducted business via phone, e-mail, and snail mail. This made communication challenging, but NWP provides proofreading, cover design, and all printing while the author owns the copyright and the printing “plates.” They also arrange for book distribution through Baker and Taylor (www.btol.com), an international supplier of books and materials to retailers and libraries.  I selected the paper, page icons, book size, and typeface and chose a photo of my mom as a young woman for use on the cover. My experiences as an English teacher, librarian, book reviewer, and bibliophile made the design decisions quite easy. I knew exactly how I wanted the book to look — professional and not self-published. I felt confident enough to self-edit.  When I disagreed with the NWP proofreader’s punctuation changes, I changed them back!

Because I had reviewed memoir for Booklist Magazine, I contacted two authors (Sheila Bender and Frances Weaver) whose books I had reviewed and requested cover blurbs from them. Both graciously agreed to read the galleys of Dear Mom and provided wonderful blurbs. I also asked my former high school English teacher (with whom I have maintained an e-mail relationship) to do likewise and she came through as well.  Writers must cultivate contacts, ask for help, and offer assistance in return.

The writing process took about a year of sporadic work; the publishing process took four months. At last, I was the proud parent of 500 bouncing books. However, the real challenge had only begun. With no publisher to market my work, I read every self-publishing book possible and joined SPAN (Small Publishers Association). During the past five months, I have participated in Chicago’s Printer’s Row Book Fair (no sales), have placed the book in three area stores and a local bed and breakfast, have sold copies to friends and co-workers, and have begun to market to local libraries. I have a lead to participate in an authors’ evening at a public library next spring. I have sent brochures to retirement homes and local clubs who might need a speaker and am scheduled for a reading in February. The book was reviewed favorably in The Catholic New World newspaper, and a local paper interviewed me for a feature with a photo. Lastly, I have entered Dear Mom in Writer’s Digest’s self-published book contest and have reserved a table at an upcoming meeting of the Illinois Woman’s Press Association (of which I am a member) to display and sell the book.

I would encourage any potential self-publishers to locate their state’s Arts Council and apply for an assistance grant. They will send appropriate forms, including a request for a writing sample, and if you receive a grant, they will require that you submit a copy of the finished work. I received $500 towards publication expenses. Grants are often larger, but I applied at the end of the fiscal year when funds were running out.

I am proud and pleased to have competed a writing project that haunted me for several years and I believe Mom would say, “Good going, Toots.” Many readers tell me that they laugh and cry along with me because they recognize their memories in mine. Therein lies the universality of writing, of memory, and of moms.  “That looks like my mom,” they’ll say to me when they see the book’s cover.  “Your story is my story,” they sometimes say, and I feel good knowing I have used my memories to connect with others.

Patricia is sure she’ll be writing another book–this time about the process of writing a memoir. But she’s going to look for a traditional publisher.  Who knows, maybe when she gets a contract for her second book, the publisher will be interested in bringing out her first book in a new edition!

Following is a chapter from Dear Mom:  Remembering Our Mothers:

We’re on a Piano Roll

If music be the food of love, play on.
–Twelfth Night

My husband plays piano like George Gershwin. I should say he leans piano pieces by the same method as did the jazz maestro. Gershwin, amazingly rightbrained, taught himself to play by experimenting on a school friend’s player piano, trying to capture the keys as they jumped like crickets.  My husband also sight-learns so we purchased a dazzling electronic version of George’s self-propelled upright.  Pop in a disc and watch those ivories hop under ghostly hands. Ray likes this method of memorizing songs because he can cut to the chase and avoid reading notes.

I’m a note reader. My sister was a note reader. My mother was a note reader. It probably correlates to prissy left brains that made us follow the rules and never stray from the score.  Mom learned to play as a teen and insisted that my sister, Joanne, and I do likewise. Jo was a more accomplished singer than pianist and quickly segued into those classes while I was left trudging to piano lessons every Monday at 3:00 for seven years.

The teacher was our parochial school principal, a middle-aged Sister who ruled the convent piano with an iron metronome. “You didn’t practice, did you, Patricia?” she would ask while her blue eyes bore a hole through my skull. Truth be told, I hated lessons but reveled in melodies. When I liked a song, a rousing waltz perhaps, I would play it to near extinction and look forward to strutting my Strauss at an annual recital in the school hall. When I disliked a piece, it died a miserable death at my hands. Black or white.  I couldn’t get into gray.

Mom loved gray.  She’d play any song, taming it note by tedious note, until she had wrestled it into submission. One of her favorites was the pop tune Fascination which she practiced on a continuous loop until we rolled our eyes and begged for Old Man River. Because she had sung in the church choir as a girl, Mom didn’t hesitate to belt out the lyrics as she played for her captive audience

“Move over, Debbie Reynolds,” Dad would say.

“She should sound this good,” Mom would reply between verses.

Although she never admitted it, I think Mom would have enjoyed performing in public. She loved to express herself through music and enjoyed nothing better than watching a good, sappy musical. In fact, this fondness for music reached back forty years to her teens.

During the Depression, Mom had met her friend June when both worked as sales clerks at a Kresge’s dime store in Chicago.  On weekends, they would ride the streetcar to popular ballrooms to dance and romance budding Lotharios with slicked-back hair. Mom told me that she had gone more for the music than the men, but somehow I had already guessed.

