How Composing is Really Decomposing

The thing about good writing is that how it ends up is NEVER how it started! I have now erased and restarted this post three times! To get to a good product, you gotta get messy. That is why I teach my class that the composition process is really a decomposition process. The first draft is like the compost heap with fresh stuff in it–banana peels, coffee grounds, wilted lettuce. All the pieces seem to have nothing to do with each other. But the longer they hang out together and nature (or your mind) works on them, the more these separate things start to get connected. And you end up with a really rich, uniform product you could bag and sell if you wanted!

It seems to me that blogs allow us to compost with other people. While I am pulling in random ideas and sites and images and commenting on them, I am putting them in this compost heap. It isn’t going to be pretty and connected and uniform, but it is going to be very rich and productive. Other kinds of finshed products might come out of it eventually, but for now I want to just be doing the process part. If I don’t have good scraps and organic bits to toss in my pile, I’m never going to have a good product. So toss some stuff in! Comment, link, whatever!