Composting

A couple of days ago, I wrote a post questioning what a blog was for and why I was writing this blog, beyond the obvious. Well, I have since come up with an answer which, whilst it doesn’t answer what a blog is, does answer why I write this one to my own satisfaction – which is good enough for me. :)

As some of you know, I am serial journal keeper and some-time writer of fantasy stories. I really enjoy writing and the buzz that creativity gives me has no equal! I’ve never been published, have very little hope of ever being so, and in fact haven’t completed a story since I lived in Melbourne, but I have been writing my thoughts down in books of various hefts for as long as I have been able to write. I wrote a couple of complete stories in primary school between the ages of 8 and 12 that I vaguely remember, but writing didn’t actually become a regular part of my life until 1989, when my grade 9 English teacher insisted that her class keep a journal. Thank you Mrs Fisher. I have become addicted. Writing is now a compulsion for me and as necessary to my health as eating or breathing. I don’t doubt I would have tried to do something drastic to terminate my existence or become addicted to some of the more unsavoury activities available to us in high school if I hadn’t had an outlet in which to vent my angst and teenage depression.

For you see, I can’t stop thinking about things. I obsess over so much; how work is going, how home is going, how friends and relationships are going, how the government and the environment and the planet are going, in short, how life is going. But it is not just things in this reality that revolve around in my head, but also stories that endlessly repeat themselves; I imagine a spiralling series of events happening to various characters in ever increasing iterations with minute changes to cast or settings… and these thoughts won’t leave me alone…until they are out on the paper in black and white.

Oh how wonderful was the day that I discovered that if I write down what’s in my head then I don’t have to think about it any more!! And when I do, I find both my sanity and sense of proportion return and I feel immediately at peace. When I now find myself emotionally pent up to the point of madness, I just write down the contents of my head, and Hay Presto! Reason returns. It is a blessed relief too, not to mention fun.

I have also noticed that my creativity increases with the amount that I write. If I manage to keep up the head-writing for a week or so, I find that stories will blossom and flow out of me at a prodigious rate, and generally in a consecutive and comprehensible flow, not the higgledy-piggledy mess it usually comes out in. I once spent a month living in Queensland on an army base and had nothing to do of an evening but study and write, and I found on several occasions that I would write between 15 and 20 pages of a story in one sitting, generally only stopping because my wrist gave out from the pain!

The writer Natalie Goldberg uses the metaphor of a compost heap to describe this phenomenon which I find very apt in my case. In daily life you accumulate experiences, thoughts and feelings like so much useless trash. If you don’t sort through them, they tend to pile up and become an overwhelming heap of garbage, smelly and unsightly. However, by turning and aerating the pile, adding bits here, taking out bits there, getting perspective and gaining distance, you allow your experiences to break down into valuable organic matter and it becomes fertile ground ready for the planting of new ideas. And without conscious effort, because it has such rich soil to grow in, a story germinates. So I do my sorting and composting through the process of writing. It turns the garbage in my brain into healthy soil. ;)

I don’t write as often as I want to. I’m too tired, or have too much work to do, or I am out living life, or I feel that it would be too much of a self-indulgent procrastination, or I am too immersed in my own brain to notice that it needs emptying. And unfortunately, I frequently forget the beneficial result of writing for my sanity, and stop doing it for a long enough period that I get very confused…until I recognise that my sense of proportion has slipped. So, I have as yet been unable to grow any of my story seedlings into trees, or even into saplings – I keep burying them in more garbage.

But I just realised that this blog thing provides me with the PERFECT excuse to write and hence a potential trash-disposal unit. I have committed to writing it to inform you all of my activities whilst I’m away, so I’m obliged to keep it up to date. And if I post to it regularly, it also provides a soothing balm to the monster of parental anxiety – Ali doesn’t have to spend horrendous amounts of money on international phone calls – she knows I’m ok as long as I keep blogging. My writing is no longer a self-indulgent thing but is actually providing information and security to others, so I feel justified in my procrastination. Of course, I’m not going to bore you with the contents of my head in this forum, nor my stories, but it is yet another nail in the coffin of my confusion, or maybe another light to ward off the darkness of disorder and best of all, another pitch-fork to help turn the garbage into mulch. I have been writing on this blog just as often as I do in my journal, and it provides a similar service and with beneficial side-effects. Wow.

So I have discovered the reason for my blog: It's a compost heap! :)