Writer nesting

It’s coming, and soon. That second novel is ready for attention. But before I withdraw to Scrivener and stream loud music through my ear buds to muffle the sound of my children, everything needs to be just so.

Isn’t that what nesting is? That preparatory time when every nit-picky thing has to be tended to? Bookshelves aligned, desk cleared, crevasses dusted. I pulled up Scrivener yesterday, in fact, but I couldn’t focus on the words because there were eight pens strewn about my desk. And then I noticed a stack of random receipts, a box of colored pencils, eraser bits, unopened mail, a role of tape, and crumbs from the brownie I ate four days ago. ALL THIS DISTRACTION.

So I clean and organize and nest. I’ve turned in the boys’ grades for the year, pulled out school books we no longer need, and dumped my overflowing garbage. I ran a scan on the computer, redesigned this blog for simplicity, and started the long, arduous process of deleting excess raw files on my hard drive, a task that will take me weeks to accomplish.

Do y’all do this? Fiddle about before starting something big? One might call this procrastination, but it’s not an issue of avoidance. It’s about creating an environment conducive for writing. I’m easily distracted, so there’s no way I can write dialogue or sketch a workable Freytag’s Pyramid if there are pencil shavings on my desk. It’s an impossibility.

I’m not sure how long this nesting season will last. It might be a couple of days, maybe weeks. I’m embracing it because it’s the process. Professional writers often say that to be professional one must write every day. It might be a single sentence or it could be 10,000 words. If writing a novel, I would agree. When I finally begin Mallory’s story, it’s likely I’ll write every day.

Until then, I see a long orange string on the floor and I must go pick it up.