Why We Never Give Up Our Need for a Perfect Mother: Trapped at Home by Anxiety & Panic?               by Anne Hart
Published March 2007

Publisher's Price: $16.95
Format: Paperback

Book Title: Why We Never Give Up Our Need for a Perfect Mother: Trapped at Home by Anxiety & Panic?

ISBN: 978-0-595-43402-2 (0-595-43402-9) Paperback. Published 2007. Publisher: ASJA Press, an imprint of iUniverse, Inc. To order book call in the USA: 1-800-AUTHORS

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The 5-HTT Gene: Research at the Stoneybrook University in New York revealed that perhaps if you inherit a short version of the gene called 5-HTT, you’re more likely to be predisposed to experiencing anxiety and fear or to become depressed.

Here’s how I burned out agoraphobia and panic disorder by stretching, walking in place, and nutritional changes. Research your individual issues from my detailed experience.

Book Description

The world is divided between calm people with a long 5-HTT gene and anxious individuals with a short 5-HTT gene. People with a short 5-HTT gene live with constant electrical activity in their brain’s fear center. Here’s one life story chronicling the genetic basis of agoraphobia and panic disorder, one woman’s war against the fear of going outside. You may be predisposed to either anxiety or depression if you have a short 5-HTT gene. Look up the article reporting a study that links depression to an overactive fear center in the brain titled, “Bound for Gloom and Doom,” Proceedings of the National Academy or Sciences, October 11, 2006. You can find this online at ScienceNOW Daily News. Online, check out ScienceNOW’s search engine at: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/search?searchtype=article&andorexacttitle=or&fulltext=bound+for+gloom+and+doom

Your genes react to different foods, vitamins, and treatments. If you’re concerned about hormonal imbalances and genetic predisposition, such as a short 5-HTT gene, how your body metabolizes nutrients or what defects are in your autonomic nervous system, then discover genetic causes of vitamin over stimulation or under absorption. Here’s how I burned out agoraphobia and panic disorder with mild exercise such as walking in place and nutritional changes. Research your individual issues from my detailed experience.

Browse Before You Buy

The 5-HTT Gene

How limited are future career plans when you are trapped at home for many years with agoraphobia—the fear of panicking in unfamiliar spaces? Research at the Stoneybrook University in New York revealed that if you inherit a short version of the gene called 5-HTT, you’re more likely to be predisposed to experiencing anxiety and fear or to become depressed.

Other studies reveal that you also may be sensitive to carbon dioxide in the air, feeling panicky when the there’s 5 percent carbon dioxide in the air. For people without a genetic sensitivity, the air in your environment would have to reach seven percent carbon dioxide before you’d feel anxious.

If you’re chronically anxious, have panic disorder or have advanced to agoraphobia, and are afraid of leaving your home or other familiar surroundings, if you can’t drive, ride in a bus without getting a white-out, or walk more than a few feet from your home without anxiety causing you to return home….you may not even feel depressed or be aware of any other feeling but a physical sense of dread, trembling, or numbness in your elbow.

You may panic, feel dizzy, become short of breath, hyperventilate, and go through the fight or flight syndrome. You may have adverse reactions to stress, medicines, anesthesia, or foods. You could become allergic or sensitive to loud sound effects in movie theaters, have a fear of bus travel beyond a certain point, or have white-outs while traveling, perhaps developing more frequent migraines.

You crave healing sounds in music that makes you feel relaxed. Perhaps you are experiencing post traumatic stress disorder. If you don’t have agoraphobia, perhaps it is sociophobia that keeps you away from opportunities to meet people and make friends. Or your stress may be from a physical condition that worsens when you talk on the phone or meet new people and have to speak in public. Or your panic may increase when you are in a group and fear that you’re being singled out, judged, or discriminated against.

Sometimes you develop an increasing sensitivity to dental anesthetics. For example, you react immediately with a panic attack when given a dental injection, but can be calm when the same minor dental work, such as a deep cleaning on one tooth, is done without anesthesia.

Why do you feel anxious, get panic attacks, or become homebound for decades with agoraphobia? Hyperactivity in the brain’s fear center due to the fact that you’ve inherited a short instead of a long 5-HTT gene could be the cause. The brain’s fear center is connected to the amygdala and hippocampus.

Okay, you have a short 5-HTT gene. Maybe you can’t travel without become anxious, stressed, or panicked. Maybe you get headaches from travel or have a low stress level. Maybe you panic when you laugh or are in any way emotionally stimulated by sound, touch, sight, scent, or experience.

You may not be able to sit in a movie theater or view a play without feeling anxious from the loud sound effects or the flashing lights. You look for calming experiences. The problem is you have electrical activity in your brain.

The electrical activity is in motion all the time, even when nothing should cause fear—such as when you laugh or make love. You overreact to anything that stimulates that electrical center in your brain’s fear center. It doesn’t have to be anything that would cause fear to people who have inherited a long copy of the 5-HTT gene.

The world is divided between calm people with a long 5-HTT gene and anxious individuals with a short 5-HTT gene. People with a short 5-HTT gene live with constant electrical activity in their brain’s fear center.

You may feel either anxiety or depression if you have a short 5-HTT gene. Look up the article reporting a study that links depression to an overactive fear center in the brain titled, “Bound for Gloom and Doom,” Proceedings of the National Academy or Sciences, October 11, 2006. You can find this online at ScienceNOW Daily News. Online, check out ScienceNOW’s search engine at: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/search?searchtype=article&andorexacttitle=or&fulltext=bound+for+gloom+and+doom.

If left untreated, agoraphobia can burn itself out with moderate exercise, but it may take years. You need to study how your genes react to various treatments so that you don’t become dependent upon the treatment and not find the cause.

If your problem is post partum anxiety or menopause, and you’re concerned about hormonal imbalances on top of genetic predisposition, such as a short 5-HTT gene or defects in your autonomic nervous system inherited at birth compounded by your environment and trauma from physical, emotional, or environmental stress, or even a slight head injury years ago, work on the physiological, nutritional, and genetic causes of what is keeping you bound to your home.

What worked for may be similar or very different from what will work for you. Be sure to find out how your genes react to the buildup of certain vitamins or minerals from food supplements.

Are certain B complex vitamins you take over-stimulating your thyroid? Know your body type, metabolism, and genetic predispositions. Find out how fast or slow your body builds up and metabolizes vitamins, foods, and supplements in ways that might build up in your body to over stimulate glands or organs. Are there toxic substances in the water you’re drinking?

Are you using a water distiller that takes out all the magnesium and calcium, and you aren’t replacing those minerals in your food supplements so your body can function properly? What trace minerals are you taking?

Who else in your family had anxiety problems, migraines, or other inherited issues? Did a parent smoke, drink too much caffeine or alcohol, or take any medicines or supplements during pregnancy that might have influenced your autonomic nervous system’s response to stress or other perceived changes?

When you eat fruit or sugary foods, is there a rush of insulin and adrenalin that makes you tremble with anxiety? Are the sugars in your diet worsening chronic gum disease by keeping your blood glucose level too high? Anaerobic bacteria under the gums thrive on excess sugar and yeast in your blood. Have you looked at your reactions to food that is a combination of protein and good oils such as extra virgin olive oil and Omega 3 fish oils?

Have you discussed with your health professional whether certain foods “hit you like a bomb” and cause anxiety or other symptoms of blood sugar changes?

Agoraphobia has a female-to-male ratio of 2-3:1. Social phobia is more common in females, but more males ask for treatment due to the social pressures on men to earn an income throughout adult life. Talk with health professionals that specialize in these symptoms. Is it metabolic syndrome for you or something else? Do you have the short 5-HTT gene? Or is another part of your body giving you an important message to heed? Find out how your genes process what enters your body and how your genes and brain electro-chemistry react to stress. Stress is rapid change. Does food hit you like a bomb?

What Helped My Own Hyperinsulinism and Metabolic Syndrome

What worked for me may not work for you because your metabolic system is different from mine. You need to tailor your foods and treatments to your own genes and work with health professionals that look at the whole person, and not solely the one symptom. Between 1965 and early 1972 I was housebound with agoraphobia and panic disorder. It began after the birth of my first and second children in March 1965 and in November 1966. It resumed in 1981 to 1985 and from 1999 until 2004 when I started a better nutrition program without eating the chocolate I craved, sugary desserts, and shell fish.

Each body type has different nutritional variations just as you have different genes that can be switched on and off by various methods. My metabolic syndrome and agoraphobia with panic disorder, my sensitivities to carbon dioxide in the air, to dental anesthetics, and to a variety of foods and scents will be different than yours.

What set off anxiety experiences or panic attacks in me or what caused my belly to go convex will be different that what sets off your physical reactions or experiences. Sugar and too much salt, too many dairy products and too little greens were not good for my health. You are different. Keep in mind that your genes influence how food affects your body. What environmental sounds, scents, or experiences affect your panic level?

By switching to vanilla instead of chocolate desserts, and a largely vegetarian Mediterranean and Japanese diet (seaweed, salmon, whole grains, green vegetables, no caffeine, and decaf green tea with lemongrass or herb tea with blueberry leaf), I am now able to travel by bus and walk for a half hour near my home. Caffeine and other foods were wreaking havoc causing adverse reactions as well as most dental anesthetics.

More than two million people in the United States suffer from this incapacitating anxiety, a panic state, when traveling away from their homes. It's a fear that wells up when under even the slightest stress or in an unfamiliar situation.

When traditional medicine failed to help, a friend sent me a book on Yoga exercises and meditation. I practiced the positions with determination to help myself.

In addition to the approximately 28 Yoga postures, I used music therapy, calming ethnic music of strings, flutes, and slow drums at 60 beats per minute to bring down my naturally high adrenaline state. I also changed my diet to vegetarian, but medium-protein, cutting out all white sugar and salted foods, all caffeine and chocolate.

I added raw vegetables and cut out certain starches in high amounts such as cooked potatoes and loads of cooked rice and substituted tofu, protein powder, and grapefruit pectin powder, two scoops per day.

A fish and fruit diet also worked wonders and is helpful for those not strict vegetarians. I was willing to try cooked fresh cold water fish like baked salmon in lemon juice because it's helpful to those with genetic-based hyperinsulinism and genetically high blood pressure.

My monthly estrogen migraines also grew less painful as a result. The vitamins I took were Vitamin E with 100 mg. of Selenium, Vitamin C, and beta carotene, and the usual B complex vitamins found in health food stores in normal amounts fewer than 100 mg. I also took magnesium 400 and calcium 600 to 1000 mgs.

At the time I was 25 years old. I'm in my late sixties now. I couldn't exercise much with agoraphobia because exercise increased the lactic acid in my body. Lactic acid creates panic attacks in persons prone to panic disorder. Exercising caused exercise asthma, hyperventilation syndrome, and panic attacks.

During pregnancy, the estrogen and progesterone levels increase dramatically in a woman's body. A pregnant woman has 200 times as much estrogen in her body than before or after pregnancy. After childbirth, that estrogen and progesterone level drops suddenly. For me, the result was panic attacks with agoraphobia and hyperventilation syndrome.

One way for me to get rid of my fear of leaving the house and the panic attacks was to get pregnant again. By the third month of pregnancy I'd feel incredibly calm again. But I couldn't do that forever, especially, not when my husband divorced me after the second child.

Yoga was my next resort. Yoga required stretching instead of the usual exercise movement that would increase my already hyper state of adrenaline and insulin in my

blood. In addition, I had low blood sugar (hypoglycemia)and too much insulin as I previously mentioned--(genetic hyperinsulinism). Too much insulin from too many fast burning carbohydrates grew me a protruding belly that didn't look great on my 112 pound five feet four body. My fasting blood glucose of 86 would drop to 60 when I drank two tablespoons of honey in lemon water during a glucose tolerance test.

For seven years I was totally housebound and suffered dozens of panic attacks a day some days. Other days I'd only have chronic anxiety for the entire day, and panic when I had to sit in my graduate school classroom. At the time I was an evening school graduate student in genetic and medical anthropology and science journalism. I'd tried every exercise from aerobics to belly dancing.

Yoga was the only movement that relaxed me without giving me exercise asthma and the tremors. The stretching of my muscles removed the lactic acid from my body in the same way that a runner stretches a leg against a tree to cool down and remove the lactic acid that builds up in the body during exercise. It was the build up of lactic acid causing me to shake with the tremors and go into a panic attack upon exercise.

Persons who are biologically prone to agoraphobia and panic under the slightest stress normally are born with shy, over-aroused dominant introverted feeling) nervous systems. They often secrete a high level of catecholamines. Their adrenaline level is frequently at a higher base level than in the average or naturally calm person. They secrete more insulin into their blood that people who are literally immune from anxiety attacks.

Sometimes the left hemisphere of the brain (high verbal intelligence) begins to fire at a different rate, faster or slower, than the right hemisphere (visual art and emotion). When the two hemispheres get out of sync, panic and shaking could occur at any time of the night or day, when you laugh or sleep, walk through the street or sit in a chair.

Stretching from the Yoga positions calmed me so that I could relax and enjoy the day's events. I'd been a person with an avoidant/dependent personality type. I withdrew from direct people contact and became a recluse in order to stop being a "hot reactor."

An ‘invisible’ hot reactor reacts to the slightest stress not by outward anger, but inwardly and silently, by a dramatically increased blood pressure, pulse rate, and sudden, gripping fear to people and slight mental stress, even though there is no facial expression change or bodily motion to show what's narrowing or calcifying from sugar (and insulin's overabundance to sugar) on the inside.

All I ended up with was the protruding pot belly of hyperinsulinism--on the thin, small-boned frame of a 120 pound, medium-height woman. It’s also called metabolic disease. In my situation, it combined with agoraphobic, panic disorder, chronic anxiety and sociophobia—fear of people, loud sounds, and ringing telephones. Outwardly, emotion is introverted, so nobody can see what you're feeling on the inside.

Sometimes closet extroverts forced to act like introverts to please introverted family members in power can help to push a genetically prone person into panic disorder. Usually, some physical stress does it, such as childbirth, surgery, or even getting married or a first job and moving out of the family.

