Begin with a perfect egg. It is whole, and it has something wonderful inside it. But you can go either way. You can have breakfast with just a little work. With a little more work, you can hatch chicks. If you want to hatch chicks, you need to tend to the eggs. Make sure they are just the right temperature. A few degrees either hot or cold will make them die in the shell. Make sure they have enough moisture. Also, you have to turn them three times a day. If you don’t, they’ll do all their growing on one side, and become unbalanced.

Just like with writing, I want my writing to be balanced. I pay close attention to all aspects of it: Thesis, Support, Organization, Grammar, etc.

Also, I don’t want to take all of my support from one source. I make sure to include multiple perspectives in my writing.

 

 

The chick has an egg tooth, a thorn shaped protrusion on its beak, that will drop off a few days after it hatches. It uses the egg tooth to cut a circular crack all around the egg. This can take up to a full day.

 

I need patience for writing. If I don’t finish the first draft in one sitting, that’s fine. I need time to rest and process what I’ve written.

The chick struggles against the egg. It needs this struggle to gather strength for life. If you were to try to help the chick out of the egg, it would likely die, because it was not allowed to develop its own muscles through the struggle.

When I write, I struggle with an idea and turn it over and over in my head, and try different ideas on paper. In the struggle to understand, I gain new knowledge.

 

 

 

When the chick comes out, it looks like hell. You wonder, will this thing even live? But a few hours later…

 

 

 

 

…with time the chicks dry and gather strength to run around and explore their world.

The eggs they come from are now destroyed, but you get something new.

When I write about a new topic, I begin at the beginning every time.

eggs for church

Baby chicks need a lot of care, just like new writing needs help sometimes.