Insomnia at Child Pageant in Nowhere New York

This is from blog.penelopetrunk.com

I just spent about 2 hours reading Penelope Trunk‘s blog.  I woke up at 1:00 (really 2:00), and now it’s 3:30 (really 4:30), and thank god because after I get this burning need to tell all you good people about this amazing sleep interruption out of me, I will still be able to get some sleep before I have to get up to go watch the crowning at Angel Face Pageants in Owego, New York.  Penelope is my new girl crush.  I mean major.  I think I would probably have difficulty forming sentences if I met her.

Social Networking is hard but worth it.

Here’s the back story:  All 20 of you know that I am working my face off to rock this self-employment thing.  This blog represents me and my business (badly, I just learned, or at least not optimally), so in addition to pursuing clients & writing work, I have been following people on Twitter and tweeting and reading Copy Blogger, and The Wealthy Freelancer sends me its free webinars, and I’m doing all these “right” things.

So after my super lucky guest post on Jane Friedman’s Blog, this lovely woman, Jamie Chavez, linked me to a post about her son learning to really love reading after sixth grade.  And Jamie and I, kindred spirits I think, have been exchanging emails.  She pointed me to Penelope’s blog.

What I love about Penelope

1. Everything.  No, really.  She is brilliant and funny and thoughtful and deep and good at life and all the things I want to be publicly.  Now, only you 20 people know this about me, and mostly because you know me personally, not because you read my blog.
2. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, which means that she probably stands on the same tile floor Lorrie Moore stands on to order coffee, at least sometimes.  Maybe they shop at the same Trader Joe’s.
3. She started out writing fiction with sex in it.  I did that, too.
4. She is a mom.
5. She makes a pile of money writing.
6. She has an MFA, but doesn’t talk about it.
7. She has this rare ability to make vulnerability and shitty life moments readable, engaging, without even a sliver of self-pity.
8. She is frank.
9. She lives on a farm.

What I hate about Penelope

• She told me I have to focus.

She’s right.  I know she is.  But here are the things I get excited about writing about:  writing, books, being a mom, movies, TV, child pageants (at least for a week), my life as a rock star, beer, vacations, cooking, eating, dreaming, fictions/stories.  Go.  Look at my archives.  They’re nuts.  I seem like an insane person.

Here are the things people read:  Anything with Dead Babies in the title, anything with the words penis, vagina, or sex in the body, my posts about writing, humorous anecdotes about me and/or my kid.

Diagnosis after Penelope Therapy

I need better titles.

I need to keep on keeping on.  Not that there was any doubt.

I need a clever euphemism for my domestic partner, like The Farmer, but different.  I learned that, too, recently from my domestic partner, he has difficulty with my writing openly on the internet about our life.  He is a private guy.  But Penelope tells me that if I’m funnier about it, it might work better for me.  I doubt that’s true in my case, but I’ll give it a whirl.

I need to be more artful about linking.