On
Grandparenting
Speaking from experience, the best part of being a grandparent is spoiling the grandkids rotten, letting them get away with just about anything, loading them up with sweets then sending them home. But wait! There’s more to being a grandparent than that (even though “that” is funny sometimes), and we want to hear your stories.
Deadline: Open until we get enough workable stories to fill a title.
Tentative Chapter Titles
Spoiling the Grandkids
(Then sending them home)
Learning the (Multiplication) Tables
(Grandparenting several grandchildren at once)
Show and Tell
(The surprising things grandkids do and say)
Tears of Joy
(Celebrating the accomplishments of your grandkids)
Always on Call
(When you’ve grown up to become the babysitter)
Pete and Repeat
(Your kids are raised; now you’re raising theirs)
Living in the Jungle
(And other imaginary fun with grandkids)
Long-distance Grandparenting
(Holding them close when they’re far away)
Old-fashioned Fun
(Electronics not included!)
Cooking Up a Storm
(Mixing it up in Grandma’s kitchen)
Growing Old
(When your kids and grandkids try to raise you)
Oops!
(The follies of grandparenting)
Last updated 5/8/12
Thank you and good luck!
SUBMIT YOUR STORY HERE
About this title's co-creator
Pat Nelson’s love of writing led her to her current project of co-creating Not Your Mother’s Book . . . . On Grandparenting. In sixth grade, she wrote a story about a family moving from Virginia to Kentucky. She added a heavy paper cover to the sheets of lined notebook paper and singed the edges with a cigarette lighter to show signs of the long journey. She doesn’t know if it was the excitement of creating a story or the 
thrill of playing with fire, but that’s when she decided to become a writer.
Nelson wrote and self-published You…the Credit Union Member when she was in her twenties. In 2004, she returned to her hometown in Northern Minnesota for a visit and left there determined to write a book about the tuberculosis sanatorium where her parents met, a book about its progressive lady doctor, its patients, and its employees. She has returned to her 
childhood home on several research trips, gathering information that will bring memories of the sanatorium era back to life. She continues to work on this project.
Her story "Indian Summer" appears in Chicken Soup for the Soul in Menopause. She has written a weekly column for The Daily News/South County News, Longview, WA, and her stories appear on www.lewisriver.com. Her newspaper columns and other stories appear on her blog at www.storystorm.me. Nelson, who lives in Woodland, WA, is a member of Willamette Writers.
Nelson has a grandson and granddaughter nearby and she is one of their best supporters. She attends their sporting events, volunteers to help with writing at school, shares adventures, and vacations with them. Her other two granddaughters live in Arizona, and she recently took the two Washington grandchildren to Arizona to spend spring break with their cousins. “We have so much fun together,” said Nelson. “Being a grandmother is the best!”
Today, Pat Nelson juggles writing with grandparenting, leasing office space and running a wholesale business. “Grandparenting, writing and editing aren’t work,” she says. “They provide the play time that gives me a break from work, and who doesn’t love to play?”
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