Quote of the Month
"I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say."
- Flannery O'Connor
Announcements
We're working on a book about Lakeview East (neighborhood in Chicago). But instead of just having one writer, we want this to be a compilation of stories from anyone in the community. From residents who've lived here their entire life to people who moved here last summer. Restaurant owners, small business owners, or people who just love a good round of karaoke at Friar Tuck's. Everyone is welcome to contribute stories.
And anyone who wants to setup a book project like this for their own neighborhood, let us know. We'd be happy to assist. Email - library@longoverduestories.com
Write For Yourself
The Rough Draft Doesn't Have to be Anywhere Near Perfect
Grammar is important. It's necessary to catch any typos and make the punctuation as close to perfect as possible for your final physical book.
But at the rough draft stage, the goal should just be getting the story down on the page. Thinking about grammar, pursuing that perfect sentence can really slow things down. For a different perspective on grammar that we hope relieves some of the writing pressure, check out this article on the Medium Rare blog - Rough Drafts: Don't Worry About Grammar
Write for Your Family
We've paired up with Brookdale Senior Living - Lake Shore Drive here in Chicago for an exciting new storytelling project.
How it works - We set up a time to interview a resident, ask questions, record their stories. From there, families can have us edit the different stories into audio chapters, have us transcribe the audio to text, or even work on turning the whole thing into a book.
If you're interested in recording your parents' or grandparents' stories, whether they're in a senior living facility or not, we're here to help. Send us a note - library@longoverduestories.com
Write for Your Community
Writers of Hope College
Current Hope College student Annie Cerovich had the goal of giving her friends an expressive writing outlet as well as show their experience through photographs during the COVID-19 pandemic. She created this Quarantine Review magazine as a result.
You can access the full magazine by clicking on the cover above or downloading the PDF below. We'll also be sharing some of the individual posts over on Long Overdue Books.
Congratulations to Annie Cerovich, Jillian Chang, Rose Wilcox, Carmen Baden, Celia O'Brien, Adriana Mirabelli, Emma Cerovich, Langley Cerovich, Loral Hankey, Michaela Bunger, and Noèmie.
Social Network for Writers: Is Facebook the Only Option to Share my Work?
Facebook is a great way to stay connected. It's easier to create an author's Facebook page than building a whole website. And how else would we remember birthdays?
But is it the ideal home for writers? Could there be a better option for sharing written work? And what if there was a social network entirely centered around writing, storytelling, and creating books? We explore this topic further here in this new article.
Keeping up with Long Overdue
"The secret to writing is once you get started, you just can't let go. You keep tugging, and working, and, eh, I dunno. I've never written anything before."
- Crash the Dog, Chief Marketing Officer
The best place to keep up with Long Overdue is via our monthly newsletter. If you're seeing this for the first time, you can subscribe to the newsletter here and also catch up on earlier editions. Our guarantee: We will always put a Norman Rockwell level effort into the cover.
Our websites are Long Overdue Stories and Long Overdue Books. Long Overdue Stories is for families who want to record/write their parents' or grandparents' stories. Long Overdue Books is the social network for creating books, mainly for authors looking to share their work with their local community.
Our next newsletter will go out the week of either September 21st or September 28th. And, not to give a cliffhanger ending here, but we'll be sending out an exciting announcement on Tuesday, September 1st. Mark those calendars, especially if you're interested in the "Write for your Family" / "Record Family Stories" topic.
As always, we'd love to hear from you in between newsletters. You can reach us at - library@longoverduestories.com