So tomorrow I'm going to a writer's conference here in Kansas City.  It's for the Missouri Writer's Guild.  We're going to write about deer and moonshine.  No, just kidding, though I know, I KNOW that's what some of you on the coasts think we are all about here in the flyover states.  See?  I caught you.

Actually, I have a fifteen-minute pitch with a fancy-pants NYC agent who will probably wear black, sniff disgustedly down her hipper-than-thou glasses at me, and reaffirm my deepest-held conviction that my writing does actually suck.  However, I've spent hours upon hours upon hours on my proposal and have some really, really, REALLY cool people working on the project with me, so I'm hoping at the very least to get some decent feedback I can then use to target the superstar agent who will catapault me and mine to fame in two years or fewer.

Hey, baby, everyone's got a dream. Wish me luck!

You may have noticed my new warning flag in the left sidebar.  Yesterday I was part of an interesting dialogue concerning freedom of speech and writer's rights. 

We who blog put forth our words for free in the hopes that they will make people we don't know snort Diet Coke out of their noses, or for cathartic purposes, or maybe even because we don't have anyone else to talk to at that exact point of the day.  That said, we still don't want anyone else to take our words and mess with them, even if it's done in the name of new and delicious traffic for us.

Hence the age-old question - which is better, fame or fortune?  Is it better to have additional traffic and become more well-known even if people do not pay you for your writing?  Or is it better to retain the movie rights for your story about your Nuvaring?  I'm being a little tongue-and-cheek here, but it is an important question to ask, and one that is coming to the forefront as mainstream media starts looking to bloggers for material.

The other side of this conversation, and the one that the flag addresses, is the idea of self-censorship in order to appeal more to mainstream media.  For instance, I doubt highly mainstream media would appreciate my frequent use of the f-bomb.  It's not so appropriate when you're owned by a conglomerate.  It's not really appropriate in the workplace, either, and that's why I channel all of my hostility and repressed curse words into my blog...it's the one place I can swear like a sailor and not fear the judgment of the daycare workers or the vice president of my department.  My blog is my house, and I'll do whatever I want in my house.  Even walk around naked.

But yet...I want the traffic.  I want to be heard.  I want my words to be in the world.  I'll admit...I even want to be famous.  I think every writer does - otherwise why would we be vain enough to think that other people care what we have to say? So yes, I do want the syndication. I do want the traffic. I just have to ask myself at what price will I get it.  That's a hard question, and I admit one I've never really thought about before, chiefly because these opportunities for normal people to get significant readership have only come about since the advent of the Internet.  And until blogs, most web pages were more about cool design (which I don't know how to do) than they were about writing. My blog, in some way, has been a dream come true - an opportunity to get people in North Carolina (yeah, I saw you in my statcounter, dawg) that I don't even know to read about the little angel's adventures in Toddler High.  Or my own fears about reproduction.  Or my thoughts on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, or our president, or the mental state of my composition students.  I suddenly can have an active dialogue with fifteen women from all over the country that I've never physically met about the word "fuck."

And that, Internet, is what it's all about.  Opening up the dialogue.  Expanding your social circle. 

Feeling heard.

*****Updated to add...

For more on this topic, check out Jenn Satterwhite's post on BlogHer.

Hi.  I'd like to direct your attention to the link below that lovely photo of the little angel in the left navigation bar of this blog.  See that survey link?  Tempted, aren't you?  You know you want to click on it.

Here's the gig:  I've been invited to join the BlogHer advertising co-op, and they would like to learn a little more about you so that we can get all sorts of hipster cool ads instead of that one with the Kewpie doll that says it's not even the weirdest thing they found in their mom's closet, or some other equally bizarre thing.  Also, if the ads do well, I'll eventually make money and can quit my stupid job working for the man.  Okay, I probably won't do THAT well, but everyone's got to have a dream, right?

