Help your parents produce their memoirs

(NC)—Very few gestures on Mother's Day and Father's Day are a gift for eternity like this one could be: Create a beautiful hard-back book based on your parents' life story.

Instead of just letting the years fly by, why not embark on a project together to put on record all of their milestones, joyful times, comical moments, childhood adventures, favourite relatives, favourite friends, plus (if they want) their viewpoints, philosophies, passions, challenges, regrets, and/or, all of their interesting pathways to wisdom and success?

Big job at first glance, but today we can use advanced inexpensive computer technology to simplify it. Combine all the stories with a lifetime of photographs and then self-publish it with professional polish. Producing a permanent memento of your parents' life is destined to be a gift that keeps on giving.

Ripple rewards

Once completed, senior-aged parents especially will be assured, and even intrigued, to know that long after they're gone, future family members will be reading about them. It may be just a small slice of your entire ancestral tree, but a slice that will now survive.

“It's true that if we don't record our lives into some kind of permanent keepsake, it only takes one or two generations until no one remembers us at all,” says Jane Stokes, a freelance writer who has just completed a memoir project with her recently widowed mother, Charlotte. “But especially for a grieving parent, we found that it was visibly therapeutic for our 83-year-old mother to recall, for publication, the standout moments of her life.

“She did the main job herself, but instead of writing it all out by hand, we installed some voice-activated software (Dragon) so she could just sit comfortably with her laptop and narrate. She quickly got the hang of it and narrated a few stories each week. The activity was so positive—sharpening the mind, finding the photos, giving progress-reports to friends, and anticipating the look of the final book— it didn't matter how long it took. Then after six months or so, and at around 55,000 words, it was ready to be edited, by me. The whole project, including tons of pictures to make around 150 pages, plus a professional book designer, took about one year.”

If you do it yourself totally, Ms. Stokes explained, your costs are simply for the expense of printing the books (plus Dragon if you need it). For example, with online publisher, Blurb, you will get a high quality, full colour, hardback book for around $60 each, plus delivery. If you use a professional editor and a professional book designer, the start-up costs for your heirloom will be considerably higher. But once the template is created, it will be yours to order any number of books (even just one) any time, by simply paying the per-book charge.

Book design information is available at www.rossignoldesign.com .