Minor fame part II

(Warning: even more self-absorbed than usual.)

One of my admittedly easy goals on the “minor fame” post from weeks ago was to get my name in Time Out Chicago, and this week I did, though I’m not sure if it counts: it’s a listing for an event I’m reading at, and I did the publicity for the event. (Which includes listings in Time Out, the Reader, Gapers Block, and flyers a few places.)

It’s a zine reading this Sat., June 4, at MoJoe’s Café Lounge at Roscoe and Oakley, 7:30 p.m. I should be finishing up writing the piece I’m reading there (something new, not more disturbing zine excerpts), but I felt like adding a few things I forgot when I wrote that “minor fame” post:

(Of COURSE writing and publishing [and self-publishing] aren’t supposed to be about fame [or minor fame] or therapy or self-esteem or making friends, but about creating art that speaks to people, tells the truth, makes people think, etc., and I want to do all that, but I can’t deny that I’m also trying to compensate for a lot of bleak lonely years in my life, and getting my writing out there has helped things be a little less bleak and lonely.)

*I’d like to be mentioned in other peoples’ blogs, either for my blog or for my other writing
*I’d love for a writer (or musician or artist, etc.) to name me as someone they’re “reading right now” or “someone to watch” or whatever
*I really want to be a cover story in New City and/or the Reader someday. For what, I’m not quite sure. (I got nearly a whole page in Section One of the Reader in Nov. 2000, but that wasn’t for my writing or art.)
*I’d love to turn up as a character, however minor, in someone’s else’s writing
*And, of course, let’s not forget the ultimate dream, inclusion in the someday inevitable “Girls of Self-Publishing” feature in Playboy.

(You know I’m kidding there, I hope. I mean, I’d have to lose a lot of weight first…)

I forgot to include, in my plans, the idea of writing for Web sites (other than this blog and the other sites I’m planning)--getting pieces on Web magazines, literary sites. So I’ll add that to the very long list of goals…

And since I wrote that first list, I’ve been hit with the urge I thought I’d never have…to write fiction. Maybe for now fiction that’s the thinnest of thinly veiled nonfiction ever, but still. It’s a startling new feeling.