A dear friend of mine called this the quintessential picture of me: holding onto a baby*, studying the world and reluctant to be photographed.

Touché. 

Yes, I study the world and its people. I enjoy reading science fiction and fantasy, but I don’t write in either genre. Nuanced human relationships are sufficiently intriguing to keep me writing for the rest of my life. Every character has a story; it’s my job to find it. And what a great job it is!

During the last fifteen months, I have worked on one primary project and two secondaries. Now that my first manuscript is complete, I am equally passionate about the other two. 

A contemporary novel about a mother’s grief, or an edgy YA novel about assuming a new identity? I just can’t decide. I’m sure to finish both, and piece together the hundreds of ideas in the queue, but it feels a bit like Sophie’s choice.

No, it’s not that dramatic. It’s more like that personality trait Jack Kerouac craved: desirous of everything at the same time. I am that person, where writing is concerned.

Right now, I want to work on everything at once. And I hope this inspiration makes for a very productive summer.


*Note the velcro baby in my picture in the sidebar. Yes, she’s always there.

I’m evaluating my *other* writing projects right now, and realizing I write about mothers constantly. Probably because I’m so deep into the nurturing phase that is early childhood, I am studying the mother-child relationship from all angles.

Recently, I realized something stunning and beautiful. (Before I share it, you should know that I have a brilliant and funny husband, and our marriage is one of the good ones. This will help you calibrate the intimacy in my life.)

Here it is: The relationship between mothers and young children, particularly nurslings, is the most intimate of all human relationships.

I know everything that goes into their little bodies, and I see everything that comes out. I know how much sleep they get, and whether the sleep was good. They have preferences and favorites and foods they absolutely will not eat, and I have to know it all. If my husband expected these things of me, I would go berserk.

For these short years, as my helpless newborns grow into schoolgirls, I am still a part of them. We are sharing our lives in a very intimate way. There is love, yes, but there is feeding and cleaning and teaching and explaining and helping them understand that life is not fair. My heart broke yesterday when 2008 asked me why some people hit. There is heartbreak and there is joy. 

There are also French kisses, because my baby thinks licking other people’s teeth is hilarious.

Beneath it all, there there also is a slow process of moving further and further from each other. 2008 has started having preschool experiences that I do not share. 2010 has started remembering her dreams, which gives her some mental privacy. They are carving out pieces of the world for themselves, and it is amazing.

As I work on this YA manuscript, I've been thinking about how teenaged love is different than, say, love in my mid-30s.

Here's what I've come up with: love in high school is just tough. First off, it is not a level playing field: some people are lip virgins, and others aren't virgins in any sense of the word. And for the former, there's so much scary territory that is simultaneously tempting and utterly terrifying.

What's more, you've known most of your classmates forever, and it's hard to imagine dating John [last name redacted] who walked out of the kindergarten bathroom with his pants down, or Timmy [last name redacted] who vomited all over his grade school desk, or Chad [last name redacted] who called me "dream boat" starting in the third grade.

Those boys knew (many of) my secrets and had seen me at my absolute worst. We were like extended family, and no one wants to date their pimply cousin whose mother is constantly imploring him to wipe after a bowel movement.

For the past two weeks, my brain has been basking in (mostly cringe-worthy) memories of high school. The letters from friends and notes from boyfriends (oh yes, I kept them. ALL.) are very helpful, and I'm injecting some of my own angst into my protagonist.

He's a boy, though, so it's a little different. We're embarking into this virgin territory together.

--Making more tea
--Finding snacks
--Checking the baby monitor
--Researching a new cookie
--Managing logistics for a book club brunch
--Googling for recipes
--Updating the blog
--Going down Wikipedia's rabbit hole (cookies, again)
--Turning up the heat
--Turning down the heat
--Emailing Sarah Quigley
--Ordering pool passes
--Paying preschool bill
--Researching preschools for autumn
--Trying to decide whether Oil Baby is a girl or boy
--Updating "writing resource" spreadsheets
--Checking to see what kind of rubbish a former friend is spewing on Mommy websites
--Talking about writing
--Rejiggering the upstairs stereo system
--Refreshing Vienna
--Watching high schoolers walk from the bus stop, 30 feet apart, and enter houses adjacent to each other

If that were my to-do list for the day, however, I would be kicking ass and taking names.

I am a stickler for rules, particularly those governing language, syntax and the written word.  For many years, I pored over new editions of the AP Style Book and Chicago Manual of Style.

But sometime between my early 20s and this week, rules changed without my notice:  now only one space is required between sentences. . .and none between ellipses' periods.  This is disturbing news.

What's more, that I'm doing it wrong makes me feel old.  Kids these days (yes, I said it!) use only one space.  Even 20-somethings use just the one.  Yes, I learned to type on a typewriter.  (Thank you, Miss Marto.)

I find this habit nearly impossible to break.

