Spilling Ink: Day 3

"Eighty percent of success is showing up," Wood Allen said.

Just show up.  This is sage advice on so many levels.  As parents, all our children want from us is to just show up.... to their games, recitals, school parties, concerts, and awards ceremonies. They want us to show up mentally as well as physically at the end of the day to listen and commiserate on the day's events.  Our students crave this from us, as do our spouses, bosses, and significant others.

In section three of Spilling Ink, Anne Mazer prompts us to just show up on the page and the ideas will work themselves out.  She prompts us to keep a journal and regularly maintain a mental compost pile, in which we place ideas dredged up from our lives.    Embarrasing moments from our lives can get thrown into that heap, in addition to subjects we are passionate about, daily moments, dreams.... stuff from our lives.

So here I am, just showing up.  I am sitting down to type, to think about the items in my mental compost.  I don't think they've had enough time to become fertile soil, though.  How long is long enough, I wonder? 

Thinking about composting.... we have a tradtional compost pile in the back yard.  Every few days I throw our scraps out and turn over the newly developing soil.  We have had some "volunteeers" sprouting lately.  Those are plants that have sprouted from the seeds of our scraps, without any effort on our part.  I sure do wish some writing ideas would "volunteer" themselves and pop right out of my mental compost pile!. 

I guess it is only Day 3 of this challenge; maybe my mental compost will become richer and more fertile as the days progress and I continue through Spilling Ink.   So, I will continue to show up right here.  Some really smart folks say that's more than half the battle.