The Tyranny of Tidiness

& the artist Anna Brones on the fertile mess of a creative space

Hi friend,

The question I find hardest to answer honestly is: “How are you?” The word that usually floats to the top of my mind is overwhelmed, but I’ve decided to stop using that word. I’ve felt overwhelmed for the last fifteen years, and at some point, I have to take accountability. Life’s unexpected plot twists like illness aside, I have to recognize that whatever has caused that overwhelm—whatever project or deadline or responsibility I’m facing—I have chosen it. Like last week, when I got the page proofs for The Book of Alchemy and felt a tidal wave of anxiety, I had to remind myself, “You signed up for this!”

Both with Between Two Kingdoms and this new book, the page proofs have brought me to tears. Writing a book is a very private experience, but soon it will be leaving the nest and flying out into the world. While that’s exciting, it’s also terrifying: Very soon I’m going to have to relinquish control. As I comb through the manuscript, I feel overwhelming anxiety—about grammatical errors, about getting things wrong or putting my foot in my mouth, about how it will be received. As I work through the proofs, every little typo fuels that fear.

From talking to other writers, I know that this is a very normal thing to feel at this juncture. You may have felt a version of it yourself—be it with writing a book, launching a business, or hosting a big holiday gathering. With The Book of Alchemy, I’ve looked at these words so many times. I have read and rearranged them, tweaked and edited them so much that I have lost all perspective. I can no longer really see them. So my friend and Isolation Journals collaborator Carmen and I have reprised a strategy from when I was finishing Between Two Kingdoms, when were quarantined together in the early days of covid: reading the whole thing aloud—though since she’s back in Texas, we do it over the phone.

In reading the manuscript out loud, I can experience it more objectively, as a reader might. It helps me step outside of myself and my own ego, to hear the broader sweep of the story, rather than obsessing over what I see as flaws but that no one else would notice. It’s a real gift to have a trusted friend and creative collaborator who knows you and your anxieties and insecurities, so that when you inevitably want to tweak something that does not need tweaking, they can push back. I can’t trust my instincts at this stage—because they aren’t instincts. They are anxieties masquerading as instincts, and they can lead me to over-edit or otherwise spin out.

But I haven’t been able to avoid the spinning entirely. As I gear up for work, I find myself hyper-fixating on anything messy, anything in need of tidying. It’s pretty common for me to start each day by tidying up—to straighten my office, folding blankets and stacking books, stowing stray papers in my desk. But in times like these, I go into hyperdrive. I reorganize my whole closet, or I delve into the junk drawer in my kitchen—rooting around, categorizing, obsessing over what container to use for the shocking number of stray keys I’ve accumulated: a tupperware or a ceramic bowl?

These are actual things I did and actual thoughts I pondered a few mornings ago, and I ended up being fifteen minutes late for my work call with Carmen. I told myself it was better to do that than to obsess over the manuscript. But then, as we reviewed an essay in the book about freeing yourself from ego and accessing a kind of creative looseness, I wondered if all the tidying is just a different way of trying to grasp for control. What would happen if I accepted the mess? What if, instead of seeking solace in a different form of perfectionism, I found comfort in the way Lentil rests her head on my shoulder as I work? Lentil—who loves me unconditionally, who couldn’t care less how my book is reviewed, who knows that I’m doing my very best. What if I tried to channel that?

Our relationship to mess is the subject of today’s guest essay and prompt by the artist Anna Brones, adapted from her own newsletter, Creative Fuel. She first published it just over a year ago, and it feels so timely. May it help you untangle the stories you tell about your creative space—and wherever you fall on the messy-to-neat spectrum, may it relieve you of the impulse to judge yourself and help you create a little more freely.

Sending love, 

Suleika

Some items of note—

• On the subject of page proofs: My new book, The Book of Alchemy, is available for preorder! I’d be so grateful if you would preorder a copy for yourself or a friend. Preorders are so important for authors, and it would mean everything to me.

• In last week’s gathering of the Hatch, Carmen read a favorite poem by Eavan Boland, reflected on the Buddhist concept of tonglen, and led the community in a compassion meditation. If you missed it, we have some exciting news! Rather than a written recap, we’ve posted a video replay here.

Scenes from the author’s studio

Prompt 313. My Creative Space Is… by Anna Brones

Around this time of year, my phone tends to fill up with messy studio photos. This is a way of commiserating with fellow creative friends, particularly those whose jobs involve any kind of seasonal packaging and shipping. At this point, these photo exchanges have become inspirational in nature—the worse the chaos, the better.

