Day 1

Hello!

I’m glad you are here. I read a quote that caused me to stop and think.

Giving yourself permission to write garbage is like having a compost pile in the backyard.  It might smell a little and even look yucky, but it provides a fertile environment for some great stuff to grow.  – Henriette Anne Klauser

Several years ago, I talked Scott into buying me a composting box from Sam’s. Not too much before that, I had talked him into buying rain barrels for the downspouts of our house. I had big dreams. I was going to have a garden and grow our own food. We had plenty of land and space. I would fertilize the soil with our compost pile and water the garden with water I collected from the rain barrels. I would leave a small footprint here on earth.

As the summer passed, the garden grew more weeds than vegetables. Getting the water from the rain barrels was much more difficult and time consuming than just pulling the hose over. And the compost pile, it never produced the good-smelling dirt I dreamed of.

My writer’s notebook is a lot like my compost pile. It is full of garbage-remnants of conversations, scraps of memories, fragmented thoughts. I try to write every day. What I dream of writing in my notebook, is not what comes out across the page. I must sift through my notebook, looking for the remnants, scraps, and fragments. When I find one, I hold it up for closer inspection. I let the light shift the dust off, I twist it and turn it, trying to get a better view. Once I see it through new eyes, then I can tackle writing what I see. But to do that, I must “resee”. And to “resee”, I must have something to see in the first place.

It is not important what comes out in this summer writing project of ours–only that something comes out. We are not writing to write gems every time we sit down to write.

We are writing to find our voice.

We are writing to hear the sound of our voice above the sounds and cries of others.

We are writing because we can.