You can also get panic disorder from watching your mother being battered and not being able to help at a young age, or getting frightened by a parent. It signifies a sense of loss and fear of losing your health, and it prevents you from traveling, or in my case, of learning to drive. I never did learn to drive, but by choice. Why? I went from a low-income housewife (homemaker) to a low-income senior citizen.

Why learn to drive when I did not own a car or have the income to pay for a car, let alone the yearly insurance. I couldn’t even become a member of a house of worship because it would cost money each month or annually, and with no income, food, clothing, and a bus pass became priorities. Luckily, I don’t have to pay rent at this time. I know too well what it feels like to be homeless. Again, being homeless at the age of 28 felt very different from what it would feel like now as I move closer to the age 70 mark when the most important indicator of integrity in addition to health is being independent and in your own home.

I had to change my diet to healing foods that would not further stimulate my thyroid, as sugar and simple carbohydrates were doing when they quickly turned to sugar as soon as they reached my bloodstream. Examples were fruit juice, white rice, bran muffins, and bagels.

As a biological introvert, sensitive to people's actions, noise, intrusions, and words, my whole body would over react to any stress in my environment, until I had to back off and become housebound. I couldn't work at any job that brought me into contact with people directly.

The phone would ring and my pulse and pressure would hit the ceiling. I couldn’t sit in cinema theaters as the sounds effects were so loud that they caused panic attacks. The loud effects overwhelmed my nervous system and caused panic tremors that subsided when the film or loud music had finished. Gentle string and harp music calmed me, especially Baroque music of the 17^th century and new age meditation music.

I didn't dare answer the phone or I'd go into hyperventilation syndrome and start breathing too fast in terror at the voice on the other end. I was expending a ton of energy in response to an ounce of provocation. I was afraid of everything that could elicit a physiological response in me. Bellydance music, if not loud, created a feeling of well-being and prayer.

To counteract my weak calming branch, the more I stretched with Yoga exercises, the cooler and calmer I became. I noticed that at the height of my panic attack, I'd go into the Yoga positions and stretch my muscles. The result was a sudden sense of calm. Qi Gong and Tai Chi helped improve my balance. I’ve always had problems keeping my balance, even when young, during the post-partum phase when agoraphobia and panic disorder hit hard, keeping me housebound exactly at the moment my then wife-beating husband (now many decades deceased) had filed for divorce, taking all the money in the bank account, removing the children to a foreign country, selling the house, and leaving me homeless and penniless.

Imagine what it feels like to be homeless and housebound with agoraphobia, panic disorder, and hyperinsulinism/metabolic syndrome, and chronic anxiety at the same moment your physically abusive husband walks out, leaving the country, even his mistress giving you the finger, taking all the children and money…and you have no relatives of your own family to offer a hand. (He later also left his mistress when he left the country.) That’s what happened to me.

Even when without more than a few cents left on the table, I determined that I would exercise agoraphobia away, back then in the mid 1960s, when I was only in my late twenties. Little did I know then that my son would grow up and become a physician specializing in neuroradiology, and my daughter (a language scholar) would marry a physician who works with these types of issues in the field of internal medicine.

What about the anxiety that kept me from going more than a few feet from my home? I hadn’t realized that the amounts of vitamin B complex I took stimulated my large, fast thyroid so much that the anxiety increased even more.

What I hadn’t realized is that vitamin B (complex) stimulates the thyroid. In my body, my particular genes allowed the vitamin to over stimulate my thyroid because of my sensitivity to various types of vitamin B.

That’s why it’s important to find out how your genes turn on and off in reaction to food and food supplements and how these vitamins affect other parts of your body. It’s all about how your genes respond to food, medicine, or environment.

When I walked for a half hour or more a day in small, 10 minute walking sessions, the anxiety would fade. A feeling of sending out waves of love to my worst enemy took over my body and mind. My dominant introverted feeling personality type emphasized values. I asked myself: Is this issue worth weakening my heart's pacemaker by an adrenaline bath? The answer was always, of course not. For me, music became a healing tone. The type of music affected my brain’s fear or calming center and healed my body to the point of a feeling of well-being instead of anxiety.

Harp music, calming sting music, and even slow, new age music relaxed me. Belly dance music and music of India allowed me to stretch and do my Tai-Chi exercises to the music as well as Yoga-type stretches. From there, I moved to high-energy bellydancing alone in my room, stretching out my arms in a type of dance-prayer-tai-chi and yoga stretch and moving my arms and shoulders or feet in a folk or tribal dance. When done in short spans, not long, exhausting hip-drops, the exercise did calm me, and a feeling of well-being arose along with stress reduction. Nutrition played a part. I had to balance my magnesium and calcium to feel relaxed.

Now, my body had to understand that feeling value at the molecular level as well. The best and healthiest answers came when I asked a value question, is it worth it? Worth it meant was the solution, need, benefit, or answer worth it to my health in the long run.

Yoga was the best event in my writing life and in providing a link or bridge to learning to relax by stretching until calm. Listening to calming music or chanting also was a relaxing experience during a panic episode.

The calming, ethnic or meditative new age music such as Indian music relaxed me. My whole body would physiologically react to the beat of the music. The slow beats, precisely music of 60 beats per minute brought me down to a relaxed normal feeling.

Music distracted my brain from firing off anxiety neurons. The right hemisphere of my brain was shooting off energy from neurons a lot faster that the left hemisphere of my brain when the both hemispheres should have been working together in balance at more or less the same rate. This was another cause of my chronic anxiety, panic attacks, and ultimately being housebound with agoraphobia (literally, fear of the outdoors). I turned to Ayurvedic medical books for kind solace. Yoga helped the most along with Qi Gong, a form of Tai Chi for health and balance.

What I was really afraid of was not the marketplace, or outdoors (agora in Greek), but my body's panic reaction to stress. I perceived stress as threatening so fast that my

logical side didn't have time to calm myself down. I had a weak calming branch.

Again Yoga came to the rescue. How Yoga worked specifically was by the actual stretching of the muscles. When muscles stretch they cool down the panic by changing the posture. The stretching removed the adrenaline, lactic acid, and insulin from the muscles, and the muscles stopped shaking.

My breathing grew slower as I stretched and went through the basic postures. My monthly migraines eased. Meditation became easier. Finally, I could relax after a good, but gentle Yoga stretch. What’s your body type? Different body types metabolize nutrients according to their own physiology. There are fast and slow ‘metabolizers.’ Have yours checked and measured.

Stretching Away the Panic Attacks

To get rid of the panic attack, I'd begin by sitting in a half lotus position. For hyperventilation syndrome, I'd breathe into a brown paper bag to increase the carbon dioxide. However, when I was back to normal, I'd breathe fresh air slowly because carbon dioxide causes sensitive people with panic disorder to have a panic attack from breathing carbon dioxide. Then I'd hold my left foot firmly and place my left foot and heel against my right middle thigh near the knee while stretching my arms downward.

The position of my foot resting against my inner thigh became the most calming stretch position for me. I tried to stretch my arm muscles and the rest of my leg muscles. Then I allowed my forearm to relax and rest against my raised knee. I'd sit for two minutes in this posture. The weight of my forearm gradually lowered my knee. By the time the knee was lowered as far as it needed to go, I was calmed down. Slow deep breathing was very helpful.

Yoga also helped my inner ear problems. I have a damaged left inner ear from the time I was a passenger in the back seat of a car that was rear ended in an accident in 1967.

After the ear injuries healed, I had life long vertigo attacks whenever I was under stress. The stretching and movement of yoga as a series of postures helped me regain my balance.

Eventually my brain compensated for the damaged inner ear, and the vertigo and ear problems lessened, especially by the side bend Yoga exercise. I'd recommend to any person housebound by agoraphobia to check out the values of a Yoga regimen backed up by balanced nutrition, vitamins and minerals, and meditation with music therapy. Of all the therapies I tried, Yoga worked the best.

Now years later, I practice Yoga. It's combined with slow belly dancing and Tai Chi Chuan, meditation, slow beat ethnic, new age, and classical music. I ate soaked over night and then slow, low-heat-cooked whole grains and legumes consumed with fresh and juiced vegetables, and no sugar or excessive salt. Fast dancing only brought on exercise asthma for me. Stretching slowly took it away.

My motto is “stretch your panic away.” I'd take this regimen anytime over tranquilizers, addictive drugs with side effects, or antidepressants that do nothing for the panic, but treat the depression that are usually prescribed for agoraphobia with panic disorder. I'm only speaking for myself here.

I didn't feel depressed. I felt scar out of my skin, scared to tremors. The seizure of shaking felt almost like a mild epileptic set of convulsions. Yet, I was always told after seeing dozens of doctors that nothing showed up on tests.

Back then, in the middle sixties, my doctors told me my panic attacks were all in my head, and I was in good health. They automatically gave me a prescription for Miltown or Librium. I didn't take the tranquilizers after hearing other people's sensitivity reactions to the pills. I wanted to try more natural solutions to agoraphobia and panic disorder such as better foods or vitamins and minerals or antioxidants in small amounts. What worked best for me focused on mild exercise, walking in place, then walking outdoors, then Tai Chi, Qi Gong and gentle Yoga. Finally, bellydancing or tribal dancing alone in my room to relaxing but exotic music that allowed me to stretch and relax.

When I got older and complained of too much adrenaline in my blood, they gave me a prescription for Inderal, a beta blocker to stop adrenalin from hitting my heart's electrical system. Over the years, I'd developed arrythmias which I cured with 150 mg. of selenium, 400 mg of vitamin E, 300 mg. of magnesium, calcium, and the amino acid, a little Taurine (half or quarter of a 500 mg capsule) or Coenzyme Q 10 in a bottle of multiple vitamins.

I never took the pills because I was afraid of the side effects of depression, which I didn't have in the first place. Instead, vitamins, minerals such as 400 mgs of magnesium and an equal amount of calcium with a tiny amount--a half capsule of the amino acid Taurine, helped me feel normal. Omega 3 fish oil helped most along with good nutrition.

I know that having a genetically sensitive to stress system helped me understand why I feel so well working at home where I can have my own flexible work hours. Yoga did help as did my vitamin B complex regimen with (for me only) 800 mgs of folic acid in the B complex capsules and Betaine. These helped me along with Yoga. Everything, in vitamins or minerals, for me, is in moderation. Please do not copy my individual combination of nutrients are for my body type. Make sure you tailor your own foods and nutrients to your own body, genes, and blood type constitution.

I also have AB blood that needs a balance of protein and carbohydrates because I don’t have the thin type O blood that can eat a lot of protein, but rather the “vegetarian with some fish, fish oil, olive oil, and sea vegetables” (the omega 3 and 6 oils in balance as fatty acids) ‘thicker’ blood type, that is found in the healthy diets of Japan and the Mediterranean areas.

Optimism helped the most to walk-off and dance away anxiety. Hope helps. Healing music, exercise, and nutritious eating became my regimen. I preferred Yoga, meditation, serenity, good nutrition, and the vitamins and minerals that keep me calm and reduce my reactions to stress.

For me stretching with Yoga eventually helped my menopausal back-aches, when I went through menopause more than fifteen years ago. Taken with the best nutrition plan that works for me, stretching in Yoga and balancing from Tai Chi Chuan stepping gives me the right kind of weight bearing exercise I need now in my sixth-going-on-seventh decade.

Making my own almond milk and eating frozen blueberries also helped to calm me. Fresh blue berries remove some of the vitamin B from you. Frozen or cooked blueberries don't because the B vitamin removing enzyme is disabled by freezing or cooking. I take a scoop of soy protein to help my bones and arteries. Along with the Yoga and Tai Chi Chuan exercise program or walking as I don't drive, I'm happy and able to write to the best of my ability. Thanks, everyone, and thanks for Yoga.

It's the stretching and relaxation that works for me with world beat music in the background, again keeping to 60 beats per minute when I can find it. I particularly like the music CD, Sheltering Stones, by Richard Searles (Earth Dance Music, Sherman Oaks, CA).

Instrumentals with gentle voice sounds as in Mystic Voyage, from the CD Sheltering Stones, is a calming, Celtic work of plucked strings and soft voices that helps me to visualize misty and mystic mornings at Big Sur in California.

Unsweetened products such as unsweetened almond milk has reputation for building bones, (but be sure to find out how your body reacts to taking calcium and magnesium supplements so you get enough, but not too much to trigger other problems) and Yoga is known for stretching and calming.

To counteract my weak calming branch, the more I stretched with Yoga exercises, the cooler and calmer I became. I noticed that at the height of my panic attack, I'd go into the Yoga positions and stretch my muscles. The result was a sudden sense of calm. Don’t take soy isoflavones in powder form where it is highly concentrated if you have breast cancer because it’s not recommended. For those not at high risk of any condition, soy is supposed to be good for your arteries. I took soy products for chronic anxiety, and combined with yoga, here’s how it stretched out my doubts.

Talk to professional nutritionists, health care professionals and compare their views with naturopaths and alternative nutrition counselors. Have a genetic test to see how your body reacts to various foods, vitamins, mineral build up. For example, does calcium raise your blood pressure or lower it?

Different people react in different ways. What ration of calcium to magnesium is best for you? That’s why you need to talk to professionals trained in tailoring your foods and any other treatments to your individual genes.

Get tested for what is scientifically accurate about nutrition and genetic testing. Check out any companies with health care professionals. Find out what other patients/clients are saying about their own treatments. What works for you may not work for someone else. Stretching and walking in place worked wonders in the midst of a panic attack—at least for me.

Each time I did mild stretching with my legs and arms, anxiety would fade. A feeling of sending out waves of love to my worst enemy took over my body and mind. My dominant introverted feeling personality type emphasized values. I asked myself: Is this issue worth weakening my heart's pacemaker by an adrenaline bath? The answer was always, of course not.

Now, my body had to understand that feeling value at the molecular level as well. The best and healthiest answers came when I asked a value question, is it worth it?

Yoga, Tai Chi, and Qi Gong were the best event in my writing life and in stretching, balancing, and walking to relax. Stretching resulted in a feeling of calmness. Listening to calming music or chanting also felt relaxing during a panic episode.

