The Compost Heap

The compost heap is the heart of the process of our creative recycling. For creative work, we need to be constantly taking in information in order to later tap into it later as a source of inspiration and material. But in order for the information and stimulation that we take in to be transformed into our final product or artwork, an almost alchemical process needs to take place. In 'Drawing on the Artist Within', Betty Edwards calls this process the period of 'incubation'.

When we put a plant in an incubator we generally mean that we are putting it in a protected environment and applying a gentle heat. In our creative lives, this 'heat' – which as gardeners we know is required to create the right conditions for a compost heap to break down – most often equates simply to time. After taking in a lot of stimulation, our ideas need quite a lot of time to incubate in order to eventually form into a concrete direction. Very often it seems that we go through long periods of seemingly doing very little – reading books, visiting galleries or looking at other people's work on the internet, collecting photographs of odd things or excerpts from the books we are reading and this can feel at times like a form of procrastination but in fact this taking in and digesting of material really is an essential part of the creative process.

"Our bodies are garbage heaps: we collect experience, and from the decomposition of the thrown-out eggshells, spinach leaves, coffee grinds, and old steak bones of our minds come nitrogen,heat, and very fertile soil. Out of this fertile soil bloom our poems and stories. But this does not come all at once. It takes time. Continue to turn over and over the organic details of your life until some of them fall through the garbage of discursive thoughts to the solid ground of black soil...If we continue to work with this raw material, it will draw us deeper and deeper into ourselves, but not in a neurotic way. We will begin to see the rich garden we have inside us and use that for writing.
...Understanding this process cultivates patience and produces less anxiety...We must continue to work the compost pile, enriching it and making it fertile so that something beautiful may bloom..."
from Writing Down The Bones by Natalie Goldberg