Your creative process is supposed to be messy

Turn your messiness into an asset.

No matter how organized I try to be with my writing process, somewhere along the way, everything inevitably becomes messy. My creative process denies the structure and pose I try to bring to it.

Believe me, I tried to be organized. I tried to categorize my writing by using different software, trying different writing routines, putting time limits and deadlines, creating content lists and calendars and storing every idea that I have.

But at some point, all those ideas become a beast and overflow the bounds I try to restrict upon it, and then I feel overwhelmed and lose track.

I do have a system, but that system is not as neat and structured as I’d desire. It’s a messy one. When I force a neater structure, it seems to backfire. I become organized and on track for a couple of weeks, but then I’m back to square one.

Sometimes my ideas feel like they will get lost in that infinite space where I’m unable to see their endpoint, like an endless well. I write them down and they get lost somewhere, and I forget them for a long while because I simply don’t have the time to extend them further.

Sometimes I’m equally amazed but scared at the volume of the ideas I have and the speed at which I can work on all of them. This is the part where messiness start to feel like a problem. But as much as it can be a problem, it can also be a blesssing.

Ideas don’t ask for an invitation

We want ideas to come to us when we want them to, but the random ideas that pop into your head never come to you on demand. Their occurrences are unplanned.

You can’t control when they’ll appear in your mind. It can come at the most unwanted times, or it may never stop by when you’re waiting for it.

Inspiration strikes whenever. It doesn’t wait for your schedule or try to fit it. It just barges in like an uninvited guest, but is never unwelcome.

This is the nature of being an artist. Your brain, aka the idea machine, works and makes connections in the background and spurts out ideas at random moments.

It collects the ideas from the movies you watch, books you read, content you devour daily, and takes inspiration from your unique environment, surroundings, your encounters, and boom, it creates a brand new idea that you can work on later.

But you never know exactly when those ideas will stop by. You can’t force them to come to you. You can facilitate their speed via nourishing yourself with more intellectual food and apply a writing routine, but that doesn’t guarantee their fast arrival.

These little gems might come at you during shower (the most likely setting), when washing the dishes, or when taking a walk, and not when you’re staring at a blank screen in front of your computer. It’s all uncertain.

Sometimes an idea comes to you at 2 am when you’re trying to sleep, and not writing it to your notes app or getting up to write it down on paper feels like a crime.

Your brain works outside regular working hours, and that contributes to the messiness, too. You can’t shut your creative brain like you shut down your computer after 5pm at your day job.

But sometimes contrary to those 2am ideas, you don’t feel the spark to write in your initially planned time slot.

The uncertainty in writing

Perhaps this uncertainty pertaining to writing is what makes me uneasy about the messy nature of writing.

I have a desire to control, hence I want to organize everything into its littlest details. I want to know exactly what I want to write, and when. I want to have my plan laid out. I don’t want to leave it to chance. But it doesn’t always work that way.

Some days, and some weeks, I’m bursting with ideas and have the energy to go in depth on them, analyse them, and magnetic prose flows out of me. Yet some others, I feel demotivated and can’t seem to get into flow. I sometimes don’t match with the energy with my own brilliant idea.

Your mood and motivation are also important metrics. No matter if you have tons of brilliant ideas stored, if you’re not in the creative mood, or in a rut, the right words just don’t seem to come out of you.

Maybe you’re too distracted, or sometimes your life’s circumstances don’t allow you to create at the speed you desired and you can’t help but hit pause.

Uncertainty is scary, because you don’t know what your next brilliant idea will be, or when you’ll be able to execute it, but it’s equally exciting as it shows you all the possibilities and what could happen.

The messiness inherent in creativity

The mind of a creative person is messy. You have like a thousand tabs open in your brain, and it’s really hard to tame them and limit them to one organized space, at all times.

Some of your ideas will be lost in an ignored notebook, some on the notes of your phone, some on your Notion, some on your docs, some on the random scribblings on the book you read, and some on flashcards or A4 papers. And that’s okay.

While knowing my ideas are scattered somewhere feels uncomfortable and raises the urge in me to sit down and gather them in one collective space, I know that doing that will take way too long and is not logistically possible.

Also, upkeeping that structure will be tough and will stress me eventually, and it will get messy once again; just as like how your room gets messy after a week you cleaned and organized it, your writing ecosystem can get messy with time.

You can attempt to organize it once again, but it will get messy again. But that’s okay, maybe the trick is aiming for a disorganized structure. There can be structure in the messiness, too. Even if it’s messy, if you know where to look in that mess, then you’re good.

Too neat is boring and sterile anyway. Messiness can help fire your neurons to make new connections.

It’s impossible to turn up to your creative work with the same drive every day, we’re humans after all, not robots. Art needs personality, and the human touch. And creativity isn’t always predictable in terms of when it will come. We all experience creative burnout.

Messiness can be writing for 10+ hours at your creative high yet not being able to write a sentence for days after that.

That’s why it’s best to batch produce articles when your creativity flows for times when you feel burnt out, as you can always publish those ready articles whenever you feel stuck.

Embracing the messiness and turning it into an advantage

So instead of trying to be too organized with my writing, I’m accepting the messy nature inherent in this craft and choose to see its bright side. I can have my inspiration and ideas scattered in my room and in my mind. The messiness doesn’t devalue them.

Maybe that’s what spices up the creative process anyway. Perhaps it’s the messiness that makes writing or being a creative so attractive and adds flair to the process.

Sometimes that messiness is exactly what gives you a strange momentum, something that being neat and organized doesn’t give. That messiness spawns incredible ideas.

Creativity is not like a 9-5 job requiring you to do mundane, robotic tasks. It is mostly unstable, unpredictable, and playful. And that’s the fun part.

Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road in a total of 20-21 days, on a manic writing spree. You don’t always need to follow a set structure, your ways can be more unorthodox, more messy, if you work better that way.

Of course, it would be easier if we could just turn up in front of our laptops and spare 2 hours for writing each day and write really good stuff consistently, but that mostly doesn’t portray the reality of being a writer.

Somedays what you come up with is going to be shitty, and some days it will feel like you wrote godly sequences.

Sometimes you will write on your bed, on the couch in the living room, on your desk, at the kitchen table, or at a neighborhood cafe.

Sometimes you will write on paper, on your journal, on a napkin, on your notes app, or on your laptop. And that variety is something that gives you a lot of inspiration.

Sometimes you will work on an exciting new idea, and ditch the order of your content calendar, and that’s okay too, because plans can change.

Because when you sit on that newfound idea, that initial idea unlocks even more indepth ideas and develops it, and I don’t want to miss on that spontaneous magic.

Sometimes being planned is good, especially if you’re a creator who needs to upload content regularly. It gives you a roadmap on what you can write about, but always sticking to a plan can make you lose that creative spark and play associated with the fun nature of creativity.

Your plans can act like a guidebook for you to be open to possibilities, but sometimes what should matter is what you want to write at that moment, and what’s bursting out of you. Or if you can’t muster to write, not pushing yourself to produce work you’re not proud of just because you wanted to fulfill a wordcount.

I simply don’t want to ignore a whole essay that literally flashes in my brain, ideas there but unconnected, waiting for me to tie them, and voluntarily lose those unique connections my brain formed for a preplanned piece. But maybe that’s just me and the way I view it.

Maybe my creative process was never meant to be neat in the first place. At the end of the day, I’m happy to work with this chaotic mess and let it inspire and energize me.

But I’m curious, how does your creative process look like? Is it messy like mine? And in what ways? What kinds of strategies do you employ surrounding your writing?