The calming, meditative new age and ethnic music helped to relaxed me. Oddly, high-spirited belly dance music without too much drumming gave me a feeling of wellbeing, not panic. The drumming increased my heartbeat and raised my blood pressure. So I didn’t choose music with a lot of fast drumming.

People’s bodies react to the tempo of the music. If a music piece is only 60 beats a minute with a metronome, the human body responds to that beat and calms down to a feeling of relaxation. Your body eventually moves in sync with the music beats. That’s why I choose slow music.

My whole body would physiologically react to the beat of the music. The slow beats, precisely music of 60 beats per minute brought me down to a relaxed normal feeling. Classical string and brass music of the 17^th century felt the best along with new-age, stress-reduction, and relaxing music made for meditation. When calm, I liked bellydance or tribal dance music with a slow beat to stretch to. The focus of each movement emphasized keeping my balance. And when the rhythm changed, the bellydance hip-drop helped me focus on losing the stress.

***

How to Make a More Nutritious Cookie - Vegan Cookie Recipe with Rice Bran, Oat, and Flax meal.

Low-sodium and only natural fruit sweetening… No bleached flour ingredients. Use oat bran, flax seed meal, and oatmeal instead of flour. No eggs, baking powder, soda, or dairy products.

_______________________________________________

The Recipe:

1 scoop rice protein powder (about 2 tablespoons)

1 tub tofu made with calcium sulfate instead of magnesium

chloride (about a pound) or three egg whites, beaten until in stiff peaks like merengue

1/2 to 2/3 cup of pink grapefruit juice. Buy a freshly squeezed carton of juice or juice

your own grapefruit.

1 cup walnuts

1/2 cup almonds

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil cold pressed and not rancid or old.

1/2 cup frozen blueberries

1/2 cup frozen strawberries

1 cup oat bran

1 cup oat meal--old fashioned rolled oats uncooked

1/2-2/3 cup flax seed meal

1 tablespoon of lecithin granules (optional)

Place in a bowl the oat bran, protein powder, lecithin, and flax seed meal, stir, then finally the oat meal, then all the fruit and nut ingredients. In a blender blend the grapefruit juice and tofu. Pour into the large glass bowl.

Stir everything. Pour all ingredients into the bowl and mix with a large spoon. If you need more sweetness, consider fruit, but please go lightly here. You don't want sugar to raise those insulin levels. I like it without sweetener. Use pieces of fresh dates, chopped apples, or figs to sweeten more, if you require a sweeter taste.

You can serve with almond butter, peanut butter, or other high protein or nut butter topping if you wish. The addition of the Omega-3 oils in the form of flax seed meal, is helpful, and at least helped me. This is a nutritious nut and fruit cookie that can supplement a meal on the run.

Coat 2 or 3 cookie sheets with the extra virgin olive oil. (I use glass cookie sheets). Bake in a 350 degree F. oven for 40 minutes or from 30 to 45 minutes, until the undersides of the cookies are a light brown.

Use a metal spatula to lift the warm cookies and place into a cake dish or other glass bowl. Cover and let cool. The world's most nutritious cookie is served warm. It's delicious.

The key ingredient is the rice protein powder and the absence of granulated white sugar, fruit juice concentrate, or dairy fat.

***

Raspberry/Carrot Vegan Cookie Recipe with Rice Bran, Oat, and Flax meal.

Low-sodium and only natural fruit sweetening. No bleached flour ingredients. Use oat bran, flax seed meal, and oat meal instead of flour. No eggs, baking powder, soda, or dairy products.

_______________________________________________

The Recipe:

2 scoops rice protein powder (about 2 tablespoons)

1 cup of unsweetened almond milk.

1/2 to 2/3 cup of frozen or fresh red raspberries blended with a cup of soy milk.

1 peeled banana

1 cup walnuts

1/2 cup almonds

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil cold pressed and not rancid or old.

1/2 cup frozen blueberries

1/2 cup frozen strawberries

1/2 cup peeled baby carrots

1 cup oat bran

1 cup oat meal--old fashioned rolled oats uncooked

1/2-2/3 cup flax seed meal

1 tablespoon of lecithin granules

2 or 3 egg whites. Or if vegan substitute 1/2 tub tofu (blended to a creme) for eggs or 1/2 cup stewed prunes in their syrup and 2 tablespoons of lecithin granules if you don't eat egg whites.

In a blender blend the almond milk and fruit. Add the peeled baby carrots. Liquify. Taste it and it will taste like a rather tart soymilk product.

Pour into a large glass bowl. Add two or three egg whites to a bowl and add the soy milk and fruit blended to a thick smoothie consistency. Add to the bowl the oat bran, protein powder, lecithin, and flax seed meal, stir, then finally the oatmeal, then all the fruit and nut ingredients.

Mix in bowl. Or if you're a vegan, substitute 1/2 pound tub of tofu or 1/2 stewed prunes in their syrup and 2 tablespoons of lecithin granules for the egg whites that will hold the cookie paste together.

Coat two or three cookie sheets with the olive oil. I use glass cookie sheets. Bake in a 350 degree F. oven for 40 minutes or from 30 to 45 minutes, until the undersides of the cookies are a light brown.

Use a metal spatula to lift the warm cookies and place into a cake dish or other glass bowl. Cover and let cool. The world's most nutritious cookie is served warm. It's delicious. The key ingredients are the rice bran and rice protein powder and the absence of granulated white sugar, fruit juice concentrate, or dairy fat.

***

Other Book: Novel

Title: Proper Parenting in Ancient Rome: A Time-Travel Novel of Love as Growth of Consciousness & Peace in the Home
ISBN: 978-0-595-42977-6 (0-595-42977-7).	Published 2007.

Or see list of other available books in paperback written by Anne Hart at: http://annehart.tripod.com.

30+ Brain-Exercising Creativity Coach Businesses to Open

How to Use Writing, Music, Drama & Art Therapy Techniques for Healing

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30+ Brain-Exercising Creativity Coach Businesses to Open: How to Use Writing, Music, Drama & Art Therapy Techniques for Healing

By Anne Hart

Publisher's price: $20.95
Format: Paperback
Size: 6 x 9
Pages: 320
ISBN: 0-595-42710-3
Published: Jan-2007

To order call 1-800 AUTHORS or: http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0-595-42710-3 or http://www.iuniverse.com, and click on Bookstore link. International orders:
Call 00-1-402-323-7800

Here’s how to open a variety of businesses as a creative writing coach. Incorporate techniques for healing or memory enhancement inspired by music, drama, and art therapists.

Book Description

Exercise your brain’s right hemisphere to write words using improved visual imagery. Here’s how to open 30+ businesses as a creative writing coach incorporating selected techniques for healing and memory enhancement inspired by music, drama, and art therapists.

Learn healing techniques from creative writing therapists using the tools of music, visual imagery, and expressive arts therapies in the background. It’s a multimedia approach to enhancing creativity, memory and to write salable work.

Are you interested in guiding life story writers in a variety of environments from life-long learning or reminiscence therapy to working with hospice chaplains? Be an entrepreneur, career coach, or manuscript “doctor” organizing groups using music and art in the background to inspire authors. Design brain-stimulating exercises for specific types of writing.

Tired of analyzing puzzles to build brain dendrites and stimulate, enhance and exercise your own memory or those of groups or clients? Help yourself or others write salable works and move beyond journaling as a healing tool. Write therapeutically about a significant event in anyone’s life against a background of art or music.

Fold paper to make pop-up books, gifts, or time capsules where you can illustrate and write. Even add MP3 audio files.

Browse Before You Buy

Table of Contents

Chapters

Introduction

1 Preserving Memories, Enhancing Creativity, and Healing by Writing Memoirs-

Text, Oral, Visual, Pop-Up Books, and Multimedia

2 Creative Writing Therapy Group Fiction Projects to Do

3 Creative Fiction Writing Therapy Projects for Playwriting & Scriptwriting

4 How to Create Paperback 98-Page Pamphlets on Current Issues in the News for

Students/Researchers, Teachers, and Librarians

5 Writing, Publishing, and Selling Your Own Small Booklets or Pamphlets

6 How to Format Your Book or Booklet Manuscript

7 Self Promotion and Plugging Products

8 Pre-Selling Your Book with a Web Hub before Publication

9 Getting a Strong and Visible Platform

10 Writing Drama or Memoirs as Time Capsules for Internet Video Theater or Radio

11 Organizing Your Life Story Book as Dramatic Fiction

12 Writing and Expressive Arts Coaches as Creativity Motivators

13 Write about Peoples’ Inner Payoffs and Moral Needs

14 Writing Biography and True Story

15 How Writing Salable Work is about Selling Solutions

16 Does Writing Your Life Story As A Novel Affect Your Memory?

17 Writing Life Stories or Current Issues as Romance Novels or Romantic Stories

18 Using Odd and Even Chapters in Your Book or Biography

19 Music Therapies as Healing and Inspirational Tools in Creative Writing

Coaching

20 How to Write a Course Syllabus and Teach Online to Market Your Books

21 Online Creativity-Enhancing Businesses for Writers as Entrepreneurs to Start

Media Tours

22 News Monitoring Service

23 Music Video Podcasts

24 Mind-Body-Spirit Businesses

25 Inspirational and Motivational Writing with Music for Relaxation Business

26 Creative Writing Preference Assessments as Healing Tools

27 Writing Coaches and Creative Writing Therapists are “Tech Support.” Take the

“Howling Wolf’s Scribe” Creative Writing Preference Classifier

28 How Slice-of-Life Vignettes, Essays, and Journaling Become Healing Tools

Appendix

Bibliography

Index

Introduction

Here’s how to open a variety of businesses as a creative writing coach, memory enhancement facilitator, or consultant. Incorporate selected techniques for healing inspired by music, drama, and art therapists. Or design creative writing assessments for clients. Consider life-long learning in expressive arts coaching. Become a creative writing facilitator, therapist or a manuscript ‘doctor’ and writing coach. Here are numerous business to start and operate all focused on applying or enhancing creativity and/or memory.

You can become certified as a creative writing therapist using the healing tools of music, visual imagery, and expressive arts therapies in the background. It’s a multimedia approach to enhancing creativity and memory. Other entrepreneurial possibilities include alternative healing consultant incorporating creative writing and journaling as healing tools for use in problem solving or conflict resolution. Organize family history and genealogy journalism research workshops.

You’d work under the supervision of a health care professional providing writing instruction to a group. Or as a coach, you’d work in a corporate setting as an outsourced independent business contractor training executives in how to improve their writing skills. Or offer coaching in writing to employees and executives in a corporate setting as a business communications trainer. Another possibility is to open a writing coach business and help authors prepare their manuscripts, plays, or scripts for the appropriate markets—publishers, agents, or producers.

In a religious or alternative healing group, creative writing coaching becomes a tool for journaling inwardly to discuss choices made. Coach individuals in how they can learn from past decisions. Learn how to make better decisions in writing and in life by not overlooking the “blind spots.” Creative writing as a coaching business in a consulting business also becomes looking beyond editorial revisions to see what type of visible national platform a writer-client can develop.

Because creative people differ, writing coaches or consultants are trained and hired to recognize “blind spots” that could lead to a creative worker’s derailment. Copyeditors are hired to revise, edit or otherwise correct the writing rather than heal the writer.

Creative writing therapists, like biblio/poetry therapists or expressive arts therapists (art, music, drama, and dance), are certificated persons with graduate degrees. Expressive arts therapists have to pass national exams. They are trained in a particular therapy in graduate school and serve in internships in one of the expressive arts therapists working under the supervision of health care professionals, such as a physician prescribing a specific plan of therapy.

Creative writing therapists help people from all walks of life solve problems and resolve conflicts by making use of journaling, reading, and writing as healing tools in therapy, usually with a group.

Creative writing coaches are not licensed and don’t need a specific degree or expertise in a special area of training. Most have years of experience in editing books or writing published works, or working as a “script doctor” on plays or film and video scripts. They are not trained as therapists. They are consultants similar to script doctors that help writers improve their books, scripts, or other works of writing.

Creative writing therapists and writing teachers may specialize in helping people write, record, or transcribe their life stories, memoirs, autobiographies, and personal or oral histories. Writing teachers who are not creative writing therapists with training and certification are sometimes called personal historians when they specialize in helping clients write or record life stories. Those recording life stories are called oral historians.

Are you interested in guiding life story writers in a variety of environments from life long learning to working with hospice chaplains? Or perhaps you’d like to be an entrepreneur organizing groups as a writing coach using music in the background to inspire authors?

Are you a musician or certificated music therapist who wants to write books, stories, or true life experiences in a variety of formats—books, short stories, skits, plays, scripts, poems, fiction, creative nonfiction, or interactive learning materials? Perhaps you’d like to design brain-stimulating exercises for others in specific occupations or life stages. You can combine writing with music and art or drama as multimedia to enhance creativity.

Tired of analyzing puzzles to build brain dendrites and stimulate your own memory or those of groups or clients? Write about an experience or event in your life or another’s significant event, highlight, or turning point with a goal of writing therapeutically with a background of ethnic or inspirational music.

Or should you work the right hemisphere of your brain and fold paper to make pop-up or origami books where you can illustrate, write, and even add an array of MP3 audio music or speech files on a disc or add a disc with video, photography, and illustrations slipped inside an envelope pasted on the inside back book cover.

Write while listening to music for inspiration, relaxation, or closure. Write therapeutically for health. Here’s how to write salable memoirs for popular magazines to enhance your memory. The first question to ask yourself or another is, “On your way to maturity, what have you given up?” What have you added? Is your life story about disconnection and keeping your mouth shut? Or is it about connections and sharing meaning through communication?

How secure, stable, and steady is your sense of self as the seas crash around you? To what portraits will your memoirs give voice as you cross over to each new stage of life? To what in your life story will you pay tribute? Describe your watershed in colorful words, sounds, or pictures. Highly recommended background reading before starting to write memoirs (for female adolescent memoirs writers, older adults, and journaling coaches or creative writing educators) are the books titled, Meeting at the Crossroads: Women’s Psychology and Girls’ Development, by Lyn Mikel and Carol Gilligan, Ballantine Books, 1992, and In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, by Carol Gilligan, Harvard University Press, 1982.

