Wet it, Wet, it. You should get it, as much as you can haul. Then add as much greens as you can. As for setting up a pile, go for it document,photos, then have it tested for whatever.
Sometimes the only way to know is to do.
I am using leaves, dry grasses for my browns.
You can tell us how it is done. the only problem I see with your plan is finding greens & spring lawns can get you most of that. I take it you fish a lot.

How much of that shredded paper your soil can take depends on your soil and what is in it now. The shredded paper would be all Carbon and would need other types of organic matter to balance it in your soil so the plants that grow there would have some nutrients. The Soil Food Web would need some sourcve of nutrients so they could digest that high Carbon material also.

Kimmsr, granted paper is a strong brown - I'd expect it to provide carbon to a pile and not much else - I've always wondered about people bemoaning the lack of nutrients in paper - what is it missing that it ought to have?
If I amend the soil with it, I'd expect a nitrogen deficiency unless mitigated. I'd approach it as sawdust from carbon/nutrient perspective.

jolj, this past summer I composted ~3000 lbs of fish scrap in 8 piles; I'm constantly on the lookout for browns since I can get more fish scrap than I can use, and it seems to make great compost. I've been using chipped brush as brown, but am wondering how much of that I can replace with finely shredded paper. Some of the piles had up to 10% paper, and worked out fine. I suppose the answer is to try a pile with mostly paper, and hope for the best.

I look at paper and sawdust as 'last resort' browns. Paper, paper products (cardboard, etc) and sawdust contain little to nil nutrients when compared to leaves.

Now there are cases where paper products and sawdust/wood chips have uses and are a beneficial addition. These uses can range from 'odour control' to 'better aeration' to 'best way to get rid of something' and probably a thousand other reasons.

I've never done it but I would imagine a large volume of paper would lead to lack of air infiltration. This is just a gut feeling. If you do try a mostly 'paper as browns' pile, I'd appreciate hearing back from you how well it works.

Thx

Lloyd

josko, sounds good.
Lloyd, after reading most of your posts/photos. I am going to call you a pro composter, not in that you make $$$,but that you know from doing, not just reading.
So what is the "leaves" you think are best,oak,maple,elm,dogwood,hickory,catalpa,poplar,gum?
Or does it matter, as long as they are composted in balance with the other items in the pile?

..
I've got a bunch of shredded office paper stockpiled. A nearby base is a handy thing at times.

A bin of just shredded office paper and grass clippings will reduce to almost nothing. When I get a lot of grass clippings, I'll blend the two at approximately one to one ratio by weight.

Great oder control.

If you're concerned about a high carbon diet, consider a slow, no turn bin that induces fungal activity. Once you see mushrooms in your bin, you can expect some serious volume reduction and mushrooms really breakdown the high carbon stuff more effectively than strict bacterial action.

I don't think you can go too far wrong if you don't stray too far from the 10 percent rule when mixing it into your compost bin. Yeah I know a lot of shredded office paper makes that hard and I stray. As finely shredded as you get, I think you can afford to stray.

One thing you'll need to settle for yourself on shredded office paper is the toner. Shredded office paper means laser printers and photocopiers. That means no ink but toner. Toner is a finely ground plastic that behaves nicely to a static charge and then a fuser section in the photocopier or laser printer melts it onto the paper. I've gone through over a hundred Xerox MSDS sheets on toner and they are all non-toxic. However, when I asked Xerox whether they thought it was safe to compost or not, I got a very brief email: 'the paper will breakdown but the toner will not'.

I don't like plastic but have made a conscious decision to accept it in shredded office paper. I don't think everyone else would necessarily make the same decision. You need to decide that for yourself.

Another thing you may encounter in this shredded paper is if they decide to shred old files, you could end up with some old acetates or those clear plastic sheets they used to use for overhead projectors. That's quite rare now, if at all, but if they have a bunch of boxes that have been sitting around and it's time to to get rid of them you may find some of that junk sprinkled in the big bag of shredded paper. Again I've decided to accept that level of plastic but you may not.

Works fine for me. If I had a line on manures, I wouldn't have an excess. I also know that I never know when that resource might just dry up. I use what's on hand as opposed to try and work the best mix possible.

two cents
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"best" leaves? Not a clue. I get all my leaves from a town with a population of around 5000 so there are all different types in there. One year I got some 'flash frozen' after a hard freeze hit whilst they were still on the trees. Several truckloads of frozen, green, and extremely heavy leaves. Mixed with some straw and they seemed to compost just fine.

I do a lot of composting, I make a lot of mistakes. I just try to not make the same mistake twice but I guarantee I haven't made them all yet.

Lloyd

Mixing paper with my leafmold pile (~20% paper) this fall just exploded redworm populations. I've never seen so many worms in one place before. I have no idea what caused this, but somehow the combination worked a LOT better than leaves alone. I'm also noticing that the mix precluded leaves from matting down as they normally do.
If anybody knows why this worked better than leaves alone, I'd be glad to hear.

rott, thanks for all the details.
Lloyd, thanks for the honest answer.
josko, for some reason everyone agrees(that I know)that redworms love paper, here are a few who do anyway.
www.redworncomposting.com
www.compostguy.com
http://kitchengardeners.org/groups/worm composting.

I would think that shredded paper and fish scraps would be a great combo! I used to use shredded office paper as bedding for our guinea pig. It was so much easier than shavings, and when it was time to change the bedding the mix of shredded paper/guinea pig pee & poop would go right on the compost. If you run out of greens for your shredded paper urine would no doubt work nicely.

But isn't urine yellow...

I have access to shredded paper. Red Wiggler worms eat it. I mulch with it on new garden plantings, along with hay, compost and what have you. We always throw some red wigglers on top of the garden when planting the new crop, as the seasons change. It dissappears, and becomes worm castings.