She and June remained friends, exchanging calls and visits for nearly seven decades until Mom’s death. A few months after that, June phoned to invite Ray and me to visit her at home where she now lived widowed and alone. “I’ll be your new Mom, ” she said. How could I refuse?

I hadn’t seen June in many years, but immediately remembered why Mom had valued her friendship:  This lady was all music–in her eyes, in her voice, and most of all, we soon discovered, in those hands. She insisted on a house tour, and there in the basement sat an ancient upright piano that her husband had built into a wall decorated with musical scenes.

“Will you play something for us?” Ray asked, nearly begging.  “Is grass green?” her look seemed to say, but she answered with grace, “Of course. Love to.”

June settled herself on the creaking bench and her eighty-five-year old hands lighted on the keys like two cranes swooping onto a spring lake. As her diamond rings glitzed and blurred in the light, those wrinkled fingers migrated from key to key with birdlike precision. We were delighted that she drew her repertoire from those distant ballroom years–Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and oh my, good ol’ piano-roll Gershwin.

And the showstopper, whose composer none of us could name, was called Together, in retrospect an ironic title for a song whose verse I still remember:

You’re gone from me, but in my memory
We always will be — together.

Something in the way June sang the words told me she was serenading her husband, the love of her life, but I had someone else in mind. Someone w ho loved learning the notes, who hummed medleys from My Fair Lady while stirring soup, someone whose love of music had brought together an unlikely trio huddled around an old piano in a Chicago basement.

Dear Mom,

Several years after I had been issued a reprieve from piano lessons, I began to tinker with music again, but just as I was beginning to enjoy the laissez-faire approach to teacherless piano, you decided to fulfill a dream and replace that instrument with an organ.  One of those trendy electronic uprights, no less, with syncopated background effects that swished and thumped and clanged.

You practiced diligently and when that forest of foot pedals refused to be tamed, blithely ignored them and substituted the thumps and swishes instead.  Dad always provided a big hand at the conclusion of each thirty-minute living room recital, and his shout, “Encore!” brought on an inevitable organ version of Fascination.

Eventually, your Parkinson’s symptoms precluded any further organ performances and the instrument sat neglected for years. Until I began to date Ray. Mr. sight-reader took an instant liking to the organ’s deeply dramatic sounds and we resurrected those old recitals. This time, it was you who waited for the encore that was, inevitably, Gershwin. “Ray, I want you to have that organ after I’m gone, ” you would say.

So your organ followed us to another home where occasionally Ray will jilt his cutting-edge piano to court that aging matron. And when his hands hit just the right keys in a search for just the right tune, I’m convinced that you both always learned just the right notes.

Memory Prompts:

• Describe any artistic talents or cultural interests your mom had.
• How did she respond to music and art? How do you? If she played a musical instrument, how did others react to her performance?
• Did she live her life as a sight-reader or a note reader?  How so?
• How did your mom’s attitude toward music and the arts affect your talents and cultural interests?
• Compare her favorite music with yours. Why are they similar or different?
• What song title would serve as an apt one for your mom’s biography? For yours?

****

Patricia writes in her introduction that it “is consoling to connect the dots of experience and watch patterns appear, and perhaps to talk to mothers who, if nowhere else, live on inside us.” She hopes her recollections and reflections jog memories of comparable experiences and that her readers can use her writing and her prompts to collect and savor their own memories.  As I wrote in my blurb, “Writing from her own experience of losing a mother, Patricia Jana Hassler offers a skilled guide for helping all women move up one generation. Whether we have to process our loss of our earliest and strongest role model for becoming a woman or still have our mothers with us but must figure out how we are different from them, Patricia’s memory vignettes, letters to her mother and targeted writing prompts offer the opportunity and inspiration we need.”

If you are interested in self-publishing a book that you believe will benefit others, consider Patricia’s experience and information.  Look for professional organizations and arts commissions in your area and ask if they have grants and other resources for self-publishing authors.  Your local National Writer’s Union chapter can also be of help, as can commercial print-on-demand publishers like 1stBooks.com, Xlibris.com and Booklocker.com.  Look around for publishers whose services meet your requirements.  Patricia has itemized the services the house she used offered, including distribution.  I would add that you must make sure the service you use has an ISBN number available for you to purchase for your book since bookstores and distributors will not handle books without one.  Purchasing an ISBN number on your own requires contacting R.R. Bowker, applying and paying an application fee.  You also want to be sure if the company producing your book registers it in Books in Print or whether you have to do that yourself (visit www.bowkerlink.com for information).

When arranging for the production of your book, make sure you understand any contracts you are signing (arts organizations can sometimes help you arrange a meeting with a lawyer who is volunteering time for the arts).  Be realistic about keeping inside a budget.  Distributors and bookstores take a percentage of the cover price that can add up to over 60% so recouping costs is not easy.  If you will need a book doctor, an editor or copy editor, make sure you find a good one and understand those additional costs.  Local professional societies for writers should have contacts for you and you may be able to “employ” a colleague, relative, or teacher who is gifted in these areas to do some of the work for you.

To get into the swing of things, read writersweekly.com to keep abreast of issues and marketing ideas for writers who publish.

It always feels good to get a book in other people’s hands, but you do want to make sure the book they hold is one they will value and find accessible.  That’s where all the preparation, services and support come in. If you are publishing a book yourself, doing research on the process and on promoting your book may prove just as important as writing it.