The creativity (and science) of habit

You’re struggling to finish that novel. You know there’s a box-office hit hiding out in your head. There’s a poem teasing at the edges of your brain - if only you had the time to write.

If we’re honest, though, however busy we are, most of us do have the time. The real problem isn’t time at all. It’s habit.

Habit is one of those buzzwords of success, attached to everything from exercise and diet to career advancement. And for good reason. Habits quite literally rewire the brain. It generally takes around 28 days. So if you want to change something in your life, or add something new, commit to it for a month.

There’s solid science behind this idea, and one of the most striking examples comes from NASA. In the early days of the space program, researchers wanted to understand the physiological and psychological effects of spatial disorientation in a weightless environment. Astronauts were given convex goggles that flipped their vision 180 degrees, forcing them to see everything upside down. They had to wear them 24 hours a day for 30 days.

As you can imagine, this made life extraordinarily difficult.

Then, on day 26, something remarkable happened. One astronaut found that his vision had turned right-side-up again - despite still wearing the goggles. Between days 26 and 30, the same thing happened to the remaining astronauts. Their brains had created entirely new neural pathways.

Just as fascinating was what happened next. It took roughly the same amount of time for their brains to readjust once the goggles were removed. In a later version of the experiment, half the astronauts were allowed to remove the goggles for just 24 hours on day 15. When they put them back on, it still took another 25 to 30 days for their brains to adapt. Breaking the continuity of the new habit - just once - sent them back to square one.

As Aristotle famously said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

In The Artist’s Way, the seminal book on creativity and creative recovery, Julia Cameron introduces Morning Pages - a simple but powerful daily practice. Each morning, you hand-write three pages about anything and everything that comes into your mind. The pages don’t have to make sense. You write first thing, she explains, because “you’re trying to catch yourself before your ego’s defenses are in place.”

This stream-of-consciousness ritual establishes the habit of writing, clears mental clutter, and creates space for ideas to surface.

And then there’s Stephen King. When he’s working on a book - which is most of the time - he writes every day of the year. That includes Christmas, the Fourth of July, and his birthday. King finishes a draft in about three months, but he’s also quick to point out that writing just 300 words a day is enough to complete a novel in a year.

In the end, it really is that simple.

It’s just a matter of getting into the habit.

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Denise Howie World Famous in B.C.

My Childhood: Fact or Fiction?

Don’t decide to base your first book on your childhood - especially if you lived in six countries and didn’t keep a journal.

I started writing this book thirteen years ago and I’m about three-quarters of the way through. I’m not lazy. I’ve been published many times in the intervening years, but this particular project is forever shunted to the back burner. Take a guess at what I was working on moments before I distracted myself by opening a fresh page on this blog…

I’ve always called it a novel because, although it’s rooted in the facts of a period of my life, I’ve had to invent conversations and events to bridge the inevitable gaps in memory. After all, the main character - me - is only five years old when the story begins. But really, I should learn to call it what it is: a memoir. All memoirs are crafted in the same way. The story tells the truth of the life being described, but by necessity, it cannot all be true.

My father was in the Royal Air Force - a blessing that meant my childhood was designed for adventure. Another blessing is that there are countless online groups and forums devoted to reminiscing about life as a services or military child in the 1960s and 70s. There is, it turns out, an eager readership for memoirs like mine.

And yet, this is also a curse. Those experiences matter deeply to my fellow brats (the Forces acronym for British Regiment Attached Traveller), and that sense of shared history comes with an unspoken expectation: get it right. Be accurate. Don’t muddle the details.

I’m not just describing my life - I’m chronicling a way of life. The peculiar, transient world of a military child in the 1960s. I take comfort in the fact that all any memoirist can do is recount how they experienced, and now reinterpret, the events around them. Even within one family, each person deciphers shared moments differently. Still, there’s a certain pressure in knowing that not only my siblings, but an entire generation of former brats, may quietly question my version of events.

Many of our family photographs have been lost. I’m the eldest child, and my parents both died while still in their fifties, so I have little tangible material to draw from. What slows me down the most is my unreliable memory of geography. Even with the help of the internet, so much time has passed that I’m often researching what feels like an entirely different planet.

Frustratingly, old maps don’t track my footsteps the way the Marauder’s Map does in Harry Potter. I know my peers will be forgiving, but it will undoubtedly jar if I describe turning left to reach the Malay village when, in fact, I could only have turned right. Then again, their retrospective GPS may be just as sketchy as mine. Here’s hoping.

Needless to say, my second book will be a proper novel. It will be set in space. The main character will keep a journal that she starts writing in at the age of five.

Because she is, quite clearly, a much smarter cookie than I ever was.

Widen your Audience: Repurpose to a Different Genre

The Borrowers: Illustrated by Emilia Dziubak

Recycle. Repurpose. Reuse.

We’re finally getting it.