Readers reach out to you. Let’s hear or read about your crossroads and paths taken. And to put your words to use, consider writing salable anecdotes and life experiences for popular magazines. Your social history is part of pop culture. Reminiscing is good for your memory and personal history.

Memoirs are excerpts and highlights of significant events in your life. They can be written in prose form or as skits, plays, dialoguing with relatives, or as monologues. Parts of your life story can even become material for stand-up comics in a laugh-for-your-health workout. Or you can write salable memoirs and put direct experience in a small package and launch it worldwide.

Write your life story in anecdotes of 375 to 1,500 words. The difference between memoirs and autobiographies is that memoirs are excerpts or highlights of a life story. Autobiographies are life stories than run chronologically from birth to maturity.

Write salable tributes, eulogies, and highlights of life stories and personal histories for autobiographies. Then condense or contract the life stories or personal histories into PowerPoint presentations and similar slide shows on discs using lots of photos and one-page of life story.

Collect experiences. Flesh-out news stories, linking them together into first-person diary-style novels and books, plays, skits, or other larger works. Write memoirs or celebration-of-life tributes for the living.

If ghostwriting is too invisible, write biographies and vocational biographies, success stories and case histories, and customize for niche interest groups. Your main goal with personal history and life stories is to take the direct experience itself and package each story as a vignette.

The vignette can be read in ten minutes. So fill magazine space with a direct experience vignette. Magazine space needs only 1,500 words. When you link many vignettes together, each forms a book chapter or can be adapted to a play or script.

By turning vignettes into smaller packages, they are easier to launch to the media. When collected and linked together, they form a chain of vignettes offering nourishment, direction, purpose, and information used by people who need to make choices. Here's how to write those inspiration-driven, persistence-driven life stories and what to do with them. Use universal experience with which we all can identify.

Included is an excerpt from a full-length diary-format first person memoirs novel and an entire three-act play. Also, there is a monologue for performances. There's a demand for direct life experiences written or produced as vignettes and presented in small packages.

Save those vignettes electronically. Later, they can be placed together as chapters in a book or adapted as a play or script, turned into magazine feature, specialty, or news columns, or offered separately as easy-to-read packages.

If you are working with activities directors and persons with dementias on stimulating memories, I highly recommend reading an online article and viewing the resource links at the

Website called, About Health & Fitness at: http://alzheimers.about.com/cs/treatmentoptions/a/reminiscence.htm?once=true&. See the article titled, “Reminiscence Therapy and Activities for People with Dementia,” From Christine Kennard, “Your Guide to Alzheimer's Disease.”

Try writing to ethnic music. Whether you choose Asian, Middle Eastern, Flamenco, new age, classical, Latin beat, Salsa, world music or inspirational tunes, look for specific music recommended by music therapists. The type of music selected affects each individual differently. Music is customized to the individual’s choice. Certain types of music influence your brain waves in one way and another individual’s in another way.

If you want a joyous, uplifting sound to write to, try klezmer, Rom, Eastern European, Spanish flamenco, or Middle Eastern tribal dance music. If you want music to do your Tai Chi or Qi Gong exercises to, find slower Asian music or flute music from Balinese and Japanese to the music of India or Indonesian Gamelan music for slow exercise. Chinese and Indian music also are excellent for slow exercises for balance in walking such as Tai Chi, Qi Gong, or chair Yoga.

You choose the music according to the mood you want to create and than move to the rhythm or write or do both. Let the music carry you away in your visualization and imagination to bring out the creativity in your writing. Make your writing animated—alive and move your words to the music.

Take stirring klezmer wedding music, for example. If you want to write a scene in a novel, in your autobiography, or memoirs, pick klezmer or Middle Eastern dance music or tribal dance, and see what scene comes out in your creativity. Writing historically? Pick stringed instruments, flutes, or 16^th and 17^th century Baroque music to stir you to write creatively. Think of ways that music and writing together can heal you with the music as one tool and your writing and imagination or historical research as another tool. Let’s look at klezmer.

“Klezmer music like any genre of folk music is music of, from and by the folk. The melismatic sounds of klezmer, the Arabic scales that form the DNA of klezmer all contribute to its universal sonority. Klezmer is just another way for me to express to the listener my perception of the human condition.” Yale Strom.

I highly recommend The Absolutely Complete Klezmer Songbook, by Yale Strom. The book provides a collection of Klezmer music as a book that includes a CD. Before the 1970s, klezmer music was little known to the non-Jewish world outside of the nostalgia of ethnomusicology or from interviews of ethnologists, folk music devotees, and with older adults who remembered Yiddish theater or radio in the thirties.

Now this prolific book of music provides 313 full-length klezmer songs, including out-of-print and previously unpublished melodies, many with Yiddish lyrics. All with musical notes. The material comes from both Yiddish and Rom (Gypsy) Holocaust survivors that recalled the songs from childhood. The book offers an excellent compilation of bulgars, horas, nigunim, and other klezmer songs and music. There's also a glossary, perspective, and history of klezmer and Rom music.

The book of music notes and songs include archival photos, historic background, cultural material, and the CD containing 36 klezmer songs recorded by Yal Strom's Klezmer band, Hot Pstromi. The book is available at many music sellers or from the music publisher, Transcontinental Music Publications.

Klezmer music is for dancing, celebrations, weddings, and entertainment. Strom also is a musical archivist. He has made many trips to Eastern Europe to interview klezmer and Rom musicians. Strom has advanced knowledge of what the music was like when klezmer and Rom musicians played at celebrations in rural Eastern Europe of the past century. Check out his films at: http://www.yalestrom.com/films.html#

For variety you might also keep CDs of Greek dance music to write with, medieval and Renaissance music, classical, new age, world music, Latin Salsa, or whatever mood you want to create for writing. Put the music on and begin to imagine what you’d write on a blank page. Make a list of what words, pictures, and sounds would go on your computer screen. That’s the start of multimedia writing as one healing tool.

Personal
                  and Oral History Therapy

              
                  Creative writing therapists also might consider researching the effects of personal and oral history listening, recording,
                  and transcribing as therapy. To begin your research from a viewpoint of how to help writers learn to listen more effectively,
                  you might find helpful an article titled, “Learning to Listen: Interview Techniques and Analyses," by Kathryn Anderson
                  and Dana Jack. The article appears on pages 157-171 in the anthology titled, The Oral History Reader, edited by Robert
                  Perks and Alistair Thomson. The article discusses women and counseling.

              
                   It originally was published in Sherna Gluck and Daphne Patai's book titled, Women's Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral
                  History (1991: 11-26). Oral history therapy group facilitators would find this article helpful when discussing healing
                  or therapeutic effects of oral history.

Oral or personal history also is helpful
                  when teaching writers to listen with efficacy for the therapeutic, beneficial, and healing elements of life stories combined
                  with social history before writing a first draft in a creative writing therapy workshop.

              
                  Oral and personal history listening techniques may be taught and practiced for use as a tool before classes begin creative
                  writing therapy or memoirs writing workshops for memory enhancement. Listening to oral history is helpful before the actual
                  writing process starts.

              
                  Working with writers, artists, or musicians not interested in speaking publicly, an online group combining photos or illustrations
                  and text materials can be turned into multimedia, using musical backgrounds with themes or melodies related to the setting
                  of the stories. The materials would be saved to a digital disc. Work could be uploaded to a Web site in e-zine, blog, or newsletter
                  format.

              
                  Other alternatives include pop-up books, (paper engineering) pop-up books on disc or on Web sites, anthologies, chap books
                  in gift or prayer boxes, and family or social history time capsules. Creative projects as healing tools could include the
                  cooperation of musicians, artists, and writers setting stories to music and illustrating significant scenes or themes.

***

Chapter 1

Preserving Memories, Enhancing Creativity, and Healing by Writing Memoirs-Text, Oral, Visual, Pop-Up Books, and Multimedia

The purpose of using multimedia and mood-lifting, inspirational, or meditative background music “to write by” in creative writing therapy as a healing tool is to produce a hand-made, finely bound memoirs or success-story gift book containing a DVD or CD placed in the inside cover of the book in a plastic envelope attached to the cover that enhances the text transcription or rendition of the paperback book. The goal of creative writing therapy for memory enhancement is to show how two or more people bring out the best in one another. It’s a time capsule of an individual’s life—turning points, significant events, and highlights.

What questions will you ask? How would you interview people for the significant moments in their life stories, and then write, publish, and bind by hand exquisitely crafted personal gift books, memoirs, or business success stories? The questions and interviewing techniques in the next chapter will give you a healing tool that you can use for yourself or with others in your work using creative writing therapy to freshen memories by writing multi-media memoirs that emphasize those turning points and events.

What's your opinion of creative writing therapy? Some colleges award masters degrees in creative writing therapy, especially bibliotherapy. It combines writing poetry (poetry therapy) fiction, memoirs, journaling, and dramatic writing as part of an expressive therapies masters program for those with a background in creative writing, art, or drama.

What's A Creative Writing Therapist?

Creative writing therapy differs from bibliotherapy or poetry therapy. Creative writing therapy emphasizes listening to oral or personal history—either one’s own or someone else’s personal history and then writing from inspiration using facts, significant events, and turning points as highlights of an experience, issue, or life story.

Bibliotherapy may focus more on either reading books, articles, or poems and discussing the facts, experiences, or emotions in the written word read. Bibliotherapy may emphasize reading and discussion, whereas creative writing therapy emphasizes expressive writing from behavior, emotions, or logic. Bibliotherapists in the USA have a Federal Title classification for this job description.

In 1977, a Federal Title, classification 601, was created for bibliotherapists to be hired. Poetry therapists undertook 440 hours of the study of poetry therapy became eligible for the newly created position, according to the National Association for Poetry Therapy (NAPT). Check out the NAPT’s Web site located presently at http://poetrytherapy.org/contact.html
or write to:
Sheila Dietz, NAPT Administrator
525 SW 5th Street, Suite A
Des Moines, Iowa 50309-4501
Email: info@poetrytherapy.org

http://poetrytherapy.org/contact.html

The Association publishes a quarterly for Poetry Therapy called the A.P.T. News. It's estimated that thousands of professionals use poetry therapy. The requirements for a "trainee in poetry therapy" include graduation from an accredited college with a degree in the humanities or behavioral sciences.
Equivalent credit may be granted for combination of completed college courses and experience in a recognized institution. There should be evidence of concentration in poetry covering the primitive, classical, post-renaissance, modern, and avant-garde writing. The trainee must be accepted into a mental health program as a volunteer or paid employee under professional supervision.

As a poetry therapist, you must not exaggerate your own importance in the therapeutic team. Certification allows you to put a C.P.T. (Certified Poetry Therapist) designation after your name. Training programs in poetry therapy and bibliotherapy are offered through the National Association for Poetry Therapy and through other private schools.

There are several poetry therapy institutes. The New School for Social Research in New York City offered training programs in poetry therapy and bibliotherapy. One poetry therapist, Don Theye, has a motto: "Observe, absorb, create, share." Check out the book titled: A Seminar on Bibliotherapy: Proceedings by Dr. Franklin M. Berry, a psychology professor. Research bibliotherapy-related books at the Library School, University of Wisconsin, Helen White Hall, 600 N. Park, Madison, WI, 53706. See the ERIC (Educational Research Web Portal) ERIC # ED174226, Seminar on Bibliotherapy. Proceedings of Sessions, June 21-23, 1978 in Madison, Wisconsin. The ERIC Web site is at: <http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED174226&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=eric_accno&objectId=0900000b8011ce45>.

For guidelines to poetry therapy and book lists, write: J.B. Lippincott, Co., East Washington Sq., Philadelphia, PA 19105. Of interest are the pioneer books written in the sixties and seventies, such as Poetry Therapy, by Dr. Jack J. Leedy (1969), and Poetry, the Healer, Dr. Jack J. Leedy (1973). For the current newsletter, click on the association's Web site at: http://poetrytherapy.org/contact.html.

Publishing Your Creative Writing Therapy Book

Some people pay handsomely for one hand-bound, gilded, and elegant gift book of lifetime or corporate events. You’d be surprised how many people are satisfied to offer up to $10,000 (or more, depending upon the publisher) to have only one copy of a hand-bound hardcover book published about their event or life story. What does it take to create and publish a memoirs gift book commemorating a celebration of life, Bar Mitzvah, confirmation, wedding, or true experience? What quality of personal book do you want to make from scratch—writing, printing, and binding? As far as printing and binding, you can make one finished book at a cost to you of only $1.50-$4.50. What you charge a client depends on what it costs you.

If you create and publish a custom gift book, you’d publish only one copy of a hand bound, hardcover book. The tome would contain anywhere from 60 to 100 photos. Text material would be based on phone or live interviews. The interviews usually would run at least two hours or more for one person (and about two hours spent per each interview). The gift book would be about 80 to 120 published pages or slightly more if necessary. Look at yourself as a designer, writer, interviewer, and bookbinder.

You can even tailor a pop-up book creation (with the help of input from engineers on how to fold paper). Or learn how to make your own pop-up books. See the Joan Irvine Web site on making pop-up books at: http://www.makersgallery.com/joanirvine/books.html. Also check out the How We Make Pop-Up Books Web site at: http://www.hawcockbooks.co.uk/how.php.

What questions do you ask to help people respond calmly and openly at an interview? Start with “What do you enjoy the most about this particular time of life? What do you enjoy most about this event? What do you enjoy most about this holiday? What do you enjoy most about this experience? What thought, act, or feeling do you want to emphasize in the gift book?

Serious Life Experiences

If the person is going to emphasize a war-related or military service event, an ordeal, medical or survival details, or a factual report of behaviors related to any other serious segment of a life story, you could ask in addition to the details, what have you learned from this experience?

How have you transcended the past and moved on? What have you learned from other people’s mistakes or choices? What have you learned from your past choices, mistakes, decisions, or alternative solutions and paths? For business case histories, ask your client to relate the details step-by-step so readers can follow how your client arrived at solutions to problems or achieved measurable results. A memoirs book is like a public relations campaign. It’s about image built on solid detail and storytelling illustrated by visually-striking photography (photojournalism).

