The classic ‘messy creative’. This is how I work best.
To the casual outsider (and, actually, everyone who knows me) I am the classic messy creative.
I write while surrounded by piles of papers and books. My pen pots are stuffed to overflowing with (mostly empty) biros, and layers of lists, jottings and printed-out emails smother the whole surface of my pin board. But, I send out a plea for better understanding of my artistic sprawl – that is how I work best.
I like to have everything within reaching distance. All the ideas, contacts, deadlines and research relating to a project needs to be easily accessible and it seems my mind keeps track of things better this way. Only breaking my gaze from the computer screen for a matter of seconds, I can reach out a hand and pluck the exact resource I need from what appears to be unfathomable clutter. I can always lay my hands on the post-it note with a particular email address from someone I met briefly a month ago, because it’s on the pin-board underneath the list of deadline dates for current writing and editing projects.
While I write, the cacophony of desk-clutter is almost like white noise. If everything is tidied neatly away, it interrupts my concentration. I feel vulnerable. ‘Organised chaos’ is one term for it. ‘A right pigsty’ would be my mother’s description of choice.
However, my writing sanctuary is only an illusion of mess. Beneath the superficial mayhem, my filing system is embarrassingly immaculate, with colour-coded post-its, spreadsheets and separate folders. If you ask me to find something, I will know exactly where it is and have it to hand within seconds.
So, to all you neat-freaks out there who judge us creative types for our apparently untidy ways, stop and think for a moment: One man’s mess is another man’s office.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Leave a Reply