compost

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Some times, things just work out.

Years ago, I found a pretty little box on sale for a ridiculously small amount of money at Borders.  It was covered in brightly colored fabric and little beads.  My inner crow took one look at it and cawed, “Shiny!”  My inner cheapskate crowed, “Cheap!”  The combination of shiny+cheap was just too strong to overcome.  I had to have it.

What would I do with it?  No freaking clue. Didn’t matter. It was shiny+cheap and I knew I must possess it.

So possess it, I did.  I don’t know how long it sat on my desk unused.  One day, I put index cards in it.  Why? Well, because they fit.

Finally, it occurred to me to write stuff on the index cards.  So I started writing down random ideas I had.  These were ideas that came to me, but never really went anywhere.  Little seeds of ideas that I thought might one day grow into something pretty, but for now, they were just seeds. I decided to call my shiny+cheap box my compost bin.

Some times, weeks and months would go by and I wouldn’t put anything in the compost bin.  Other times, I would find myself writing several ideas down and filing them away.  From time to time, I’d take them out and look at them, but nothing much seemed to be growing.

Then, it happened. 

An idea started to turn into a story. 

Parts of it were a puzzle at first, but I was so excited about the idea that I just wrote down everything I could, figuring the puzzle pieces would sort themselves out eventually.  Everything was moving along so nicely that it never even occurred to me to look in the compost bin.  But those ideas that I’d filed away began to sprout anyway.  I’d be driving along the freeway to my dayjob, and one of those seeds I’d thrown in the compost bin would suddenly sprout up like Jack’s beanstalk, fitting themselves perfectly into the story that had been brewing in my head.

So, some times, things just work out.  I bought a pretty box.  I put stray ideas in it.  And one day, those ideas started fitting into my story.  I wish I could say I did all of this on purpose, but I didn’t.  It just worked out that way.  That doesn’t mean you can’t do it on purpose though.

Some people have other ways of composting their ideas.  Chris Brogan uses a spreadsheet. What do you use to compost your ideas? If you don’t compost your ideas already, what do you think you would like to use?