As a reward for taking the survey (which I KNOW you will do), I will now present you with a list of all the jobs I have had, so that you will understand my deep and underlying need for alternative sources of income.  They are in chronological order, starting in high school:

1. concession stand attendee at the pool
2. professional gift wrapper at the mall
3. chick who takes photos of kids sitting on the Easter Bunny's lap
4. waitress at a dog track
5. waitress a gazillion other places
6. telemarketer
7. public relations assistant account executive (professional faxer)
8. public relations account executive (media whore)
9. temp/secretary
10. technical recruiter
11. content director for a marketing website
12. web director (28 days) for a nonprofit that I bet you've given money to
13. information architect for an advertising agency (see #8)
14. usability consultant
15. freelance writer
16. sr. product manager - corporate
17. sr. product manager - small start-up
18. adjunct professor of English
19. wife to sports fan
20. Mommy

See?  And I'm not even going to tell you like everyone else that I hate the ads. I don't hate them. I've worked in advertising. I do prefer pretty ones, though, so tell them who you are, yo.

Before I begin today's rant, a few random notes:

• Lest anyone think I am a horrible person who runs over cleaning ladies' plastic cars with no remorse, I did send my cleaning lady flowers yesterday afternoon. I haven't heard the verdict yet, but I do feel terrible about crunching her car with my apparently indestructible Explorer bumper.
• Little angel sleeping status update:  Well, let's just say I've ended up on her floor every night this week, but she has made startling progress in the "ability to fall back to sleep in her own bed with no cuddling" category.  She is going back to sleep in an average of ten minutes.  And that, my friends, is a victory in and of itself.  Next challenge:  NOT WAKING UP.
• I have registered for BlogHer!  I'm going with Jane and Cagey.  Terribly excited. 

Okay, on to the ranting.

What's up with this wah-wah over James Frey?  First, they decide his memoir is full of shit.  Then, Oprah calls in to Larry King and says, "Blah, blah, I'm Oprah and I say it's okay so shut up, American public."  Then the American public writes her a bunch of nasty e-mails, saying she has no heart and why doesn't she start clubbing with Martha Stewart already, and Oprah freaks out and grills old James on her show like she was Barbara Walters' evil twin.

My thoughts:

• "Memoir" is a loose term.  Anyone who has ever dabbled in creative writing knows that fiction is truth and truth is fiction.  It's called "poetic license."  I don't care who you are and what you saw - you will remember the EXACT SAME THING differently than another person who was there.  Yes, fabricating a story about having dental surgery without Novocain is probably stretching the limits of poetic license, but the whole "a memoir should be fact-checked" thing is going overboard, in my opinion. 

• "Truth" and "fiction" are relative.  Does everything I blog about actually happen?  Yes.  Do we say the EXACT SAME WORDS that I write?  Most of the time.  But sometimes, yes, it's true - sometimes writers remember things as they wish they happened, or in a wittier way than they actually did happen.  If we all sat around and wrote about our trip the grocery store exactly as it was, nobody would read it. (Well, I don't know if anyone reads it or not - TypePad stats have been down for a day and most of the people who come here were looking to buy ruby slippers on the cheap, but anyway, point still valid.)

• Good writing is good writing.  I read in that Yahoo story I linked to earlier in this post (for those of you unaware - they faintly gray words in my posts are links - I wish they would use a different color) that they are also now attacking Augusten Burroughs, who wrote Running with Scissors.  It's a book about a guy whose mother lets him live with her shrink and their insane family.  Was it all true?  Dude, if it is, it's amazing this guy is still alive.  Do you wonder if it's really true that a 13-year-old kid has an affair with a 30-year-old guy and nobody seems to think anything of it?  I'm thinking statutory rape, child molestation and some other nasty thoughts, but the way Burroughs writes it, it's easy to accept as feasible, if not morally correct.  The fact is that Burroughs is an amazing writer, a good storyteller, and for that, we should all read his book.  I haven't read his others, nor have I read Frey's, so I'll reserve judgment on those.  My point here is that people should read books because the storyteller is worth his weight in ink and royalties, not because they won't touch the pages unless they've been fact checked.

