Protecting the Creative Life: The Structure That Supports Creativity by Iman Llompart
Let’s welcome back Iman Llompart as she shares with us “Protecting the Creative Life: The Structure That Supports Creativity.” Enjoy!
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Creativity vs. Structure
For the longest time, I thought that if you weren’t a structured creative, you would never finish your art.
It’s only recently that I’ve discovered the two don’t necessarily go together.
The word structure has its positives.
It makes me think of being organized and disciplined, but it also makes me think of rigidity, strict schedules, and no room for fun.
I think that’s why some writers resist it.
I wish I were more structured with my writing, but I’m just not.
Keeping up momentum for a while makes me feel good, but I’ve never been someone who can maintain the same routine consistently.
I get bored easily.
Then, when I do write but don’t achieve the daily word count I’ve set for myself, I knock myself over the head for it.
And I think that’s another reason some of us — and I include myself in this — can start turning away from what we love.
We’re not living up to the expectations we’ve set for ourselves.
Expectations that are often unrealistic and unattainable.
Why create if you can’t have fun doing it?
But what if structure isn’t meant to control creativity, but protect it?
Your Brain Can’t Hold Everything
When life throws lemons, it’s hard not to start associating passion with burden.
We have so many things to worry about outside of work, and when you add running your own business to that list, sometimes there is barely enough time in the day to take a moment for yourself.
And when you finally do, who wants to spend it thinking up new problems and trying to solve them?
Think about the responsibilities in your business that take you away from your craft.
It’s usually things like:
- Deadlines
- Emails and follow-ups
- Research
- Querying and submissions
- Client work
- Marketing
- Appointments
That’s a lot of information to keep floating around in your head.
Your brain shouldn’t have to be your filing cabinet.
Structure Can Be Simple
Structure doesn’t have to be complicated or intimidating.
Sometimes, it can simply be the solution to a problem.
There’s a reason businesses need structure to thrive.
And there are simple forms of structure that can make life easier.
Structure helps us keep track of things.
It can be as simple as:
- A calendar for deadlines
- A place to capture ideas
- A simple query tracker
- Organized research folders
- A weekly priorities list
You don’t need an elaborate system for everything.
The tool isn’t the solution.
Structure is only useful if it reduces friction.
Fewer Decisions = More Creative Energy
Structure helps cut down on unnecessary decisions and gives you more space to create.
Think about what happens before you actually give yourself the energy to write.
If you’re focused on running a business, you probably have several questions taking up far too much space in your mind:
Where did I save that?
What was I supposed to work on?
Which version is the newest?
What was that idea I had?
What deadline am I forgetting?
Now think about the decisions that are currently draining you.
Could you integrate some of them into a system so there are fewer things to remember and manage?
And more importantly, where would you rather spend that energy?
When you’re no longer using so much of it on small logistical decisions, you have more room for the creative ones:
What does my character want?
Why isn’t this scene working?
What happens next?
Those are the questions I’d rather have taking up space in my head.
Structure Should Fit the Writer
Structure isn’t one-size-fits-all.
It should be tailored to the person who needs it.
Not every system works for everyone because we don’t all have the same needs, and every business has different priorities.
I’m sure you’ve received unsolicited advice from someone who thinks they know exactly what your business needs, while instinctively, you know their suggestion won’t work for you.
I’d probably thank them enthusiastically and then toss their advice into the trash bin of my mind.
Just because someone has a handle on running their own business doesn’t mean their approach will work for yours.
It’s the same with creating.
And with writing.
Writing routines are different because writers are different.
Just because your favorite author gets up to write at 4 a.m. every morning doesn’t mean that will work for you.
Focus on your own creative process.
You sleep until noon every day?
Getting up at the butt crack of dawn probably isn’t going to be sustainable for you.
You go to bed at 7 p.m.?
Writing late into the evening will be a pretty difficult goal to achieve.
Write when it works best for your schedule and when it feels natural to you.
I wish I could write in the morning, punch out my words, and move on with my day.
But I can’t.
