This is very much a story about what it means to have a home, and what it can feel like trying to find one. So what do you think are the functions of nests, and what made you interested in exploring them?
The story began its life as part of a larger work—one I started drafting several years ago. It’s hard to say now what motivated me then, but I am interested in how spaces within living spaces operate on more public or private levels. During my first couple of college years, I worked as a housecleaner, so of course I drew on that experience, too. And it can’t be a coincidence that I recently tackled this piece for revision at the exact moment I was helping clean out two different houses for estate sales! Over time I’ve thought about the ways houses can be fully and carefully plotted, so to speak, to communicate a life story of sorts to both residents and visitors. Others are more revealing as to the reality of life there, whether intentional or no. Writers make similar observations about different cities, small towns, workplaces, and other settings too—but for me there’s a particular contrast between public and private spaces in homes. Maybe it’s because such spaces are close together and overlap often there.
As for the functions of nests, I think first of protection, which ties into Vi’s intent for the two nests she constructs in the story, and about how nests aim to protect both occupants plus their necessities for life. Comfort is another association with the term—and while Vi has learned that a nest or house doesn’t necessarily equal a home, she works to enforce a homelike ideal in living spaces by prioritizing comfort. I think of her as a character committed to these home-spaces beyond her job, as she figures out what she can claim for herself. And she might even welcome the idea of nests as non-permanent, extending to how she thinks about homes in general, as temporary things.
For us, this story’s narrator has a strong convincing voice—it’s one of the things we like most about the piece. What advice do you have for other writers trying to create compelling voice?
Thank you for that comment! I’ve been living with Vi in my head for a while now—that’s probably the main reason for the consistency of her voice. Otherwise, as I write her, I try to think about her past experiences and how those have shaped her perspective, plus the ways that perspective is challenged by the story’s present-time events. You know, she’s understandably overwhelmed, she’s grieving, she’s a little reckless, she’s processing a lot all at once. At the same time, she’s clever and adaptable. In this story, because the main thread follows her housecleaning job, I tried to maintain some consistency between the way Vi thinks and the way she works by showing her organizing her thoughts, working them toward a resolution of sorts. I think it’s important to show her making comparisons, tying new thoughts back into things she knows, to keep the thought patterns unique to her. In revision I also like to identify speech patterns that emerge and to repeat them in different contexts, which is one of the fun things about writing in the first-person. In later revisions, I try to make sure I didn’t go overboard with that. Overall, it seems the strategy I use is to start with developing the character through their past and present personality, and then slide into playing with the language and creating patterns.
The “collector” character here is an interesting one. Unlike the other characters he remains unnamed—what led to that particular choice?
When I pulled this story out of the aforementioned larger work, I thought about naming him here, as I didn’t want to be obnoxious by not doing so. It’s kind of an easy trick, you know? In the larger work, Vi sometimes refers to him as “my collector,” as she’s in competition with her deceased brother over the relationship and claiming a kind of ownership, but there’s no space in this story for that thread. I decided to keep him nameless anyway in part because his character remains mysterious to Vi, though the challenge then was to flesh him out enough so he seems real to the reader. I don’t know that I was entirely successful there, in my mind at least, but the better reason he’s nameless is to keep the emphasis on his collecting, which ties back into a function of his home and the main thread of the story.
