Q&A with Patsy Truxaw, author of “Gathering: Family, Grief, Resilience”
I first met Patsy Truxaw when she was a student in one of my life story writing classes. She joined the class with a writing project already underway: a series of stories about how the tragic death of one of her siblings affected each member of her large family. Patsy was steadfast from the beginning, showing up each week with a new story or a revision. Soon enough, themes began to emerge that threaded her stories together: mental health struggles, addiction, protective denial, politics, and fierce familial love.
Eventually, a book began to take shape. At first, Patsy intended to create a book just for her family—it’s a family memoir, after all. But her classmates’ connection to her story (and mine) informed Patsy that Gathering could appeal to a larger audience.
This is Patsy’s first book. Like a lot of my students and many memoir writers in general, she didn’t start taking her writing life seriously until she was in her retirement. That was a good fit for my publishing partner, Dorka Hegedus, and me. We were proud to publish Gathering as our first Demitasse Press book. I myself run a publishing services business, meaning that I help authors reach their publishing goals, including in self-publishing. Demitasse Press books are the ones Dorka (a photographer and designer) and I (a writer, coach, and editor) create and self-publish together in close collaboration with authors.
I’ll let Patsy tell you the rest of the story . . .
QUESTION: Tell me how it feels to have your book published. You can be honest.
PATSY TRUXAW: It's a great relief. It's exciting, and it's daunting. It's all of that. I'm proud of it.
Part of me just wants to say, “Okay, I'm going to release you into the world, and now I'll step back and resume my boring life.” But I realize I have a responsibility to the book now. I have to help promote it. So, I feel good, but I also feel a little overwhelmed by that.
I've gotten such a good response from the places I've gone with the book that I feel sort of calm about it. It's gotten a really good reception from my cousins and other family members who have read it, and some friends who've bought and read it.
I think a lot of authors could relate to not totally enjoying the post-publication part of writing a book.
It's not why I wrote the book, you know? And at this point in my life, I'm less ambitious and less competitive than I ever have been.
It’s pretty ambitious to finish a book.
That's right. It took determination and ambition to get the book finished, and also a love of the subject. I felt like the subject of the book—my family and the issues we've dealt with—was worth looking at. It helped me look at my family more closely, and having done that, I think it's worth sharing.
That was one of my questions: What motivated you to write in the first place? And did that motivation change during the writing of the book, or did it stay the same?
When I started writing the book, I didn't know I was writing a book. There were a couple of people in the [life story writing] class who were further along with their books, and I am a competitive person, so it got my juices running, like, I want to do that, too. I want to get something finished. It was five years ago when I started your class, and I knew that was the time to do it. My initial goal was to get the book done by the time I was seventy-five. I'm 78 now, and I finally got it finished. It was a long process.
But that's what it took.
Yes, because I didn't want to leave anybody out, for one thing. Everyone in my family deserved their story, and I had to find a way to thematically connect all the stories. Partly it was an organic process, and partly it was intentional, if that makes sense. Because there's a thread that runs through the book—what I call “bad wiring,” as well as the strong connections we've had since we were little.
Did you start writing the book in my class? I know I should know this, but I don't.
No. Years ago, I took a class from Grace Paley at UC Berkeley one summer, and I wrote several versions of responses to [my brother] Bobby's death. That was in the 1970s, way back. In fact, there's a piece in that original story about my dad walking to work after Bobby died and talking to Bobby, the way I imagined my dad might talk to my brother—praying, processing the loss of his son. But then I had a career, and I did other things, but I've always been writing, either in a journal or taking classes.
And the topic of Gathering has been a topic that’s been working through you for decades, it sounds like.
Yes, I also took a class at Sonoma State, where I wrote the first version of the chapter about my brother Paul. And the story about my sister Evie, I first wrote that for another writing teacher when I took a class at Copperfield Books, and I wrote another one in an adult ed class at the community center in Sebastopol.
The published book doesn't read like a bunch of stories that were written at different points in your life. There’s a consistent voice. It feels cohesive.
I save everything. I have a box of journals that I really need to burn or throw out. I can barely read them. But I did look at that old writing, and it did feed what I was doing in Gathering. But I reworked stuff: I looked at it, and I looked at it, and I looked at it, and I thought, This isn’t quite right. I've evolved as a human being and as a writer, so my perspective on my family is clearer than it was when I was younger. My analysis of how we turned out the way we did is clearer. So, as I reworked my earlier writings, I applied that clarity to all of them.
Author Patsy Truxaw
“Everyone in my family deserved their story, and I had to find a way to thematically connect all the stories. Partly it was an organic process, and partly it was intentional.”
