It's spring, and like many of you, I've got big plans for my garden right now. I've started some seeds and ordered others, and my desk is littered with pieces of papers containing sketches for raised beds and small container plantings. I'm waiting for the soil to dry up just enough for me to get out and start digging. All this makes chapter 11 of Ralph Fletcher's book quite appropriate.
Fletcher uses numerous metaphors for the writing process and his writer's notebook throughout the book, but this is really the first time that he devotes an entire chapter to one of his comparisons. It's apt, though, as you'll see:
"While it may not be the perfect metaphor, it does suggest several crucial aspects of the notebook:
- Transformation. Like a compost heap, a writer's notebook is all about change, commonplace ingredients simmering in a slow hot stew until they get transformed into something new and valuable.
- Fertility. Nature's most extravagant spending sprees are connected to the fertility cycle...Compost heaps and notebooks share a fertility that is ongoing and mysterious.
- Randomness. Like the compost heap, a writer's notebook typically does not have separate compartments for particular kinds of entries. You just throw stuff in, whatever you've got.
- Wait time. The compost heap requires the patience to wait about a year for today's uneaten salad to transform itself into tomorrow's high-class soil. The writer's notebook often requires something similar. Pause. Hold. Wait." (p.59)
Sometimes letting our stories sit for a while in our notebooks is what we need -- it gives us the distance and perspective to look back at them, in appreciation, so that we can learn what we need to learn from them.
We encourage you to share your layouts with us in our {stories} gallery and to share your thoughts and ideas with us in our {tales} forum. Don't forget to stop by our shop this week, where you can pick up the most recent Book Fair kit, as well as a handful of favorite products from our designers, all marked down 45% for the next 24 hours.
write on,
{storyteller} aud
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