I'm working on my novel as often as possible now. Over the weekend, Beloved and I dropped the little angel with Ma and Pa and Blondie and checked into a hotel in Omaha for some much-needed alone time. Over dinner, I told Beloved about the progress of my novel, and specifically, the high school characters.

"I think they need nicknames," he said, with the brilliance with which he'd said I needed to point out the narrator lived close enough to town to see the water tower, but not close enough to read it. "Kids -- especially boys -- rarely call each other by their given names."

I chewed on that with my sea bass, thinking how I'd never in a million years have thought of it, but it was one element of authenticity -- among many --  the rough draft is currently lacking. He's right, of course. It's a young adult novel, and I've forgotten how to be a teenager. 

So here I sit, momentarily distracting myself with this post, trying to remember what it's like to be a teenager, to live with names given me by friends that were not my own as we tried on identities like Halloween costumes.