But writers have been doing this all along. As authors, we recycle our own experiences and obsessions. Many popular writers - ancient and modern - return to the same premise again and again, reshaping it into each new bestselling novel. Non-fiction writers, meanwhile, have long mastered the art of repurposing the same information for different audiences.

Today, of course, this practice is more visible than ever. A tweet expands into a blog post, which becomes a YouTube presentation or podcast, which then turns into a magazine article, and eventually emerges as a how-to book - or vice versa.

You know that feeling when you’ve written a piece of fiction and, even after you’ve sent it out into the world or tucked it away in a drawer, it stays with you? Grab that emotion before it’s washed away from the shore and use it to write a creative half-cousin. If a character or storyline has affected you this deeply, it will almost certainly affect others too.

Some years ago, I wrote a 1,000-word short story about a woman named Maggie, who had suffered a devastating loss. It was a dark piece, and at the time I couldn’t find a suitable home for it. Months later, while writing a poem, I realised the voice was familiar. The character in the poem was a version of Maggie - still grieving, still struggling to move on. That poem was published in the Poetry Supplement of the Teesside Evening Gazette in the UK.

Two years later, now living in New Zealand, I decided to enter the Commonwealth Short Story Contest. Maggie still haunted me, so I rewrote the story to meet the 600-word requirement. The tighter version was far more powerful. Maggie won first place in the Australia/New Zealand segment of the competition, was published in the Commonwealth magazine, professionally recorded, and later aired on BBC Radio. After that, the literary magazine Bravado asked to republish it alongside other New Zealand finalists.

So - one idea led to a published poem and then to an award-winning, multi-published, recorded, and broadcast short story.

And then there were further, entirely unplanned consequences.

Oxford University Press contacted me to adapt the piece for their Bookworm Library for students of English as a foreign language, and they also purchased the recording rights.

Now, some of you may be thinking, “You were just lucky. Apart from the poem, the rest was a domino effect that’s unlikely to happen to my work.” But if you’ve read my previous post, Invite Luck into Your Writing Life, you’ll know this is exactly my point. Chance and serendipity do play a role in success - but your work has to be out there, and it has to be good enough for Lady Luck to trip over.

Remember: if a piece means something to you, it’s far more likely to mean something to others. So why not widen your audience by rewriting it in a different genre? The more versions you have circulating, the greater your chances of finding the right home.

Which reminds me - if any film directors or producers happen to be reading this, I do have a finished, well-written screenplay version of Maggie available… just in case you’d like to take a look.

If you would like to read South Gare, the poem inspired by Maggie it appears in my collection Carved by Gravity available on Amazon (99cents at time of posting).

If you teach creative writing, my books Creative Writing for Children (tutors and home-school parents) and Creative Writing: A Teacher’s Guide are also available on Amazon ($3.99 at time of posting)

Denise Howie: World Famous in B.C. 
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Invite Luck into your Writing Life!

As in most areas of life, luck, chance, and serendipity do play a role in whether or not your writing gets published.

Back in the late 1990s, I was putting the final touches on my first short screenplay when Steve - our financial advisor at the time - dropped by with an update. We got chatting about my writing, and he mentioned that his colleague’s brother wrote “scripts of some sort.” He offered to pass mine along on the off-chance I might get some feedback.

Worth a try, I thought.

A few weeks later, my manuscript arrived back in the post, accompanied by a card from the financial advisor’s colleague’s brother. It read: “This is great. Send it to the head of the BBC and mention my name if you think it will help.”
Signed: Tony Jordan.

If you think it will help!

Tony Jordan was - and still is - one of the most prominent and respected screenwriters in the UK. At the time, he was known for iconic television series such as EastEnders and Minder. Since then, his work has included Hustle, Life on Mars, and The Nativity, to name just a fraction of an impressive career.

Luck struck again when the Head of the BBC actually replied, suggesting I submit the script to BBC Two’s 10 x 10 series. Then serendipity truly stepped in: the producer happened to know a young director who was looking for a script to develop.

That director was Sarah Gavron, who later went on to direct This Little Life, Brick Lane, Suffragette, and Rocks, among others. She saw raw potential in the script and decided to take a chance.

After many rewrites and revisions, the resulting ten-minute short film, The Girl in the Lay-by, received widespread critical acclaim. It was presented in the BAFTA Kodak Short Film Showcase and went on to win the Las Palmas Film Festival in 2001.

But luck alone didn’t do the work.

• I had put myself in the right position by having a finished, proofread, and edited script.

• I had learned how to format a screenplay properly, so it wasn’t rejected at first glance.

• I’d studied the basics of screenwriting.

• I had a unique story, well told.

• I was willing to rewrite and make constructive changes.

• And most importantly, I submitted the work. I sent it out into the world - even if, in this case, it was via Steve, Financial Advisor and one-time-only literary agent.

Keep writing. Hone your skills. Send your work out.

Do that, and luck and serendipity are far more likely to drop by for a visit.

Denise Howie: World Famous in B.C. 


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