Answer the individual’s silence or long pauses (to gather thoughts) by using action verbs such as, “Bring me up to date on your life story, a special event, or your work. Tell me about your plans for this book. Also let your client describe experiences in detail and color. Ask interview questions such as the following: “What’s your favorite experience and why? Describe a special gift you have given. What have you received that transformed your life? What lessons have you learned from past mistakes? What holiday or event do you enjoy the most?”

For further information on using action verbs, see my book titled, 801 Action Verbs for Communicators: Position Yourself First with Action Verbs for Journalists, Speakers, Educators, Students, Resume-Writers, Editors & Travelers. ISBN: 0-595-31911-4. Also check out my Web site links at http://www.newswriting.net.

The interview questions should be given well ahead of the time of the actual live or telephone interview. Meet with the person by phone and/or in person before you arrange any interviews so you can learn your client’s expectations.

If your client wants to exceed the maximum number of words allowed, that client would be charged usually a dollar for each extra word included in the book above the maximum words allowed. (It varies with different publishers, of course.)

Each reprint of the book you’re your client would pay your team $10,000 for also would cost the client $250 or more per additional copy. The gift book would be wonderfully hand crafted in full color—a lifetime experience. The book could feature only one person being interviewed, for anywhere from two to 70 hours. Or an entire family may be interviewed in any city.

There could be only a half-hour interview of each person when 100 or more people have to be interviewed. Or such a valuable, well-crafted book may be customized to fit an individual’s special requirements. Yes, people do very happily pay this much for having a gift book crafted on them or their theme, and businesses doing this are doing wonderfully well finding clients.

The books are spectacular—rightfully gorgeous, hand bound in full color. For $10,000 (or more) anyone with the money and the time can have a book written based on interviews from anywhere, published and beautifully hand-bound with a hard cover. Are you ready to become a publisher of customized gift books?

You can publish all by yourself at a price only you will determine as you research the markets for gift books. You have a lot of choices varying from print-on-demand software to handcrafted bindings.

You can hire a team of interviewers, writers, and publishers or put to learning volunteer help from school projects and senior centers. The outcome is all the same: recording, organizing, and publishing peoples’ true life stories or other events. And you can pay for books that can be bound a whole variety of ways.

Act alone or work with a team of hired skilled people, volunteers active in retirement, or students learning the publishing business. However you manage your craft, every life story is worth a book. You can open a business or enjoy a hobby publishing gift books.

How Age-Wise Writers & Graphic Designers Can Create Pop-Up Memoirs Gift Books as Time Capsules or Multimedia Writing, Art & Music Therapy

Graphic designers and illustrators that also like to write can design pop-up family newsletters, gift books, or time capsules as keepsakes. You can start a business creating pop-up books for any age group and digitize the book to a Web site, CD, DVD, or create it hands-on in three dimensions as a paper hardcopy, or an electronic gift booklet.

If you need a workout session for your brain, try making pop up books as gifts. It’s like paper folding. You can teach senior citizens how to make life story memoirs gift books and/or record with camcorder and save on a DVD life story skits, plays, and pop-up books.

Here’s how to make hands-on paper pop up books. It’s like origami, and great for helping your memory and mind stay younger. When the book is done, you can use software such as PhotoShop to scan your project to a Web site or disc.

That way the pop-up book can be sent around the world electronically or sold through the mail or in gift shops as a hands-on paper book full of surprises, humor, or as a family history newsletter. To animate your book, use your favorite animation software for Web sites.

For the paper copy, it’s a right-hemisphere exercise in origami recommended as a balancing exercise for writers who like to illustrate for graphic design projects that showcase writing. Pop-up books can be made for grown-ups, using color copies of almost any item produced on heavy paper of photographs or other art.

Pop-ups for children also can include greeting cards to promote other children’s books or pop-ups in your story book can be rotating disks or leaves set in the center of the book. Three-dimensional folded paper glued into a book present the element of surprise. Make pop-up keepsake albums or gift memoirs books.

Ideas for pop-ups include baby and wedding photos or miniature awards and diplomas. Learn what questions to ask and how to interview people for the significant moments in their life stories, and then write, publish, and bind by hand exquisitely-crafted personal gift books.

When you craft a book entirely by hand and bind it in fine materials also by hand, being careful to use acid-free paper, you might also wish to illustrate the book yourself. Let’s propose you’re writing a children’s pop-up book about a child who is a relative. You’re going to bind the book yourself, taking lessons from the many courses in hand book-binding already on the Internet. Here’s how to illustrate the book.

If you write a children's book about your child or grandchild, try illustrating your children's book yourself on silk, coarse linen, or percale. You can even use a linen handkerchief or scarf. Frequently your artwork is wrapped around a drum, that is always curved, and illustration board won't wrap around a drum without bending and cracking.

If you decide to publish a non-fiction children's book, which will have less chance of losing in competition for entertainment against the best-selling fiction books, focus on a how-to book giving children of middle grades or their parents in picture books, information to read to children or instruction for children in how to build or do something they can't find quickly online or in a library, such as how to build or make something that children cherish.

Illustrating on Fabric for Books

To illustrate on fabric, mount the fabric on illustration board when you put your final drawing on fabric. Silk is preferred for a final draft. The artwork gets scanned into a computer, but has to roll around on a curved surface, a drum in order to be scanned to make a children's book. That's how most publishers work. If you’re having the book privately printed, find out the size of the drum so you can adjust or reduce the fabric before it gets scanned and the size adjusted once more.

The top layer of the art that is to be scanned sometimes is “set up” to be peeled off. Take a sheet of illustration board and mount silk on it, or coarse linen. Sometimes illustration board is too stiff when you cover it with fabric, and it won't peel right. So use this method. Get a sheet of Mylar or matte plastic.

This is a type of film. Mount very fine white silk with water mixed with acrylic matte medium. Scan it digitally to upload to the Web. For the three-dimensional pop-up book copy or mock-up that is not digitized, the best instruction I recommend is this method that I learned from the writings of the late Barbara Cooney, author and illustrator of more than 100 children's books and winner of the Caldecott medals and the American Book Award.

Cooney loved to mount the fine white silk with water and acrylic matte medium and then let it dry. The next step is to take a roller and put on a layer of diluted acrylic gesso. Then let that dry.

Sand the surface using very fine garnet paper. Cooney liked to repeat the second and third step until two to four layers of gesso were built up. What you want to get is a flexible fabric full of your illustration. Cooney described the result as an "egg-shell texture." She used titanium white in her acrylic paintings. Your color will be titanium white also.

Not many children's book writers know this technique of painted on mounted silk when they illustrate children's books, and publishers will be impressed with the professional technique, but in case no publisher can be found, you have an illustration for your children's book that will wrap around that drum, curving without cracking. Keep on writing and illustrating.

If color is too expensive for your budget, stick to black and white, and let the children color your book as they read or are read to from the text. Keep the text about one paragraph per page for a preschool book that will be read to children, and increase text for older children or illustrated gift books. When you make only one or two copies of a book that is entirely hand-made, you can do everything yourself or bring your materials to a printer.

To make more copies, scan into your personal computer each step of your book. Scan photos and art work at least at 300 dpi and large enough, at least 6 by 9 inches. Save text documents, for example as a Microsoft Word document. (Or use the equivalent in any other software word processing application.) Text size usually is letter size, which is 8 ½ by 11 inches. That way you can save your book to a CD or DVD with one file for photos and another for text.

Additionally, you can save a copy of your entire book in another file, organized with the text and photos interspersed the way you want to lay out the entire manuscript. The CD or DVD can be brought to most printers for additional copies of the book. Bind the book in exquisite materials by hand using paper and covers that resist acid and oxidation when the book is handed to the next generation. Personal gift books also can be pop-up books for children or grown-ups using themes of significant events and experiences that are meant to me remembered and discussed.

Concrete Pop-Up Books

There are two kinds of pop-up books, concrete paper and glue that you can fold with your hands and abstract pop-up shapes saved in a computer file or on a disc. Let’s begin with making a simple concrete pop-up that is glued into a book. When the book is opened to a particular page, the folded paper opens suddenly as if it is on springs. A pop-up inserted in a memoirs gift book can be made from a paper-cut illustration or drawing.

Supplies Needed for Simple Paper Pop-Ups

You’ll need a template for scoring and cutting. You can make a template by scoring art work. Or have a printer make the template for you. If your printer isn’t able to make a template, ask your local university to recommend an engineering or art student who has studied three dimensional art, origami, or making pop-ups.

A template may be made from a photograph that is reduced to the size you want and copied on a color copier. The following are the items to be assembled before beginning.

Template

Water colors or colorful inks

White glue that dries transparent

Paper clips

Straight edge or ruler

After you’ve made your illustration or had a photo color-copied to heavy paper, use the round edge of a paper clip to score little broken dots or lines so that the paper will fold along those lines you have scored. Don’t cut the scored lines. Only cut the solid lines.

Templates are labeled with letters of the alphabet such as A, B, C, and D. Usually templates follow a pattern such as beginning with A, which is scored and folded back. Then you fold along the dotted scored lines but not the solid lines. You’d follow through folding scored sides C and D forward. Then you’d glue the back side of the first panel to the back side of the second panel.

The panels would be numbered in linear order such as panel 1 and panel 2. You’d follow step-by-step in the order of the numbers or letters. Then you’d repeat for panels 3 and 4. So you’d begin logically with number 1 and end with number 4. You’d start with scored side A and end with scored side D. The folds would add up to a four-sided square. If you had a picture that folded into a pop-up with more or less sides, such as a triangle or an odd shape, you’d follow the numbers on your template.

Before you start to make a pop-up, the first step would be to create a template that you could score. The folds would be made on the scored lines and not on the solid lines. Your last step would be to glue your shape to the V fold so that your pop-up takes the shape you want before you glue it into your memoirs book as a centerfold pop-up or in some other spot. Before you begin, look at some instructional books on making pop-ups. They’re on the Web.

A pop-up photo of a couple dressed as bride and groom works well. The photo would be brought to a color copier and printed out on the type of paper that makes the best pop-ups. A history and virtual tour of pop-up books is at the University of North Texas Web site: http://www.library.unt.edu/rarebooks/exhibits/popup2/introduction.htm. Some pop-up books in the past contained revolving discs called ‘volvelles.’ You don’t have to use photos. You can use art or memorabilia to pop up, if the type of paper is suitable.

Use “turn up” or “lift the flap” mechanisms as pop-ups in your gift book. The same pop-up copied can also be put in greeting cards to promote your book. Separate leaves of paper cut to different sizes. Each leaf would contain different information. The leaves can be hinged together and attached to a page. This works great with memorabilia.

The reader would be able to unfold multiple depths of a picture, such as a photo cut-out wearing different costumes or clothing styles. Examples would be the bridal gown, dressed for travel, at the beach, or in ethnic traditional clothing.

Until the early 19^th century, movable books were created for adults, and not for children. One example would be learning anatomy at school from different leaves showing bones or muscles. For further information, see the following books:

Haining, Peter. Movable Books: An Illustrated History. London: New English Library, 1979.

Koskelin, Susan. "The Evolution of Movable Books from the Late Thirteenth Century to the Late Twentieth." Graduate school paper, U of North Texas, 1996.

Lindberg, Sten G. "Mobiles in Books: Volvelles, Inserts, Pyramids, Divinations, and Children's Games." Trans. Willian S. Mitchell. The Private Library 3rd series 2.2 (1979) : 49-82.

Montanaro, Ann R. Pop-up and Movable Books: A Bibliography. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1993.

What’s the Best Way to Learn How to Make Pop-Up Books and Greeting Cards?

Buy several pop-up books and make a list of how these books are placed together. Then take them apart. An excellent book for beginners is titled, The Elements of Pop-Up: A Pop-Up Book for Aspiring Paper Engineers, by David A. Carter and James Diaz (Little Simon, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Div. NY 1999).

Use your camcorder to record yourself taking the book apart. It will be easier to put them back together when you have a visual recording of what the book looked like before and during each step of the way as the book is taken apart. Making simple pop-ups for books and greeting cards is easy to learn and helps develop the use of the right hemisphere of your brain through practice.

Make a template or buy templates to make pop-up books from craft, hobby, and book-binding supplies do-it-yourself stores. Several good book binding supplies stores are online. Search your Internet engine, for example Google at http://www.google.com with the key words “book binding supplies.”

A professor of bookbinding at the Escola d'Arts i Oficis in Barcelona wrote an excellent how-to book titled, The Complete Book of Bookbinding by Josep Cambras. The book provides precise, systematic techniques with plenty of excellent illustrations. Other books include the following:

· Hand Bookbinding: A Manual of Instruction by Aldren A. Watson

· The Craft of Bookbinding by Manly Banister

· More Making Books by Hand: Exploring Miniature Books, Alternative Structures, and Found Objects by Peter Thomas

· The British Library Guide to Bookbinding: History and Techniques (British Library Guides) by P. J. M. Marks

· Book Arts: Beautiful Bindings for Handmade Books by Mary Kaye Seckler

What’s complicated about crafting pop-up books is making gift books with moving parts. To learn how to do that, you need to talk to a paper engineer or paper folding specialist. Or take a course in making pop-up books with moving parts.

One excellent specialist in this field is paper engineer, Robert Sabuda. See his Web site at: http://www.robertsabuda.com/. Click on How to Make Pop-Ups at: http://www.robertsabuda.com/popupbib.html.

Pop-Up Tutorials Online and Books on Making Pop-Ups

Web-based step-by-step instruction, workshop information, and a bibliography on making pop-up books are at the pop-up books author, Joan Irving’s site at: http://www.dreamscape.com/pdverhey/. Also other excellent bibliographies on making pop-up books include the following: Johnson, Paul. Pop-up Paper Engineering. Cross-curricular Activities in Design Technology, English and Art. The Falmer Press, 1992.

Beginners may enjoy the following books: Aotsu, Yoku. How to Make Pop-up Pictures! Dai-Nippon, 1993; Campbell, Jeanette R. Pop-up Animals and More! Evan-Moor, 1989; Valenta, Barbara. Pop-O-Mania. Dial Books. 1997.

Abstract Pop-Up Books

Play with Digital Pop-Up Cubes before You Fold Paper Pop-Ups

For digital pop-ups, try a pop-up cube that will appear on your computer as you create stories that give the reader a choice to move in several directions. This interactive choice is called writing in branching narratives.

