Storytellersunplugged

During the last few months of pregnancy, usually around the fifth but sometimes as late as the eighth, a woman’s nesting instinct kicks in.  Some primitive switch hidden deep inside the female brain flips, and the most laid-back woman suddenly becomes Robo-maid; cleaning, rearranging, putting away, and throwing out.  Childproofing and smoothing all the rough edges of her environment.  Home becomes not just a place in which to live, eat, sleep, and watch Big Brother, but a place of warmth, safety and security for the expectant mother’s child.  Though the actual birthing is most often done in a hospital room in our developed corner of the world (and a less warm and comforting environment I cannot call to mind, except perhaps a mortuary), it wasn’t so long ago that Nesting also meant creating a comfortable, calming place to drop your little bundle of joy.

The Nesting Instinct is not unique to human women.  Rodents and rabbits will seek the lowest sheltered spot they can find in which to nest, dogs will favor an empty box, cats will find a crawlspace or the far corner beneath their favorite human’s bed, and birds, who should conceivably already have a nest, will simply refuse to leave it.

The Nesting Instinct fulfils two obvious functions; to give the mother-to-be a comfortable, homey place in which to perform the physically and emotionally stressful act of giving birth, and to give their new life a safe place in which to be born and grow strong enough, eventually, to leave.

I suspect that most women will disagree, perhaps militantly, with the comparison I’m about to make, but since I think the analogy is a good one, and because I’ve already dedicated three paragraphs to it, I’m going to carry on.  Please direct all hate mail to David Niall Wilson.  I happen to know he adores it.

I’ve heard it said more than once that writing is like giving birth, and in all but the physical sense I think it’s true.  It certainly can be painful (if only emotionally), exhilarating, frightening, and at its culmination, baring a miscarriage, one of the most satisfying experiences in the world.  It’s a long way from bringing a real life into the world, but it is something.

Like the expectant mother, the expectant author should find a comfortable place to gather their will, focus their imagination, and begin their long labor.

To the non-writer, a writer’s peculiar rituals must seem both eccentric and egocentric.  I know they do to my family and my wife.  My habit of Nesting is one I know the rest of my family just doesn’t get, which is why, I think, the garage I spent a summer converting into my writing office is now more family room than sanctuary, as much my wife’s office (probably more, considering the amount of homework she does there) as it is mine.  Consequently, as Spring’s playful glances toward this cold patch of the Pacific Northwest become longer, steadier, and the evenings are approaching a near-tropical fifty-degrees, I’m beginning to contemplate reviving my outside office, the one which saw me through my most productive writing season ever.  A few years ago, from late Spring to early Fall, I managed two novels and a few short stories in that outdoor office, which consisted of an old loveseat, its ripped upholstery covered by a demoted comforter, a small end table with an AM/FM radio, and my laptop.  Under the cover of the back patio roof, and still too close to the high traffic back door, I managed to make myself a fantastic nest.

I doubt if I’m unique in my preference for the outdoor nest, but I’m willing to bet I’m in the minority.  The majority of writers who have described their nests to me paint a quaint picture of the quiet, dark room, seldom, of ever, visited by friends and family; a solitary place reflecting the inhabiting writer’s tastes.  A place where the laboring artist can work in mostly uninterrupted peace.

Sounds nice, but alas, such has not been my experience. 

It is possible to work without the benefit of the private space and closed door, but (once again, this is only my experience) having to work this way isn’t ideal, and anyone unwise enough to rouse me from my work is likely to experience the occasional, grumpy outburst.  I’ve seen laboring cats do the same thing to a person unwise enough to poke their faces in too close to a dark, under-bed nest.  Having been dragged up from my creative doze more than once to find a curious face hovering over my shoulder, I have to say I sympathize with the cat.

If the private room behind a closed door is simply not a possibility, you must at least try to find some other comfortable place, and do your best to convince the non-writers you cohabitate with to respect that space, at least when you happen to be occupying it.  If you are going to be productive, you’ll have to convince them to respect you enough to give you some privacy while you give birth to your new masterpiece.  Unfortunately, this might necessitate the occasional scratch or bite (metaphorically speaking, of course – actually biting your significant other falls well beyond the range of acceptable eccentricity), but if that’s what it takes to convince them you’re serious, and if they are going to be persistent enough in their disruptions to warrant such action, you’ll just have to bare your teeth and do it. 

It beats the alternative.  I’ve been desperate for privacy in my time, but never desperate enough to set up office in my dirt-floored crawl-space.  Hopefully, I never will.

Brian Knight