• Fact checking is for journalists. I was terribly disappointed in the Dan Rather debacle.  I don't believe in sensationalizing basic news stories, especially health stories designed to scare the shit out of America.  I especially think we need to be truthful in the areas of war (damn you to hell, W), children, health and heroism.  But if we fudge a little in the area of mainstream books, an area where adults have a choice as to what to read, not what they are depending on for a truthful and constitutionally  protected, unbiased view of the world, then let the reader beware.  Who is going around basing their lives on people's memoirs, anyway?  So different from deciding whether or not a drug is safe to give Grandma based on the latest reports in a medical journal.  SO DIFFERENT.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox now.  But I just couldn't handle it anymore.

Before I begin today's rant, a few random notes:

• Lest anyone think I am a horrible person who runs over cleaning ladies' plastic cars with no remorse, I did send my cleaning lady flowers yesterday afternoon. I haven't heard the verdict yet, but I do feel terrible about crunching her car with my apparently indestructible Explorer bumper.
• Little angel sleeping status update:  Well, let's just say I've ended up on her floor every night this week, but she has made startling progress in the "ability to fall back to sleep in her own bed with no cuddling" category.  She is going back to sleep in an average of ten minutes.  And that, my friends, is a victory in and of itself.  Next challenge:  NOT WAKING UP.
• I have registered for BlogHer!  I'm going with Jane and Cagey.  Terribly excited. 

Okay, on to the ranting.

What's up with this wah-wah over James Frey?  First, they decide his memoir is full of shit.  Then, Oprah calls in to Larry King and says, "Blah, blah, I'm Oprah and I say it's okay so shut up, American public."  Then the American public writes her a bunch of nasty e-mails, saying she has no heart and why doesn't she start clubbing with Martha Stewart already, and Oprah freaks out and grills old James on her show like she was Barbara Walters' evil twin.

My thoughts:

• "Memoir" is a loose term.  Anyone who has ever dabbled in creative writing knows that fiction is truth and truth is fiction.  It's called "poetic license."  I don't care who you are and what you saw - you will remember the EXACT SAME THING differently than another person who was there.  Yes, fabricating a story about having dental surgery without Novocain is probably stretching the limits of poetic license, but the whole "a memoir should be fact-checked" thing is going overboard, in my opinion. 

• "Truth" and "fiction" are relative.  Does everything I blog about actually happen?  Yes.  Do we say the EXACT SAME WORDS that I write?  Most of the time.  But sometimes, yes, it's true - sometimes writers remember things as they wish they happened, or in a wittier way than they actually did happen.  If we all sat around and wrote about our trip the grocery store exactly as it was, nobody would read it. (Well, I don't know if anyone reads it or not - TypePad stats have been down for a day and most of the people who come here were looking to buy ruby slippers on the cheap, but anyway, point still valid.)

• Good writing is good writing.  I read in that Yahoo story I linked to earlier in this post (for those of you unaware - they faintly gray words in my posts are links - I wish they would use a different color) that they are also now attacking Augusten Burroughs, who wrote Running with Scissors.  It's a book about a guy whose mother lets him live with her shrink and their insane family.  Was it all true?  Dude, if it is, it's amazing this guy is still alive.  Do you wonder if it's really true that a 13-year-old kid has an affair with a 30-year-old guy and nobody seems to think anything of it?  I'm thinking statutory rape, child molestation and some other nasty thoughts, but the way Burroughs writes it, it's easy to accept as feasible, if not morally correct.  The fact is that Burroughs is an amazing writer, a good storyteller, and for that, we should all read his book.  I haven't read his others, nor have I read Frey's, so I'll reserve judgment on those.  My point here is that people should read books because the storyteller is worth his weight in ink and royalties, not because they won't touch the pages unless they've been fact checked.

• Fact checking is for journalists. I was terribly disappointed in the Dan Rather debacle.  I don't believe in sensationalizing basic news stories, especially health stories designed to scare the shit out of America.  I especially think we need to be truthful in the areas of war (damn you to hell, W), children, health and heroism.  But if we fudge a little in the area of mainstream books, an area where adults have a choice as to what to read, not what they are depending on for a truthful and constitutionally  protected, unbiased view of the world, then let the reader beware.  Who is going around basing their lives on people's memoirs, anyway?  So different from deciding whether or not a drug is safe to give Grandma based on the latest reports in a medical journal.  SO DIFFERENT.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox now.  But I just couldn't handle it anymore.