I am notoriously stubborn about language.  I note a distinct difference between nauseated and nauseous.  I know no one can give more than 100 percent effort at his job.  I refuse to use transition as a verb.  I refuse to use impact as a verb, except in cases of one object physically crashing into another, and I will never suggest that someone insert himself into a situation. 

But this, I can do.

When my current manuscript is complete, I will do a huge search-and-replace for double spaces.  Then they will disappear from my computer forever.  That means I have about six months to get it right on the blog, too. 

Wish me luck.

Like most families, mine has a lot of crazy.

My mother's sister, whom we actually refer to as Crazy Aunt [Martha] is growing less crazy as she ages.  Or perhaps I'm understanding her better as I age. 

For as long as I can remember, Crazy Aunt Martha has tucked notes to herself among her Christmas decorations.  Her notes simmered (decayed?) for about eleven months until it was time to deck the halls anew.  As I helped her unwrap ancient ornaments or her awesome Lionel train set (which just fit the edges of her tree skirt, mind,) she always snatched from me the note she'd written to herself nearly eleven months prior.

I do that now.  The writing, not the snatching.  My kids can't read yet, and 1977 doesn't do decorations.

I have no idea what Crazy Aunt Martha wrote about--broken bulbs or hidden treasures or grocery lists or a great date--and I don't really care.  Most of her notes were written in Sharpie on paper towels.  I use stationery and envelopes because, unlike Martha's, my house includes lots of prying eyes that enjoy excavating cardboard boxes.

I spend a lot of December thinking about what I'll write about in my letters to Future Michele.  I want to be pointed without inducing panic.  I don't try to be profound, though that would be nice.  I'm not particularly gentle with myself, so I don't want to set lofty goals whose memory will ruin my holidays when I open the envelope and confront them.

By February, I've forgotten the specifics of what I wrote (except in 2008, when it was all about baby names and plans and what kind of parents I hopes we'd be.  Oh, naive Michele-from-the-past!) and by October I'm pretty excited to read what I wrote.

This year, for the first time, I included advice. 

Is offering unsolicited advice to one's future self crazy?

I do most of my writing while sitting on my sofa.  On the opposite wall hangs a small oil painting I received on my fifth anniversary.  The painting is of a small child--a toddler, probably--at the nape of his mother's neck.   I love this painting.  Love it.

So much of my writing is about young children and mothers, because that's where I am in life.  Young (or not so young) mothers and very young children fill my mornings and days.  I love this time of life.

I think most Bacon families refer to their little ones as Bits.  It's cute, right?  When our children were hypothetical, we referred to them as the Bits too.  Then we got pregnant, and each child earned her own little nickname, and now they each have several. 

Here, though, I don't want to use new nicknames, even cutesy ones referring to other portions of the swine.  Neither one is a ham.  My husband would be, what?  The spare rib?  (Get it?  I sometimes think I'm hilarious, you know.)  Maybe a subsequent baby could be the rump instead of caboose, but nothing else really fits.

For now, since I love numbers, I'll refer to my family by birthdate, 2008 and 2010 for the girls and 1977 for my spouse.  I can't really preserve my own anonymity here, but since you asked, I was born in 1975.

Anyone who knows me will tell you I'm obsessive.  Whether I'm focused on finding the perfect birthday present or organizing an area of the house or starting a new business, I attack projects with a singular focus.

I also am freakishly particular about maintaining lists.

It will come as no surprise, then, that when we decided to have children I maintained a spreadsheet of 2056 baby names.  (You know I'm not making up that number, because it's not prime.)  In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I'd been maintaining lists of favorite baby names since college, or perhaps high school.  Once we were ready to actually consider naming real people, I threw my lists into excel and added the most popular baby names for the past few decades.  I added a column for our last name.  (Because I like Beatrice, but Beatrice Bacon is a mouthful.)  And then I rated them.  I send my top 100 to my husband via email and he whittled the list to a couple dozen, and we worked from there.

My spouse nixed some of my favorite names:  Cecelia, Genevieve, Gretchen, Mabel, Penelope, Emmett, Felix.  I really had to let go of Nina and Vivian and Hector, and in some sense that was difficult.

The fact is, we were looking for four names, max--eight names if you include middles--and I had nearly 100 names that I liked.  That's one thing I love about writing.  I will never have my own Natalie, but two characters just chose that name for their daughter.  There's not enough space in my family (or my house!) for June, Andrew, Sophie, Molly, Violet or Tadj. . .but I have 63 Gigs free on my hard drive and I can build a new bookcase. 

What's more, names that have been ruined for me for life (Patricia!) are ideal for villains.  I love having fun with them.

Tonight I'm thinking of a dystopian novel--for women.  Most of what I write is clearly geared toward the female of the species (deadlier than the male!) but this idea is slowly taking over my brain.  I've stopped one manuscript mid-edit to focus on this crazy notion that there's a story in dystopia.  About mothers and children, of course.

I love when an idea grabs hold.  But letting it take the reins? Notsomuch.