Picture a cube or a pop-up book that snaps into three dimensions by extending the lines along the corner. Three-dimensional writing is in circular time with branching narratives ending in leaf nodes like the curving tree of life. Think of your story as a stack of cards—a metaphor used by many authoring tools.

1. Take a deck of blank cards and divide it into thirds—one for each part of your story. On each card, write a different beginning, middle, or ending for each part of the story.

2. Shuffle the each pile of cards so the reader can choose multiple pathways to interact within the story. Instead of linear time, you now have a three-dimensional parallel structure that goes back and forth like a time-travel novel.

3. Let the reader choose a different path, or return to the beginning to start a different story.

The most important rule to remember when designing an interactive story is that there are no rules. Start with a diagram and define the widest categories. Then, refine the story diagram, getting more specific as you go deeper into each story level.

Interactive writing uses metaphorical thinking to stimulate creative response. The interactive writer becomes a master of flexibility and a weaver of ideas, pictures, and sounds.

Practice Making Pop-Ups on Your Computer

Have a charming photo of a person in the book actually pop out in the middle of the book or at a spot where that person’s most important experience is mentioned. Before you design and cut out any folding pop-up art on paper, first make a verbal rather than a visual mock pop-up in your computer. A verbal pop-up is abstract. It’s all about writing one page in three dimensions. You have to think in three dimensions.

Your topic is “Writers wear many hats.” Write in of branching narratives. People who do this for a living are called non-linear editors.

A single script may incorporate several frameworks, including streaming audio narration, animation with voice-over, and montage. Other often-used frameworks—including comedy and drama—can be applied to new media presentations, as well.

The frameworks may vary from one category of facts or segment of the story to the next. In a documentary-style biography, you might include simple animation, backlit negatives, artwork, photos, or a narration to bridge the transitions.

The completed project should flow like one piece of cloth with no seams or hanging threads—like liquid, visual music. Using a varied selection of frameworks will help keep the attention of the audience and give the writer more options to set up a mighty conclusion. Be sure the frameworks don't overpower the information with too vivid an impact.

You want the readers to remember the life story highlights derived from listener.

Interactive gift books on computer discs (CDs or DVDs) can be true life stories (or fiction). They use a parallel story structure.

Readers can make several choices to change the events leading to different outcomes at different times. You can adapt an event to an interactive experience. This lets the audience enter feedback or gives a choice of how the story moves or ends.

Writing in Caricature

Writing in caricature is the essence of great dialogue writing. No one did it better than William Shakespeare, who was a master of written dialogue in caricature.

As your audience experiences the script during its performance, your writing will leap from two-dimensional text to the three-dimensional world of your audience's imagination. As you write this way, fit your dialogue into imaginary dialogue bubbles above the heads of your characters.

Your reading and viewing audiences begin to vibrate with charisma. The goal is to give each character the ability to influence, charm, inspire, motivate, and help the audience feel important.

Using Humor

The more important you make the audience feel, the better chance humor has of conveying a message of value. You may use carefully chosen humor with serious topics to hold the attention of the audience and to prevent the material from become too dry, abstract, or technical. Humor works well when it reveals pitfalls to be avoided. Your ability to make an audience laugh will increase the marketability of your work.

Using Drama

Drama is one of the best frameworks to use. To incorporate drama into a non-fiction memoirs gift book, include an experience with subplots framed like those in one of the fiction genres such as romantic comedy, adventure, mystery, or suspense.

Ask how the inner mechanisms work. Are facts readily available?

Or does the book allow the leading character or narrator to share only one experience as an interlude of inserted drama? Show contrasts in a memoirs book between the frameworks of dramatization, re-enactments, and demonstration. Contrasts are what makes a personal gift book of memoirs ‘alive’ rather than ‘flat’ in tone, texture, and mood.

“If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.” __ Bruce Barton

Gift Books for Everyone

Gift books present memoirs, family history, events, business success stories, and commemorations. Gift books showcase celebrations and rites of passage rituals with ‘action’ photos or other graphics along with text in a coffee-table style book, pamphlet, and/or multimedia disc, usually inserted in an envelope pasted on the inside cover.

Besides being more than a glorified scrap book or keepsake album, the memoirs gift book is portable and can be published in a size that easily can be mailed anywhere.

The memoirs gift books also can be digitized and placed on discs such as DVDs or CDs, uploaded to Web sites as compressed MP4 files (video podcasts), narrated for a public access or family-only video if you interview the individual, or presented in a variety of formats from paperback or hard cover books and pamphlets to multimedia slide shows and short documentaries.

Author, Gore Vidal explained the differences between a memoirs and an autobiography in his memoir titled, Palimpsest. Vidal wrote, "A memoir is how one remembers one's own life, while an autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked."

When you write another person’s memoir, you’ll have to do the type of research that can be fact-checked. Verifiable facts in a memoir are based on the words—either oral or written—from the person you are interviewing to gather life experiences.

It is that individual’s words that are recorded, edited, and written. You may never find a way to prove the facts. An autobiography includes a lot of material that does not depend solely upon memory.

For example, a person you interview might use poetic or colorful words, moods, rhythms, and textures to create an ‘ambiance’ such as this fictional line recalling the economic depression of 1931: “The sunlight shattered tongues of ice on the pond as the bread line wound around the men selling apples in woven baskets.”

Explore this possible line, “Before I left, a merchant said he’d heard rumors that the village shaman sacrificed a llama to the rain deity and burned its heart as an offering because I visited his village to measure rainfall in the parched the Chilean desert that year.”

How would you like to show how the basic, fundamental, and universal truths of human experience pull together in patterns, celebrations, commemorations, business success stories, memoirs, family histories, and rites of passage? If you want to start and operate a home-based business online, on phone, or face-to-face writing and publishing memoirs and gift books, here is your step-by-step guide to follow. Get results and solve problems.

Help people celebrate significant experiences. Interview, transcribe, organize, edit, write, and publish a personal memoirs or business history book, booklet, or pamphlet. Or include with the book a sleeve containing a CD or DVD disk on the inside back page. That disk would contain the same material as the text portion of the book, but as a narrated audio or video ‘book.’

When children grow, up they’d love to see great grandma on video, hear her voice narrate her own life story’s highlights, and discuss the times and scenes from her past. The paperback or hard cover book would contain the same material that easily can be read without technology.

Here’s how to start. Your first step is to offer potential clients unique, individual, customized books or booklets. The type of books you would write and publish would be memoirs and gift books. To operate your business, you’d need to hire as independent contractors interviewers to interview clients in a variety of cities nationally or around the world.

In addition to writing the book, you’d also arrange any photos or other graphics, publish the books, and send finished, bound copies of the book or booklet to your clients. Your client would pay for a fixed number of copies of this book, enough to be both affordable for the client and profitable for you. On the average, you’d write and publish about 25 books per year, with the help of freelance writers or a team of writers working as independent contracts on assignment.

The type of book you’d write mainly would emphasize personal stories. They would be personal books that come out of journals and celebrations, life stories, business histories, tributes, and appreciation material. To begin, divide your categories into these main topics:

Personal Celebration Books

Quincinera (Hispanic 15^th birthday party)

Start of teenage years

End of teenage years

Reaching 21

Military Service

Life stories/memoirs
child’s memories
Pregnancy Diary
Travel tips and memorabilia/Travel Guides

Bar/Bat Mitzvah Celebrations

Ethnic Rites of Passage

Confirmations

Ordinations

War experiences

Immigration stories—the journey and life in the new country

Bilingual life stories in family’s original language with English translation section of same information

Moving stories—relocation, new house.

Surviving an illness and healing journal

Diet success story “How I lost weight and kept it off.”

Memoirs and photos at various stages of life—how a person changed every seven years

High school journal

Religious experiences

Inspirational journey

Motivational testimony

Diaries

Wills/Testaments

Eulogies

Childbirth experience/Bringing home baby

Adoption stories/open adoptions

Leisure life

Retirement

Selling the large house and moving to smaller quarters

Transition to assisted living

Volunteer experiences: documenting acts of kindness

Relationship Books

Anniversaries

Adoptive child meets birth parents after decades

Dating history gift books
Engagements/Betrothals
Wedding stories
Wedding gifts and favors
Couple’s life stories together
Family histories

Genealogies

DNA reports linking families
Commemorative Occasions
Friendships
Reunions

Divorce journal of details

Battered spouse detail and dates of incidents journal

Events book

Religious conversion explanations to children

Partnership unions

Pet’s journey through Life

Dog weddings

New pets introduced to older pets in the household

Merging of families—man with three children marries woman with three children

Extended family histories

Friends for 50+ years

Several couples buying one vacation home together

Gift Books

Children’s letters

Lessons Learned from Life (celebrity interviews)

How to Make the Most of What You Have

Exercise or dance lessons

Scholarship(s) or Fellowships won

Haiku poems

Report cards from past generations

Original designs or writings preserved for future generations/keepsake albums

Jokes (original, not copyrighted by anyone else other than your client)

Personalized children’s books—a story book bearing the name and photos of each child. This can be a universal novelette, novel, or story featuring the child.

Travel stories and events with details

School year books with a twist—customization and details

Valentine’s Day for each year for many years or one specific event—first Valentine’s day before the wedding.

Bridal showers

Baby showers

Baby naming book or baby naming event

Building a house

Book of thank you notes for an event, gift, or celebration

Pet showers (new dog or cat shower)

Bar and Bat Mitzvah

Confirmation

Baptism

Conversion

Christmas gatherings over the decades

Recipes/cookbooks preserved from generation to generation (original)

Hanukah, Passover, Purim, Rosh Hashanah memories and other holiday gatherings

Ramadan

Holidays of feasting with family book with details gathered over many decades as memoirs of events.

Birthdays

Weddings

Mother’s Day

Father’s Day

Children’s Day

Grandparent’s Day

Cousins’ Books

Special Anniversaries

New Home/housewarming

New Boat/Yacht

First Apartment

College Graduation

Age-related celebrations

21^st Birthday

100^th Birthday gift book

Cruise memories

Bon Voyage

Welcoming newcomer books

Life stories of uncles and aunts as gifts to nieces and nephews or cousins

Novel for children or other age groups and genres

Plays or skits and monologues based on real-life stories or memoirs

Poems

Songs with lyrics

Interviews

Letters collected

Change of Name

Passing driver’s license exam and getting one’s first car

Born Again Spiritual Theme

Marking each stage of life transition

Timeshare stories

Room mates/Sharing a household

Business Books

Grand openings

Success stories/case histories media book

Switching brands—why customers switched to your product

Promotions

Elections/Politicians in Office

News Clipping Collection on a Theme Gift Book

Authors’ Media Tours Gift Books

Case histories

Entertainment/Music/Theatrical

Tour Guides/travel tips/restaurant guide

Opera

Dining and Restaurants for each city

Walking Tours/Guided Tours

Museums

Galleries

Outdoor Theme parks

Local museums

Campgrounds

State Fairs

National Weeks Celebrating a Theme

Mothers Day

Children’s Day

Fathers Day

Grandparents Day

Clubs/national associations

Ethnic Themes

Historical neighborhoods/homes

Video/Virtual Reality theme parks

Volunteers’ workbook of thanks and gratitude

Professional recognition, for example for dentists and doctors or hospitals

Military recognition or Veterans tributes

Commemoration or thanks to staff tributes

Eulogies

Celebration of Life Theme Variations

Rites of Passage Rituals or Celebrations

Grand Openings

Graduations

Wedding chapel history/church history

Solving problems and getting results case histories

Branding

Retirement parties and retirement stories, tributes, or histories

Corporate roast with jokes and standup comedy routines
Appreciation book from clients, customers, employer, or employees

‘Why’ customers switched to your product book of step-by-step details that potential clients follow to solve problems and get results.

Professional associations’ events

Conventions

Public speaker’s experiences

Inventory

Political views of family members

Campaigning

Public Relations

Video news releases with similar material in paperback print as text

Courses or other instruction, tips, and strategies or techniques (how-to)

Employee’s suggestions from suggestion box saved for many decades

Inventions

New license to practice a profession

First job

Contest or competition winner

Sports achievement

Award/Hall of Fame/Historical sites/Museums/Galleries

Activities after retirement

Motivational speakers

Instructional/Educational Gift Books

Literacy Tools and Photos

Restaurant Guides with Price Ranges

Fundraising

Non-profit agencies work overseas documented

Computer camp or drama camp experiences remembered

Author’s creative salon with book reviews or poetry and photos

Writers visiting schools

Public Speakers e.g. genealogists/family historians/personal or oral historians

Target Market

Look for turning points, unique significant events, and highlights. Examples could be rites of passage and grand openings, graduations, or the start or finish of major life events. Journals and diaries may be turned into customized books. The major events would pertain to individuals and businesses, schools and organizations. Any situation that has a measurable life span, rite of passage, celebration or ritual may be turned into a book of memoirs.

Clients would ask for a variety of different-sized books or booklets and pamphlets. The length of the book as well as the number of words and pages would differ. The emphasis is on details to share or real-life stories. Each book would be sold as a gift. Customers could order a set number of books.

You keep the master copy on disk and backed up in a disk drive or put on a CD or DVD. You can offer the book in print, as a print-on-demand book saved also in your computer and if you want to add voice narration, also as an audio book and/or narrated video using photos, images, video clips, and memorabilia recorded.

You could include DNA-driven genealogy reports, maps, graphics, and interpretations in plain language. Back up any files for storage as master copies. Relatives and friends may order additional copies.

If your client is of interest in the public arena, the book also could sell as a published work. Make sure the book is copyrighted in your name and that you have all the publishing rights to the work. Your book would be based on interviews with your clients. You would also use video and audio recording your clients and transcribe the recordings as text. Anything rendered into text would be readable when technology evolved to the point that the video and audio records would not be able to be played if they were not constantly transferred from one recording medium to the next evolution of technology recording devices and players.

The reason the book is copyrighted by you as a business and not by the client is that you’re doing the writing and publishing. The client is being interviewed by phone and recorded in audio and/or video.

