Garbage In, Garbage Out

If you're feeling stuck, choose something new to add to the compost heap!

Hello, Friends —

I hope you are doing well during what has (unsurprisingly) been a turbulent start to 2025. I haven’t been able to fully process world events let alone my own events. January feels like slowly waking up. Usually it feels like a long month, dotted with illness amidst planning and plodding into a new year. This year has been no different.

One of my plans for 2025 is to write more poetry — which could take the form of poetry comics, zines, songs, etc. And in support of that writing, it occurred to me that I should do more purposeful reading and listening. This is an obvious, but often overlooked part of the process… at least for me. Sometimes I wonder, “why don’t I have any interesting ideas?!” or… “All these things I’m making feel the same, or boring, or trite, or uninspired!” That’s when I need to remember inputs beget outputs. “Garbage in, garbage out!” as my mom would say. And while I think she was referring to questionable TV programs and friend choices in the 90s, the concept holds true for creative consumption.

Now that I’m an adult, it’s less the “quality” of the garbage that I’m concerned about (I’ve become slightly more discerning, unless we’re talking nutrition… still working on that!) For me, it’s the variety of the garbage that is sometimes lacking. I’ve entered January eager to explore and throw more on what Ann Patchett describes as a compost heap.

“You will take bits from books you’ve read and movies you’ve seen and conversations you’ve had and stories friends have told you, and half the time you won’t even realize you’re doing it. I am a compost heap, and everything I interact with, every experience I’ve had, gets shoveled onto the heap where it eventually mulches down, is digested and excreted by worms, and rots. It’s from that rich, dark humus, the combination of what you encountered, what you know and what you’ve forgotten, that ideas start to grow.”

- Ann Patchett in her memoir “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage: A Collection”

I love this metaphor. It demystifies creativity and turns it into dirt. Well-fertilized dirt, but dirt nonetheless! Ideas are not something you summon from the great beyond; they are something you grow. Inputs beget outputs.

I don’t have much in the way of outputs to share with you yet. The inputs are still percolating on the pages, in half-finished poems and abstract experiments. I’ve been keen on making a mess on the page lately — more scratchy textures and fewer clean lines. Here are my favorites so far.

I wish you a rich February filled with messy but fruitful composting! I hope you can prioritize your compost heap and give it the inputs you need.

xoxo,
Sheri

P.S. In case you missed it, last month I shared Choosing a Word for 2025. Last year I made this newsletter free for everyone! If you enjoy my creative work and want to follow along, subscribe to my newsletter to receive a monthly dispatch on what I’m working on and thinking about.