Sharing them creates camaraderie, a sense of collective creative wisdom: What your space looks like does not necessarily define you. These photos are unfiltered—they’re honest, they’re real. They make us feel seen, and they make us feel less alone.

With this in mind, I did an incredibly scientific poll on Instagram this past week.

Clearly I’m not really objective, since I didn’t put “somewhere in the middle” as an option, but even with this framing, two things are clear to me:

1. A lot of people are in the same boat.

2. There’s some shame wrapped up in what our spaces look like.

Cleanliness—as the saying goes, and many of us have probably internalized—is next to godliness. To be clean: good. To be messy: bad. We reflect that judgment onto ourselves, resulting in the shame that’s present in that third question in my poll. Some of my most talented and creative friends have the most explosive-looking spaces. They are also the first to apologize for them.

Lots of people have tried to pull apart this question of messiness and creativity. Some cite it as a myth, while others see a connection. A decade ago, professor Kathleen Vohs published research on the psychology of messiness and creativity, finding that messier spaces led to more unconventional and creative choices. Her resulting op-ed headline: “It’s not ‘mess.’ It’s creativity.”

Other people work and thrive in meticulously cleaned spaces. I have very good friends who work like this, and you can find plenty of examples across history of artists who resisted disarray, like Georgia O'Keeffe in her whitewashed studio, or the clean angles of Piet Mondrian's. As someone who has very rarely kept a tidy space, whenever I see an image of an artist's space that looks organized and well put together, I do wonder in what conditions the photo was taken. Photo shoot or snapped in a casual moment by a friend? Photos don’t always show the full picture of an artist’s reality.

But for those who are in the more organized camp, research by Boyoun Grace Chae has shown that messiness can negatively impact persistence, so having a tidier space might make it difficult to work through hard problems. If you’ve ever had to get out of your own space to clear your head, this research might resonate.

Despite our best intentions to embrace who we are and how we work, it’s really difficult to distance ourselves from these larger societal expectations and demands that keep lurking in the corners of our studios. Our creative spaces are spaces full of life. They are where ideas thrive and where creative energy can flourish.

It doesn’t matter whether you need a clean and tidy space or a wild, chaotic one. What matters is that it’s a space that you have a connection to. That your objects, books, materials, and art aren’t there because you think they portray the life of a creative person, but because you know and feel that they make you a creative person. What matters is that it’s a space where even in the tiniest bit of square footage—even the tiniest corner of a kitchen table—you feel safe and supported to explore all of your ideas, a space where judgment does not live.

Your prompt for the week:

What defines your creative space? Where do you fall on the spectrum from messy to neat? Do you revel in chaos or find comfort in the tidiest space? Are there value-laden stories or critical voices that come up when you admit this? What would it be like to create in a judgment-free space?

If you’d like, you can post your response to today’s prompt in the comments section, in our Facebook group, or on Instagram by tagging @theisolationjournals. As a reminder, we love seeing your work inspired by the Isolation Journals, but to preserve this as a community space, we request no promotion of outside projects.

Today’s Contributor—

Anna Brones is a writer, artist, and educator based in the Pacific Northwest. She works as a papercut artist, hand cutting illustrations from single pieces of paper, and is the author of several books including Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break. She produces Creative Fuel, a newsletter and community devoted to exploring the intersection of creativity and our everyday lives. Her annual digital Advent calendar, 24 Days of Making, Doing, and Being, kicks off on December 1st.

For more paid subscriber benefits, see—

• On Hoarding, Grief, & Asking for What You Need, an installment of Dear Susu where I answer a question from a reader whose husband’s capacity for hoarding has reached its “ultimate expression” and who is desperate for change

• Rejection, Perseverance, & Striving for Excellence, a video replay of my Studio Visit with the brilliant novelist Imbolo Mbue, where we talked about how she landed an agent after years of persistence (a.k.a. low-level stalking!) and how she believes it’s more important to focus on being excellent than being published

• Consider the Lilies, an essay where I reflect on the tyranny of striving and hustle culture and meditate on how I first learned—and am relearning—the importance of rest

Our Isolation Journal No. 1—

If you’re looking for a fresh start for fall, treat yourself to our custom journal! It has all of our favorite features: the perfect size to tote around wherever you go, ink-bleed proof paper, and numbered pages for easy indexing—and for extra inspiration, we printed our Isolation Journals manifesto on the flyleaf. Get yours by clicking below!