I chose to have significant limitations on what the music would be, given that I was restricted to my harp as a melody and harmony instrument, and my voice, and my own physical abilities to play what I wrote. I also don't have a recording setup at all, so each piece had to be recorded in one straight take (as a video on my phone), with no editing after the fact.
In terms of the creative process, I had an idea of the feel I wanted to convey, and basically sat down at the harp to improvise. I got a repeating bass riff which formed the underlying backbone of both instrumental and the song pieces, then started playing around with harmony and melody lines on top. It was then a matter of layering, and getting the fingers to play what I wanted them to, while remembering what bits of improv sounded good.
For the song I had the same chord sequence, and I wrote a poem to go with the theme words. The poem got turned into lyrics when I began singing it, as the accents and the melody have different emphasis when words are sung rather than spoken. Then it was a matter again of coming up with a melody for the song on the fly, then remembering it so I could record it. The accompaniment for the song was chosen to be something that I know I can reliably play while singing (multi-tasking!)
The end result is very different to the vast majority of the submissions to this jam (which makes me feel a bit out of place), but I had fun with it.