Patient: I think I'm suffering from Imposter Syndrome
Therapist: Great. Can I have my chair back?
Quote of the Month
“You can't be brave if you've only had
wonderful things happen to you."
- Mary Tyler Moore
Speaking of Mary Tyler Moore...
The episode "Chuckles Bites the Dust" of The Mary Tyler Moore Show is often voted the #1 TV episode of all time. What makes it so good? Here's a quick look at the premise, setup, and the big punchline/payoff scene featured in the clip above. Plus a writing prompt inspired by this episode.
Premise: Chuckles the Clown is picked to be the grand marshal for a circus parade (instead of Ted Baxter). Dressed as Peter Peanut, Chuckles dies after an elephant tried to "shell" him.
Setup: The cast can't help but find the incident funny. Murray jokes: "You know how hard it is to stop after just one peanut!" Mary's appalled by the jokes and tells everyone to take this seriously.
Punchline/Payoff: Until the funeral when Mary finally cracks...
Writing Prompt: Try writing a scene where you take one of your characters and have them react "out of character."
Ideas: The always serious character surprises everyone and does something funny. The funny character goes through a difficult life event, has a serious scene. Police officer sings karaoke. The calm teacher finally screams at the class. Superman wakes up afraid of heights. Test it out!
Writing Your Book
Advice for First-Time Authors: Fight off Imposter Syndrome with Authenticity
The title "author" carries a certain prestige to it. You instantly picture the streets of Oxford or London. There's a wise old author smoking a pipe, drinking a pint, writing a literary classic on a typewriter.
So when first-time authors get started on their book, it's natural to suffer from a bit of "imposter syndrome." The core doubts: Who am I to write a book? Who's gonna read what I have to say? I'm not a famous author, I'm just... me.
In this post, we offer advice on overcoming this unique form of Imposter Syndrome and how the secret weapon is less about chasing success and more about writing as "just me."
Revising Your Book
As we continue to build a professional network of editors, artists, and book designers to help authors start and finish their "long overdue" books, we are absolutely thrilled to add Adina Edelman to our team. Adina launched her editing business, Edelman Edits, and is a master at helping authors go from first/second draft to final manuscript. She helps authors with the big picture but also the super granular, sentence-level grammar edits.
Thought we'd pass the keyboard over to Adina for some editing advice on a pesky grammar situation.
Period inside or outside the parenthesis?
(I like Reese's).
OR
(I like Reese's.)
Period inside or outside the parentheses? 🤔
Here's the simple answer:
If the parentheses is embedded in a sentence, the period goes outside.
👉 Everyone has their favorite chocolate (like Reese's).
If the parentheses stands as its own sentence, the period goes inside.
👉 Everyone has their favorite chocolate. (I like Reese's.)
In short: if there's a period before the ( , then the next period is inside.
You can follow Adina on LinkedIn or search #miningthemessage for more tips and tricks.
Also, more news to come very soon about a new service from Long Overdue called "Final Draft." Cliffhanger ending for now, but stay tuned!
Publishing Your Book
Self-Publishing: How many books should I expect to sell?
We tried our best to write a post on this topic that doesn't end with, "Well, it all depends."
Here are some things to think about and realistic expectations as a first-time self-published author. We also share our vision for how self-publishing and traditional publishing can continue to work together in the future and become like a publishing version of Shark Tank.
"I'm not sure about this Imposter Syndrome stuff.
I've been living as a human for 5 years
and it's working out just fine."
- Crash, Team Dog
The best place to keep up with all things Long Overdue is via our monthly newsletter. And our Instagram page.
Also, our website - Long Overdue Books. The two-sentence summary: Long Overdue Books is a community for creating books. It's a place for authors, editors, artists, and designers to come together and move their stories from rough draft to published book.
Next newsletter - week of July 26. In the meantime, if you have any questions, ideas, stories to tell, you can reach Cal the Librarian at - library@longoverduestories.com
