Hadley 
Is there a right way to compost? Sure. But it all depends really on what you want to do. There are actually a lot of ways to do it. And no matter what, it takes time. But these are some of the things that I have found to be required.
For me sometimes when I start a new batch nothing happens until apparently it somehow reaches critical mass; other times it just never does.
However, it always turns into compost, so I don't sweat it too much. I mean, I prefer the heated compost, for killing weed seeds and for the higher humus content, but oh well.
- You should be shooting for 2 measures of carbons (browns) to 1 measure of nitrogens (greens). So, for every can of food scraps you put in, you should be adding at least 2 same sized, cans of browns. I keep a tub of wood chips that I get from the city next to my bin so it is easy to add in the wood chips when I dump in my food scraps.
- Leaves are a good source of brown materiel, but they take 6 months to a year to break down if you don't grind them up prior to adding them to the composter. Some leaves (magnolia, oak) can take up to two years. If you are primarily using leaves for your brown source, run them over with your lawn mower prior to putting them in your bin, that will increase the surface area of the leaves for the micro organisms to start to eat on and speed up your composting process.
- If you have some shredded paper handy. My husband gets it from work, so we use regular copy paper works best, while newspaper does not work as well, add a bunch of that to the bin and mix it well, that is a quick and easy source of carbon and will jump start the heating process. Don't sweat the ink on the paper, that is more than likely a water or soy based ink.
- Other good sources of brown are sawdust, ground wood chips, mulch fines.
For those of you who are having anaerobic issues the answer is normally more carbon and aeration.
