How a Type A Neat Freak Makes Peace with the Messiness of Writing

Hi, it's me. I'm the problem.

Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash

I sit at my desk to write and my fingers hover over my laptop. Where do I begin? What do I say? They circle the keys as my mind spins, struggling to find a place to land. I could write about anything. I could take my stories in any direction. This openness, this freedom, should feel liberating. It doesn’t. It feels paralyzing.

Time and again I find myself wishing I could follow an outline for my writing. So I go to my beats sheet. Try to establish a plot structure. But it doesn’t work. I don’t yet know the darkest hour. My protagonist hasn’t gotten there yet.

I used to write my essays in college and grad school by outlining them first. They would take me hours to complete. They had to contain every detail that needed to go into the final draft. As soon as the outline was done, as soon as I knew what I was writing and when, I could punch out ten pages no problem. Most of my papers in my second year of my Master’s program were written the morning they were due (because, burnout) and I still finished with a 4.0. But those essays were on a specific topic. They had parameters. Expectations. Writing a novel or personal essay is an entirely different beast. I can’t apply the same rules to it.

My oldest daughter brings home an assignment from school and asks for my help. She has to write an essay. “Writing?” I ask excitedly. Now here’s a subject I know something about. Most of the time she’s asking me to help her with math problems that make my eyes go sideways. I make a suggestion for how she could follow the last sentence in her first paragraph. “No,” she scolds, “that has to be the topic sentence.” Oh, right. She’s learning to follow a specific outline, too. Introduction, thesis statement, topic sentence, details, conclusion. If only it were that easy.

If only it were that clean.

When you walk through the front door of my apartment, you’re met by a large kitchen island with a sink in the middle. Behind the island to your left is the stove and oven, a wall of cabinets, counter space, and the fridge. On the counter is a small lamp, a decorative bowl where I keep my keys, a shelf that holds oils and a diffuser, and a coffee station with my Nespresso and pods. On the island sits dish and hand soaps and a candle. Walk a bit more and you’re next to the dining table. On it sits a round glass tray with white candles stacked neatly within it. The table is clear and the wood almost gleaming. It was recently polished. To the right, as you enter the living area, is a bookshelf. You notice immediately that the books are organized by color. There are blankets neatly folded in a basket. There’s another basket with dog toys. And yet another with yoga mats. The round glass coffee table in the middle of the room is clean except for a little pet hair, which I’ll brush off later. The seagrass tray on top holds coasters, another candle, two decorative books adorned with prayer beads, and a box of candles with a picture of San Francisco. The television sits atop a white Ikea cabinet. Go ahead and open it. The shelves hold games and drawing paper, craft projects organized into small blue containers, Tupperware bins with (you guessed it) more candles, dog supplies, gift wrapping, and an emergency kit.

This isn’t the result of having guests over—I didn’t even know you were coming!—this is how it always is. No clutter. A place for everything. Everything in its place.

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I open up Scrivener (a Type A’s dream, by the way—folders to my heart’s content!) and scan my work in progress. There’s only one folder titled Scenes and several text files named for their subject content: Duplex, Lake House, Birthday. What do they mean? Where do they fit into the story? I have no idea. Not yet at least. I minimize it immediately. It’s too messy.

But writing is messy. It’s a messy process. At least at the beginning. It’s like dumping the contents of a puzzle onto a table. Tiny little pieces piled on top of each other, a blur of colors and shapes that don’t make sense when they’re by themselves. Writing a first draft feels like I’m creating a bunch of pieces to throw into a pile, actively creating a jumbled mess on the table. But, as you’ll remember, my dining table is clean and clutter-free—the way I like it.

Then I remember that getting organized often requires making a mess first. The other day I wanted to clear out and reorganize one of my cabinets. In order to do so, I had to pull everything out of it. There were old takeout containers, empty glass jars, water bottles (so many water bottles), containers with matching lids, lids without containers, containers without lids. It was all strewn about on my kitchen floor. A complete disaster. After sifting through what I wanted to keep and throwing out things that were no longer useful, I put it all back into the cabinet. Now when I open the door, its contents make sense to me. There’s an order to it.

My fingers are still hovering over the keyboard. Go on, I tell myself, make a mess. Write the scene you need to write. Let your protagonist tell you where she needs to go. Get the words out. They’re not supposed to be perfect. They’re not supposed to make sense. They will, eventually, but there aren’t enough pieces on the table yet.

How do I make peace with the messiness of writing? I put my fingers on the keys and type.

xo, Kristine