From this information, you are transcribing the life story or business history. Then you are editing it for grammar and spelling. You are organizing the book so that similar topics are grouped together. Then you are changing the files of what you typed as a document into a PDF file that will be transformed into a print-on-demand book.

You are designing the cover that would be given free to the client using either art or photos supplied by the client or your own graphic designs.

You can do this yourself or hire a graphic designer to design all your book covers. This artist as an independent contractor would work for a fee per book cover. Or you could ask for art or photos saved at 300 dpi as a ‘tiff’ file, with CMYK color, for example using PhotoShop software. The books could vary in size or stay a basic 6 by 9 inches. Art for the cover would be saved on a CD and mailed to you as a 6 by 9 inch file saved at 300 dpi as a ‘tiff’ file.

For all this work, you’d charge a fee that would cover writing, editing, and publishing. Production work includes designing the cover, shipping and handling, and printing on demand several authors’ copies. The client would pay for as many copies as the individual ordered.

Finally, you’d display the book’s cover and marketing information on a Web site for the client or save it to a CD and send to the client so that the client has a copy of the book in paperback, on a CD, and saved as a Web site on a CD. It’s up to the client whether to upload information about the book to a personal Web site.

You could host the Web site with the book information or catalogue, or the book can be entirely private and sent only to the client to distribute to family and friends or employees. Some books would be private, such as a child’s story. Parents wouldn’t want their child’s name and image outside of the family.

Businesses touting success stories and histories may want a book or pamphlet circulated among employees and prospective clients. How the book is presented depends upon the client’s needs and preferences.

Sharing meaning defines ‘communication.’ What you are doing is bringing to life family histories, life stories, journals, or successful business experiences. Memoirs can be presented in print or as audio and video recordings or all together.

For example, present the book in text on acid-free paper, then include a pocket or flap envelope pasted to the inner cover of the book or pamphlet containing a CD or DVD that has a video and/or audio narration with graphics such as photos as memorabilia. This three-way enhancement of a life story or business case history/success story offers reading, viewing, and listening that can extend far into the future for generations.

Interviews

Your minimum interview time with a client should be at least two hours at a time. One person could be interviewed for just two hours, or more if necessary at different appointments. Each book should contain more than 65 photos and more than 85 pages. Identify each photo with the name, the relationship, the date, location, and story surrounding the photo.

Book size can be 6 by 9 inches or larger. A square book also is fine as long as it is at least nine inches in length. Trade book size usually is 6 by 9 inches, and personal books should look similar and professionally crafted, bound, and printed with a clear, colorful cover.

You can interview several people for up to 70 or more hours to obtain all the details or as little as two hours to interview one person. If you’re charging a high-end fee, the client will want to spend a long time with your interviewers getting the details expressed so that the words and the people say what they mean and mean what they say. The most important piece of paper to have at an interview is the one with the list of questions, including questions built around the answers to prior questions.

What the Client Expects for the Fee

Each client will pay you a flat fee. The fee is based on what every item will cost you to provide. To that cost you’d add a markup that’s enough to earn you a profit, but not so high as to make a book unaffordable by the average consumer. Most books will be unique memoir books marking a special birthday or anniversary or preserving the business history of a corporation or institution such as a school, library, hospital or non-profit agency.

Cut the words down to bare bones. Use only what is necessary because each word is precious. Photographs should be clear and showcased as if they were in a digital scrapbook published print on demand as text. The paperback book also can include a multimedia DVD or CD in a sleeve pasted on the inside cover. Make sure the label is colorful on the disk and the sleeve is transparent. Let clients view the art.

The reason people hire you to write and publish a memoirs book is to have a keepsake for years into the future and for new generations. The book also is a time capsule and an ageless memory that crystallizes love as a behavior.

For business-related memoirs books, you might look for clients commemorating the opening of an institution or medical offices, hospitals, dentists’ offices, and non-profit agencies with a cause. A business-related memoirs book of success stories, case histories, and employees work histories consists of interviews that emphasize ways to thank employees, board members, foundations, staff, and volunteers for services.

Parents may want a book that showcases their child as a character in a novel or focuses on the child’s life story from birth to a certain age such as 13, for example. Genealogists and family historians look for memoirs books that contain life story details of ancestors. Older adults also may want to get important factual information on paper, including medical histories or explanations.

Birth mothers may want to send a book to a child put up for adoption explaining why they put the child up for adoption. Parents who have adopted several children might develop a book explaining the adoption stories of each child they have adopted, from what country, city, and any other information as to why they chose that child.

Many of your clients will ask for wedding books that reflect the bride, groom, and relatives, ethnic backgrounds, beliefs, or just the bride and groom and each person’s interests. Your primary focus in a wedding book is to capture positive memories.

Pet owners want their dog or cat’s personality as part of the book. Your clients also could be a zoo featuring all types of animals, an equestrian ranch, a racetrack, or any other establishment or family featuring a pet. Good leads for pet owners often are in the media. Check out the various press and public relations clubs, animal food manufacturers, and wholesalers of pet supplies.

Couples looking for Valentine’s Day presents would enjoy a book that a couple can read together each year on their anniversary or Valentine’s Day. Sports enthusiasts also like “hall of fame” type treatment in a book on sports achievements or trophies won. A book showcasing the sports history of a person who plays a lot of sports could emphasize the details of each game along with dates, locations, and events as well as sports statistics.

One of the best times to approach a potential client is when a couple becomes betrothed. At the time of engagement, people are bubbly and receptive to interviews. Ask the person what makes that individual most comfortable in an interview, and keep the tape recorder or camcorder out of site. You might try serving decaffeinated tea or herb tea and encourage a relaxed atmosphere.

Focus on how each person met and grew fond of one another. Ask each person how he or she fell in love. Include details the couple wants to include in a book that could be read by their future children. This is the type of book that will be shown to wedding guests. Emphasize how many copies should be displayed on various tables for the wedding guests to peruse and discuss.

For parents of a young child, that child’s memories saved in a book would include asking the child what makes him or her laugh. Include positive dreams and ideas. What does the child think about or do most of the time? Focus on a particular year in the child’s life that’s most meaningful at the moment. Copies of the book for the grandparents can provide happy memories as the child grows and details of childhood memories are soon forgotten.

For a baby or bridal shower, the memoirs book becomes a gift book to be kept on a coffee table. It’s a gift that friends give. Interview friends of the bride or pregnant co-worker and have each person say something memorable and positive about the person that can be shown to relatives and other friends.

Career history books can emphasize what one did in a long career such as military service. The career history book also can be combined with a retirement and leisure activities book or war stories.

Anniversary books are seen as gifts. They mark a special number such as a 10^th, 25^th, or 50^th anniversary. Photos and interviews form the core of anniversary books. Business anniversaries also are part of corporate history books.

Collect copies of photos and interview several family members, friends, colleagues, co-workers, and employers. Gather positive comments focusing on details and memories. You could emphasize landmarks in the marriage, travels, or special times together.

Also include any events or memories of the couple before their marriage when they first met, their engagement, and life together. Significant turning points that are upbeat would be the primary focus.

Family, friends, and the couple would be re-reading the anniversary book at important times in their lives. Keep a video and audio CD or DVD inside the back cover of the book.

Have the husband and wife each write and/or read a letter to each other to be read far into the future, even when one member has passed on. The letter can be a love letter marking the most meaningful memories and saying any statement that each person wants to be remembered by.

Have each person create a motto that represents that person and/or his or her purpose or intent toward the partner. What would each person want to say to the other to be remembered? An anniversary book is moving. What can each person say to move the other to a new and wonderful state of mind?

What Do You Charge?

Each person hiring you to write a memoirs book will be paying you to reflect, reminisce, and celebrate shared or personal experiences. Memoir books motivate and inspire captured audiences of relatives and friends to share life story experiences. In the business world, history of a company can also be a family business story. For married couples or life-long partners, a memoirs book emphasizes the positive events that form patterns. The book’s purpose is to celebrate a couple’s ‘love.’

For individuals writing a memoir, personal reflection is emphasized. With a child’s story, the parents want to rekindle the same emotions felt as they watched their child mature. Memory books are gifts.

They can showcase an employee’s work history and be given by an employer as a retirement present. The outcome is a coffee-table type book that’s also an ageless time capsule combining colorful photos and text.

With the addition of a DVD or CD in a transparent plastic sleeve pasted on the inside cover of the book, when the reader has finished the text and photos portion, a video and/or audio disk can be played on most DVD and/or CD players or computers that can present a slide show, narrated life story video or audio file. That multimedia portion can emphasize a special event or turning point of an individual or couple’s life.

Before you set a price, produce one coffee-table memoirs book on yourself or on one of your relatives and keep tabs of the time it takes you. Each person works at a different rate. If you work on the book 8 hours per day, 5 days per week, it will take at least four or five work days or more to complete one book.

What would you like to get paid for one forty-hour workweek? How much do your materials cost? Is the book affordable to most of your potential clients? What type of client are you approaching?

Have you contacted wedding planners to let them know of your service and fees? What you charge depends on how many pages your client wants a book to be. Will it be a short booklet or pamphlet, or a novel-sized memoirs book?

To develop both a money budget and time budget, you need to list all the software and supplies you’ll have to buy. How many independent contractors will you retain? What will you pay each person? Can you do all the graphics, writing, and software manipulation to create the book by yourself? Would you limit yourself to one book and one client at a time?

Training Required

If you’re a digital scrap booker, you have most of the skills. The skill you’ll need to learn from there is how to turn a PDF file into a print-on-demand paperback book. The companies making the software can guide you to the tutorials. There also are professional associations you can join and learn from the members. Some national associations offer seminars, courses, or conferences.

Can you bind the book? If not, how much can you afford to pay a printer to bind your books? Until you’ve put a book together from scratch, don’t approach clients because you’ll need sample books to show. Your work of art is actually a print-on-demand paperback book featuring many photos interlaced with text.

You’ll have to oversee each stage of the process while keeping in constant contact with your client. Each process will have to be approved by your client.

It’s important to get half payment up front before you begin to interview any client. Setbacks could include the client going away for extended periods of time while you’re waiting for approval and permission to move onto the next stage or phase of the interviewing, recording, organizing, editing, revising, and re-writing process before coordination between text and photos is begun. Only then can you move onto the publishing process.

When the book is published, your client decides whether to make a video or audio DVD or CD to include in the back of the book to accent the text and photos. This recording process using video clips from the life of the client takes more time and editing.

You don’t have to offer a video or audio disk along with the book, but it does enhance the book and makes it possible to put the book and multimedia presentation on a disk to send to relatives. Since many people don’t like to read from a computer screen or watch a video, the book in text form is necessary for preserving the keepsake album feel of the memory book of text and photos.

Before you begin, you can have different budgets for a variety of clients. Some will want the book as a video and/or audio disk included in the paperback print on demand book. Others may only want to pay for a paperback or hard cover book or a smaller pamphlet.

Once you’ve set up a time and money budget, explore with potential clients what each person would most likely want in a coffee-table memoirs book that can be passed around the friends and family at gatherings. A book of this nature also appeals to houses of worship and to public speakers that share inspirational or motivational communication with a variety of audiences or clients.

What Items Do You Need to Compile Money and Time Budgets?

Before you can determine what to charge your client for a personal memoirs book or business case history success story media kit, you’ll need the following basic items to start:

1 computer

1 printer

1 bookbinding machine

Telephone

Internet service

Web site

DVD discs

CD discs

DVD recording device or disk drive

DVD playing device

Interviewers in various states on call as independent contractors

Adobe PhotoShop software

Microsoft Word software or equivalent for book manuscript writing, organizing, and editing

PDF software that turns Microsoft Word files into PDF files in a book template

Printer or printing service that works with digital imaging if you don’t have the software yourself.

Print-on-demand publishing techniques

Scanner for photos

Tape recorder and player, digital audio recorder, or CD player…

Telephone pickup device for recorder interviews via phone

Camcorder for recording videos of life stories…Industrial quality preferred, although a digital high 8 camcorder or DVD camcorder can sometimes produce amateur-type personal history videos good enough in quality and resolution to be sent to numerous TV stations as freelance documentaries or news reporting.

FireWire 1394 cable to connect your camcorder to your computer

Software and hardware to capture video from your camcorder to your computer hard disk drive and then to save the file as a video on a DVD after editing

Software that edits video and audio files on your computer

Sound recording software such as Total Recorder

Microphone for your camcorder and for your computer

Your personal memoirs or business history book service will operate similar to most print-on-demand book publishing companies, but on a smaller scale. A client will pay you to write and publish a memoirs or business history book containing photos and transcribed interviews.

The client will send you the photos either saved as a 300 dpi .tiff file on a CD or DVD or the client will email the original photos to you. You’ll need 6 by 9 inch photos for the book cover and 3 by 4 inch photos for the author’s photo.

With original photos, you’ll have to scan them into your computer and save them at 300 dpi as ‘tiff’ files using the CMYK color setting in PhotoShop. Promptly return original photos to the author. You can have a copy made for yourself to keep with your master file.

Give the author a copy of your files pertaining to that author’s book. This master file will help the author make copies with other printers if you should move or close the business. Keep a copy for yourself as the author may lose or damage the copy and ask for another.

Check out the InstaBook ™ Print on Demand Web site at: http://www.instabook-corporation.com/. There you can find out that it takes 23 steps the old fashioned way to publish a book. InstaBook ® Corporation is the premier supplier of the technology required to design, print and bind a book on demand anywhere on earth. The InstaBook ™ allows you to utilize InstaBook ® Maker III equipment.

The problem you need to solve is to figure out your cost of publishing per book. When you have a client who only wants a few books, you need to solve the problem of mass-production versus price.

You’d use print on demand publishing. For example, using the InstaBook ® Maker you don't need to print thousands of books to get the benefits of high-volume pricing. Each book you produce using InstaBook® Maker systems will have a cost per unit similar to the costs per unit of a 10,000 run. If you had used the old fashioned method of publishing that you might see in a 1980-style print shop, you would need to print 10,000 copies of a book to get the same price per unit.

That’s why for clients paying you a flat fee to compile and publish memoirs gift books, print on demand publishing is the way to go. No book actually is printed until someone wants to buy the book. At that time the book is printed and sent within 7-10 days to your client.

