6.5 - Compesto - Own Your Distortion

There’s that old chestnut: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

They say it like it’s a bad thing. Sure, if you only eat fast food, you’ll likely feel like crap. 

Then there are the chefs who take the food scraps bound for the compost bin and turn it into a lively pesto to dress up their dishes. Compesto!

Garbage in isn’t always a bad thing.

I read genre fiction - romance, detective novels. The kind you buy in the grocery store, the kind you can buy at a yard sale, ten for a dollar. Every one of them is absolute trash of formulaic fiction with predictable endings and transparent characters. But they sell like gangbusters. Romance fiction, as unreadable as I think it is, is one of the largest literary markets out there. I figure I should make it my business to know why.

Over the years, it has led to a softening in my writing and a change of pace in my stories.

The same goes with pop music and primetime TV and how every single Facebook ad reads the same way - there is something in them that appeals to the mass market. If you’re looking to sell your work, maybe the masses have something to tell you. We can’t all be avant garde. 

And, sometimes, your brain needs to relax into the simple things. Like taking a rest day in between all of the workouts. Every flex needs a release. 

There is value in the stuff you wanted to throw away. Countless ideas are from the cutting room floor. Don’t delete - just because something wasn’t good enough right now doesn’t mean it will be worthless forever.