I’m a night owl.
Sometimes my ideas arrive at 10 or 11 p.m., and that’s when I get the urge to write.
I hardly ever get the bug when the sun is out.
I also don’t write every day, and that’s fine.
Consistency can mean five days a week for one writer, two days for another, or one day for someone else.
If you only write twice a month, that can be fine too, as long as you’re making progress and nurturing that creative space in a way you can actually sustain.
Don’t build your writing life around how you think a productive writer should work.
Build it around how you actually work.
Organize Around the Creativity, Not the Creativity Itself
As a freelancer or business owner who is also a creative, you have to consider two different spaces:
The Creative: where ideas, experimentation, characters, drafting, discovery, and play live.
The Supporting: where files, deadlines, research, communication, finances, scheduling, submissions, and marketing live.
The goal isn’t necessarily to bring more structure into the first space.
It’s to organize the second so you have more of yourself left to give to the first.
Consider:
- Which parts of your writing life benefit from freedom?
- Which parts create unnecessary chaos?
- What could you organize without interfering with your creative process?
You don’t have to organize creativity.
You can organize what surrounds it.
One Real Example
As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, I’m starting my own business, Sage Lantern co.
As a writer myself, finding structure within the company is essential because I want to dedicate more time to my craft and other creative initiatives.
One thing I’ve done has helped immensely.
We’re still in the early stages, and there are two of us running the business together.
That means whatever I’m doing, my business partner needs to know about, and vice versa.
We were doing outreach but didn’t have an effective way to keep each other updated.
I would need to ask who she’d spoken to, whether we had new leads, or send her an email summarizing what I’d been working on.
None of those things took an enormous amount of time individually, but together they added unnecessary work.
So I created an outreach system for us.
Now I don’t have to constantly ask my partner who she’s spoken to or whether we have new leads.
I don’t need to send her an email summarizing my tasks.
The information is already there for both of us to see.
The system didn’t magically give me more creative energy.
It simply removed some of the unnecessary work that was taking it away.
You don’t need a dramatic transformation.
Sometimes applying a little structure to one repetitive task can free up more time and energy to fill your creative cup.
When Structure Becomes Procrastination
Don’t let your new systems take over your life, though.
That’s a trap I almost fell into.
Remember that outreach system I just mentioned?
I recently updated it, and it doubled in size.
At first, I thought it might be too much, but I realized all of the tabs served an important purpose.
The problem wasn’t the system.
The problem was that I became distracted by making it perfect.
The visuals needed to be just so.
The old tabs and the new ones weren’t consistent.
The fonts needed fixing.
The headers needed changing.
And yes, to an extent, a system should be visually pleasing and easy to use.
But its main purpose was to keep us organized, and I was getting too hung up on the details.
If a system serves its purpose, the visual changes can come later.
They can be improved little by little.
There’s no reason to spend six hours changing banner colors, headers, or fonts — especially if you do all that work and then don’t actually use the system enough to become familiar with it.
Ask yourself:
Does this system make creating easier?
If the answer is no, the structure may need to be simplified.
Make Room for Creativity
Structure is supposed to give you peace of mind.
It’s meant to give you more time and energy to focus on the things you really want to do but have been too drained to tackle.
It allows your brain to let go of some of the tedious parts of running a business so you can actually enjoy the space you’ve created.
If you could give some of those responsibilities a place to live outside your head, what would you do with the energy you got back?
Structure can’t do the creative thinking for you.
It can’t finish your manuscript.
It can’t plot your scenes.
It can’t create your characters or manufacture inspiration.
But it can create more room for you to do those things.
The goal isn’t to build a perfectly organized writing life.
It’s to create enough structure around your creativity that your creativity has room to breathe.
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About The Author
Iman Llompart is a Creative Systems & Delegation Strategist who helps writers, book coaches, and creative founders protect their creative capacity by building the structure around their work — through workflows, client systems, and operational clarity.
Take her Creative Capacity Check-In Assessment to identify where your business may be quietly draining your creative energy.