You charge the client the cost per book that it takes you to print one copy and any charges for shipping and handling, such as the cost of the box the book is packed in. How many other charges do you have besides the labor of interviewing, recording, transcribing, organizing, writing, and editing the book? Make your time and money budgets by listing each step needed in the process to produce a book.

Distribution costs and sales of the book are up to your client. You’re paid only to produce a few authors’ copies for the person ordering a personal memoirs book.

If employees of a company are made aware of a book on the business history of a corporation, each employee of that company on a voluntary basis can order the book from you, perhaps from a listing on your client’s company’s Web site. If you’re producing a family history book, each relative and friend can order the book from you directly. You publish the book print on demand and send each copy to whoever orders the book.

You don’t have to worry about getting into Books in Print, into the big chain bookstores, or about paying a large distributor such as Ingram. After all, you’re not publishing a book for distribution other than to your client and his or her family or to a corporation and its employees.

Success Stories--Corporate

Success storybooks are one branch of the occupation of book packager. You’d put together success stories of a company and create a book targeted to the media. This type of book is called a media book. You’d interview satisfied clients of a company, ask them why they switched from one company’s product to another company’s product, and then collect success stories for the perusal of select media.

Your interview questions would focus on what step-by-step procedure was taken to solve a problem or achieve results. Ask about benefits and advantages. An excellent example of a “media book” is available to the press is titled, Media Guide on Food Safety and Nutrition 2004-2006, published by the International Food Information Council. See the council’s Web site at: http://ific.org.

Why did they switch? Software is an excellent product to interview satisfied customers about, emphasizing why they changed software and what they liked about it. This success story approach can be done with interviews about many other types of products, from cars to pet food. Choose a product that’s individual enough. Some products have different labels or distributors, but all come from the same manufacturer.

As a case history manager, you’d collect the success stories from satisfied clients and record interviews by phone. Then you’d write a series of news releases about one and a half pages in length.

Each success story would be put into a book to be presented to the press as part of the company’s public relations and marketing communications department. The collection of success stories should be consistent in length and presented in book form and/or electronically to select media. It would be up to the public relations director of the particular corporation to select which media would get a copy of the “media book” that you’d publish for a corporation.

To drum up business, contact the director of media relations, the marketing communications manager and the public relations director of each corporation that interest you. Then pitch to each corporation that you would like to write a media book for select reporters based on you being allowed to interview satisfied customers on why they switched to a particular company’s product.

Emphasize details and benefits. Most likely to hire outside publishers and book packagers are new software firms that have public relations departments used to hiring independent contractors. Have some ‘mock’ sample media books published already to show them your work. You may focus on a particular niche such as mall grand openings.

You’ll need a portfolio of your work as an interviewer, writer, and publisher. Practice with text and imaging software. Then approach potential clients. Have good samples to show.

If you need to use hired printers and interviewers, have your team help you create some samples to show of your memoirs books, gift books, or business case history success storybooks. You can work entirely in text and photos or vary your output with video and audio multimedia productions or slide presentations for business meetings and conventions.

If you want to publish memoirs books, work with genealogists, family history researchers, wedding or event planners, oral historians, librarians, and publishers. Contact associations related to genealogy or DNA-driven genealogy. Memoirs books can be combined with the design of keepsake albums.

You also can branch into digital scrap booking using photo-imaging software and text with other graphics to produce gift books. Emphasize events, celebrations and commemorations for different stages of life, graduations, and rites of passage if you want to work with families or schools and hospitals instead of manufacturers.

E-Books (Electronic Gift Books)

Electronic book (E-book) readers let you take your favorite books and magazines in digital form, usually saved as PDF files. These types of books are lighter to carry than the average paperback book. Most clients asking you to publish a memoirs book will not want an E-book or electronic book.

In addition to a printed paperback or hard cover book, you might want to put an electronic book on a CD or DVD. Then send it along with the book for those who like to read electronic books (E-books) in handheld devices.

To create an E-book, all you need to do with your written book that says it’s copyrighted in your name with the year, is save it in digital format such as a Microsoft Word document cut and pasted into Microsoft Front Page software (that creates files compatible with Web sites).

You then save the document as a Web page. When you’ve finished creating your Web page in Front Page software or used one of the free Web site services online, you just upload or send your book to the Web page. You can view it there or download it and save it on a disk or in your computer.

Use your search engine to find which sites offer free Web space for your book. Also you can contact an e-publisher online that already provides a Web site to showcase the memoirs book. If you use a print on demand publisher, the charge can range from 300 to 700 dollars to set up your book.

Some publishers also charge you a monthly or annual fee per book just to host it on their Web site or keep it posted with major distributors online. To avoid these types of costs, buy your own print on demand equipment and publish one memoirs book at a time for each client. If you have only a few clients at one time, you’d only have to print a few copies for each client’s circle of family and friends.

You control how many clients you want to take at one time, like a literary agent or event planner. If you are a wedding planner or genealogist you might want to add a sideline of publishing memoirs books. People who work with older adults also might have an interest in interviewing and presenting life stories in life long learning settings from senior centers to extended studies programs at universities for active people in retirement.

Adult continuing education classes and gerontologists as well as family historians may all have an interest in memoirs books. It’s not only for older adults, but for new parents documenting a child’s growth stages or teenagers marking the taking on of responsibility. All these life stages can be incorporated into such a gift book.

E books are read with E-book readers. These are usually free, downloadable software that enables a viewer to read an E-book. Examples of E-book readers that are free and available on the Web include Adobe Reader, which is free and downloadable at: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. Microsoft E-book reader is at the Web site: http://www.microsoft.com/reader/default.asp.

Many popular and/or best-selling books also may contain formats that can be read by E-book reader software. You can use the free E-book readers online by downloading them or buy professional-type E-book reading software such as eReader Pro for Palm Os. That Web site is at: http://www.ereader.com/products/ereader/pro.

Some people use hand-held devices such as Pocket PC to read electronic books. Other people prefer to listen to an audio book instead of reading text on a computer screen or on a hand-held device’s small screen.

Audio gift books may be narrated and saved as MP3 files so that people can buy the book to download on an iPod or other mobile listening or viewing device. Or the audio book may be saved on a CD or DVD or uploaded to the Web as an audio podcast which is an audio file under compression.

The MP3 audio file takes up less bandwidth space online than other types of audio files. There are numerous E-book publishers online, but you can obtain E-book publishing software and circulate your own gift books.

The most popular way to market a gift book is to have text and photos that can be handed down to future generations as keepsakes and heirlooms, as if they were scrap books combined with life stories you can read for hours as you thumb through the pictures and the details of the experiences in text as paperback or hardback books. Then slip out a CD or DVD in a book’s inside back cover and pop into your DVD player. Suddenly, the life story, wedding, historic site, or other event becomes a ‘movie.’

“Advertisements... contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.” __ Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), Letter to Nathaniel Macon, January 12, 1819

***

101 Uses & Goals of Multimedia Creative Writing Therapy with Background Music: Why Use Creative Writing Therapy?

Highly recommended is the excellent handbook titled, Biblio/Poetry Therapy: The Interactive Process: A Handbook, by Arleen McCarty Hynes and Mary Hynes-Berry, North Star Press of St Cloud, Inc., 1994. According to the book, Arleen Hynes, O.S.B., “established the first hospital-based training program in bibliotherapy in 1974 at St. Elizabeths in Washington, DC.” (Dr. Mary Hynes-Berry is a professional writer.) The book is excellent for understanding how literature can be used as a healing tool.

Now, my own premise is that music therapy also may be added to the background with the use of creative writing therapy and biblio-poetry therapy. In creative writing therapy, I would make full use of the Internet for multimedia—music, visual imagery, and text so that sound and words surround the images, engaging all the senses of virtual reality.

For writers to use music and words as healing tools, reading and viewing are done to inspire. Keep files organized and handy on all your resources so that you know where everything is and can bring up instantly what is needed. The following are 101 projects to start using creative writing therapy with music therapy as background inspiration.

Locate feelings and express feelings in words against a background of music that enhances feelings related to the words.
Craft a story reflecting foresight, insight, and hindsight.
Reflect on the meaning of a particular experience or your lifestyle.
Deepen your understanding of your self-perception.
Discover new parts of your self and others.
Celebration of Life reading, ceremony, or celebration.
Express your feelings and your logic.
Explore your relationships.
Understand where you came from and who you are or will be.
Express connections to a former time.
Plan the future.
Put in words what’s important to you.
Use music and multimedia to visualize words for personal growth.
Create dialogue using two empty chairs.
Write to achieve closure.
Put conflict to rest and forgive yourself.
Create a journal for self-exploration.
Use music as a healing tool along with words put to the feeling the music creates.
Choreograph poetry to music.
Write salable books for any age group based on poems, song lyrics, or significant events.
Create time capsules on discs, in text, and in multimedia formats. Transcribe recordings of oral history.
Discuss your publicly allowed military service experiences.
Teach others all the lessons you’ve learned from living your life.
Give travel tips to others about the places you’ve been to and stayed at.
Write about how your animals changed your life.
Discuss what you learned from others about money or your work-life.
How did you handle challenges?
Do believe in a life purpose or going with the flow—whever life takes you as you float like flotsam in an eternal ocean of time?
What would you like from life?
Write about how you feel about your power of control.
How did music change your writing?
What family events do you want to share with others?
What events most changed your own life?
Do you have a purpose, goal, or objective?
What would you like to share with future generations reading your work?
What would you put into a time capsule?
When did you first become aware of yourself?
What would you most like to understand about life?
Utilize music with Bibliotherapy classes for teaching mature behavior and transcending past choices or mistakes for closure, forgiveness, or simply moving on by resolving problems and getting measurable results to put into a notebook, computer, or time capsule
Prison Writing Therapy groups, hospital, and institutional settings provide an interactive process of combining reading, writing, and music, even with graphic novels and cartoons
Writing with Mental Patients for Healing is an interactive process
Writing for people with disabilities using developmental bibliography
Writing for the Blind
Writing for Deaf using Sign Language (note how adjectives are described in sign language)
Writing for Teachers of Poetry and Fiction
Music Therapy for Fiction Authors
Using prose collections from many cultures
Reading and writing women’s life stories
Writing for survival
Writing about transforming, transcending, or closure
Writing to organize activities
Cleaning and sorting your life’s turning points
Discussing Choices
Training Bibliotherapists
Obtaining training in poetry therapy
Using food writing to teach nutrition therapy
Discussing classic books moved into present times
Writing how music therapy is used to inspire fiction writing
Using writing skills to invent board games
Volunteering as a writer in institutional settings
Organizing writing groups in various houses of worship
Teaching writers how to critique without bringing attention to how smart or right the critic is by finding subjective flaws in other writers’ manuscripts—being objective and tactful while being logical
Treating other writers as you would like to be treated
Work with the effects of time on manuscripts and people
Writing about family life turning points
Write about how parents make the same mistakes their children will
Write about joy and balancing happiness with nutrition
Before you write, think of “what would xyz do” and write about that compared to what you would do.
Write about how to find someone’s true character by watching them drive or act toward people who can’t promote their careers or income
Write about how and why you care
Write about how to be kind when no one is looking
Create interactive games that use writing skills
Use metaphors to inspire writing
Write fiction using active verbs and fewer adjectives
Plan a meeting or party that’s on a bus line so non-drivers who write can attend.
Every writer has a story to offer that’s worth a novel, play, or skit
Write about how customers treat food servers in restaurants
Go undercover and write about your minimum-wage temporary jobs
Write about friends who keep in contact for a lifetime
Collect the writings that come out of school 50-year reunions for inspiration
Write about the friends you can trust
Write about how people drive and how it relates to their character
Explain how young people each have a voice of resilience and write about what that voice is saying
Explore the lives of women immigrants and their writings. How does their life stories compare with your own?
Would you rather write using breadth or depth in your stories, books, or articles?
What cultures would you focus on to write about the rich literature that shaped your own family’s history?
How would you write about understanding your own mothers and grandmothers?
What is the way of life you embrace? How would you write about it?
As a writer, how do you understand the women and men who brought you here?
Use biographical dictionaries to inspire you to write creatively as a healing tool. What do the biographical dictionaries say about women writers from a wide variety of cultures? How can you use the various biographies in your own writing?
Explore the voices of female writers and compare them to male writers in different time periods of your choice.
Form a diverse study group whose aim is to read original works by a group of authors of your choice. Who has translated these authors so you can read them? They can be women, immigrants, teenagers, older adults, or any group at a stage of life or from a particular group.
Study literature as a powerful political statement before you write biography or fiction.
Explore women’s lifestyles and men’s comparative experiences in villages around the world or in one area of your group’s focus.
How did the perceptions of women as writers differ from those of male counterparts?
Capture the spirit of matriarchal and patriarchal life in any city of your choice at any time.
Write a time-travel adventure of any length
How would you begin to find out more about yourself, discover who you are, based on your heritage, genealogy, or from reading writers similar to yourself?
Illuminate the world of your ancestors, recent or in the distant past by writing and reading their writings of their own life experiences.
Make your writing accessible to the public by holding press conferences as a writer’s or book discussion group. Explore authors’ parties with the press invited.
Work with translators to get the writing of little known authors readable in your own language. Then polish the writing of the translators or learn from them how they polish the writing when one language is translated into another. Make your writing an historical document as well as a literary piece. Your life story has historical value. Use time capsules, archival and/or oral history university libraries, and heirloom keepsakes.

Why We Never Give Up Our Need For A Perfect Mother: Trapped At Home By Anxiety & Panic?

**30+ Brain-Exercising Creativity Coach Businesses to Open**

How to Use Writing, Music, Drama & Art Therapy Techniques for Healing

30+ Brain-Exercising Creativity Coach Businesses to Open: How to Use Writing, Music, Drama & Art Therapy Techniques for Healing

4 How to Create Paperback 98-Page Pamphlets on Current Issues in the News for

Students/Researchers, Teachers, and Librarians

13 Write about Peoples’ Inner Payoffs and Moral Needs

Publishing Your Creative Writing Therapy Book


				*Why We Never Give Up Our Need for a Perfect Mother*



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