What would you say to other authors about being part of a writing group? What were the benefits and what were the perils of workshopping Gathering with a group?
Well, the perils were that when I came into the class, I felt like there was an established group, and I was the outsider, and it took me a long time to feel comfortable sharing my writing. It was my fear structure, or my self-consciousness.
But I was inspired by people's writing and by people's directness, and I felt like eventually it was a class where I could take a chance and be myself and read what I wrote. I got good feedback, and the best thing is having a group of people who are just so supportive. I like having an audience, as it turns out.
One thing that I appreciate about the way you went about this book is that you did it as professionally as possible. You had different levels of editing, you had proofreading, you had a cover design. What part of the process did you enjoy the most, and what part was a slog?
Proofreading is a slog.
Amen to that.
I liked experimenting with ways of putting it together. I tried working with Scrivener, but that didn't work. There were too many pieces to jiggle around. But at some point, I noticed that the totality of my writing fit together. I presented it to you, and you edited it and gave me input. I liked the part of getting all the pieces to become one thing, massaging it together. I also really liked looking for the photos and bringing the project alive.
But the final stage was a slog. It’s just excruciatingly slow working with the publishing stage. Hiring people is really worthwhile, but you have to pay for it.
What about living with someone else who's not a writer? How was this experience for your husband, John? I know he did a lot of reading and re-reading, and he gave great input when we needed it.
That's a good question. He's been really helpful. Sometimes it's on his schedule, not mine. But why shouldn't it be?
Now, here's the problem with living with someone else, is that we do things together at night, like watch the German television that we are addicted to. We really enjoy being in the living room with the dog on the couch with me, and John in his recliner. But sometimes with the book, I needed to not do that, but I’m not good at cutting it off. I really like doing nothing, and sometimes I really didn’t want to do the work of the book. But when I do the work, I feel really good.
Here's some really good advice for other authors: It is work. It's more work than a hobby. It's real work to make a book. It takes a lot of mental energy. There are so many psychological things going on while you’re doing it, or at least there were for me. There's all of that self-doubt that writers have. So, you think, “Why am I doing this? I should be walking the dog, doing this, doing that.” You have to value the work. If I don't value my time as a writer, nobody else is going to do it for me, you know?
I'm so pleased that you've had some positive responses from local booksellers. What advice do you have for authors about how to present their books to a local bookseller? What do you think helped for you? Did you already have relationships with these booksellers because you're a customer, or . . . ?
I’m a customer at Volumes of Pleasure (in Los Osos) and Coalesce (in Morro Bay), but I wouldn’t say they knew me before I approached them about my book. I think doing a walk-by first is a good idea, and handing them a flyer with all the information about you and your book. That’s what I did at Volumes of Pleasure. I just asked, “What should I do if I’m about to publish a book . . . ?” They were enthusiastic, and they still are. They have the book out in front.
I was in Barnes & Noble the other day with my niece, and I asked one of the clerks, “Where do you keep your local author books?” and then, “What should I do if I’m a local author?” I just talked to them. And now she wants me to bring in a copy of Gathering. She was receptive and wanted me to definitely come back with copies.
Are the local booksellers buying books from you on consignment, or are they buying them through Ingram?
They've mostly been buying them on consignment, but if they want more, they'll get them from Ingram.
You mentioned your age earlier. I'd love to hear you give some encouragement to other people who might be past seventy and thinking about writing a book, and maybe thinking it's too late.
How you see the world matters. Anybody who is a writer, I think, is an observer. If you’ve been inclined to write throughout your life, then don't stop. Do it. Put down whatever your truth is, what matters, and start writing, and see where it goes. And get some feedback. No matter your age. Like I was told by—this is maybe a little funny—an astrologer I used to see in Sonoma County, Rio Oleski: “If you don't write, you could go crazy.” What he meant was that I needed to write to stay sane, to get it out of my head.
Yes, it’s clear that you needed to write this book. Final question: Do you feel like you're done writing, or has this inspired more creative aspirations?
I wanted to be done because I'm not as good a writer as I used to be. It's harder for me to write now. I get together with some friends from Sonoma County to check in, meditate, and write. And I just feel like I don't write on the spot like I used to. It's not elegant writing, which is difficult to admit. But I have found myself sitting down and thinking, I've got to write this down, and then writing. So, I guess I'm not done. And I have some ideas that I'm either putting in notes or writing little entries so I don’t forget.
I feel like I have a responsibility to the book now. Maybe when that responsibility is behind me in a way—I know it’s never over—I’ll get back to writing.
Learn more about Patsy at www.forgivemess.com.