Do Writers Nest?

Buzz Lightyear helps find the answer.

A week or so ago, I exchanged texts with my stepdaughter, Shannon. She’s expecting her first baby within the next ten days.

Me: Your grandmother had furiously nested right before giving birth to each of her four children.

Shannon: I wish I’d get that nesting urge. My house is dirty and all I want to do is lie on the couch.

Me: Then for sure you will know when you’re nesting.

Shannon: People talk about cleaning their cleaning supplies and I’m like, “I’m don’t even remember where our cleaning supplies are.”

We’re all keeping watch on her nesting situation, while I consider my own habits at work: “Do writers nest?”

I’ve written two memoirs, hundreds of blog posts, and countless freelance articles. And had yet to attempt a work of fiction. Last week, I completed major revisions on my first novel. At this stage, it’s ready for my editor, my husband, my writing partner, and a few readers to review and provide feedback.

On the same day I completed that monumental—for me—feat, something else occurred.

I waded deep into the bowels of my office space (a place unsafe for any non-writer), searching for a folder pertaining to another project. Unable to find it, I grabbed a chair, climbed onto the seat, and sorted through the closet contents beginning with the top shelf, making my way down rung by rung, while frisbeeing old files across the room and shredding a manila folder full of medical bills from when I was hit by car (the folder jokingly titled, I’ll Be in the Crosswalk, similar to my first two memoirs of I’ll Be in the Car and I’ll Have Some of Yours, completing the I’ll trilogy).

My arms swept along a few volumes of half-started journaling misfires and old tax folders. Those were tossed to the side too.

I stopped to survey the landscape of my writing life, the detritus of hundreds of hours of work, the branches that had created this tree of writing under which I now sat. I asked myself, I am nesting?

The answer was, “Yes.”

A long time ago, one of my mentors, Kathy Wade, taught me the phrase, “I don’t have space for that in my life.” She used it to kindly say “no” to things she didn’t want to do or didn’t have the time to attend to.

It’s also an appropriate phrase in recognizing the opposite. How we need to make space in our writing life for what’s next. For me, ditching a few memoir projects is the cost to pay for penning a new chapter as fiction writer.

Over the course of two years of Covid, after I stopped fretting about my cancelled book tour, I stepped up my writing output through more freelance work (read about the process here ) or submissions to creative writing or Italian Americana journals. I wanted to expand my reader base beyond the traditional eyeballs. Time to move beyond what my friend, Pauletta Hansel, once wrote about in First Person, “My friends are writing in third person now…/ I am stuck with myself.” Pauletta has since been named Cincinnati’s Poet Laureate and Writer-in-Residence for Greater Cincinnati. She should know something about point-of-view.

We do still like “I” stories. Here I am, giving readers one now.

The writerly shifts in our lives are like winds that blow across Lake Erie: fierce, cold, abrupt, and sometimes snowy.  A query to publish my first memoir was once received by the famed (but unknown to me at the time) editor, Gerry Howard. He wrote me a rejection letter I didn’t know to save. In it, he suggested, “I found myself wanting more from this story.” In the end, I did too.

The second shift occurred when the book tour didn’t happen (see above). In which I grappled with, “Am I a writer if I’m not out in the world being one?”

For many, these shifts are about writing or publishing books, possibly adding author to their byline on Instagram. For me, it was something more. I wasn’t creating content. I was creating a life.

A new stage has presented itself on my path. I didn’t arrive there without uttering the line, “I don’t have the space for this in my life,” temporarily forgoing non-profit board commitments, and few teaching opportunities, reducing volunteer shifts for food rescue and a social outing or two. A certain carving off the fat from the turkey roast. To create a fictional world, a place where I can make my characters say or do anything they want—in third person—without worrying about what someone else might think or wonder is it true enough. To do so, after time devoted to remembering a nonfictional life, to increasing my literary citizenship, to improving my craft.

I can finally play.

At the post office a few weeks ago, I didn’t hesitate when given the option of stamp themes: Christmas, floral—or Buzz Lightyear. Every time I add a stamp to an envelope, my voice lower’s to Buzz’s range, and I say, “To infinity and beyond.” There’s some synchronicity in how a Toy Story character now carries me forward in my fictional work.

Nesting for writers is not just about the spurts of energy, the rash of work, the pursuit of tidiness, or buying supplies.

It’s about clearing a space—maybe an outer space—to go “beyond.”

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One cannot nest all the time. Here are a few upcoming workshops to help make space in your creative or writing life:

NEW: Revise, Rest, Repeat - A three-part REVISION workshop. Do you have a work of fiction or nonfiction ready for a little touch of criticism—by it’s author? It’s time to double down on your commitment to advance its cause. My colleague, Tina Neyer, and I will be offering this three-part workshop at Newport Roebling Point Books, in partnership with Women Writing for (a) Change. Link here for details.

Nic Swartsell, news director at WVXU, gathered essays from writers across the city who put their pen to thoughts and observations about neighborhoods in the Greater Cincinnati region. I’ve got a contribution to this impressive tome, regarding East Westwood, a lesser-known, but no-less-significant neighborhood on the westside. Book signing kickoff happens December 6th, at the Mercantile Library. Or get your copy here.

Just in time for additional consideration of publishing and your work, Pauletta Hansel has written her last blog post as Writer-in-Residence with tips from local writers on publishing, editing, and keeping yourself sane.

Giving Voice Foundation’s Caring for the Caregiver Writing Experiences continues in 2023. Dates are: February 16, May 16, August 1, November 8. Email: breannawilliams@55North.org for more information.

Creative Nonfiction published Finding Your Public Voice, culled from several lectures I’ve given over the past few years. Perhaps you too will find your theme, your throughline, in this piece.

I’m considering attendance at the annual Association of Writing Professionals this March in Seattle. Little is required to entice me to attend a conference in my beloved Pacific Northwest.

Finally, me and my Buzz stamps will be waiting for feedback on the novel from my editor and my husband (not one in the same), while I return to my culinary memoir with stories from our family’s Italian-American table. There’s a little essay I’m working on about basements for that collection. Time to give it the light of day.

I’m curious, do you have any writerly nesting habits of your own? Please share below. And as always, thanks for reading!