Week 3 Instructions

On Tuesday mornings, I make German pancakes for my kids. There are four of them, so I double the recipe. That means every Tuesday morning, I crack a dozen eggs. I pick up each egg, tap it on the edge of the blender, dump its insides into the batter, and return the shell to the carton. Then I close up the carton and toss the whole thing into a paper grocery bag along with my used tea leaves, apple cores, and grape stems. At the end of every day one of us takes the paper bag full of food scraps to the compost bin. In goes the whole lot.

And that is why I always buy eggs in pressed paper cartons.

Because I love to compost.

In the summer, I will soak the egg shells in a half gallon jar to pour onto my tomato plants. When my hydrangeas are looking washed out, I will crush up the eggs shells and toss them onto the base of the plant.

Because it all counts. Avocado pits, broccoli stems, carrot tops, and apple cores. They are tomorrow’s black gold.

Writers are like human compost bins. It all counts. Every experience enriches your writing. Dump it all in! Those failed singing lessons? Perfect. Waiting outside the emergency vet for five hours only to be told at 1 am that they will just keep the dog over night? Amazing! Walking through crunchy leaves on an autumn afternoon! Best yet!

You just have to collect it all. Train yourself to pay attention to everything. Don’t throw away your experiences because they seem too mundane. Be a life sponge, so, when you sit down to write, it will come pouring out. The writing might all be terrible, but the flow will be there, and that is what we are after. Getting into the flow of writing. Again and again and again.