Embrace Your Strange

Discover your writing quirks and use them to your advantage.

- BY PAUL NICOLAUS

John Steinbeck kept precisely one dozen pencils atop his desk. Agatha Christie snacked on apples—in the bathtub—while mapping out murder mysteries. Colette plucked fleas from her French bulldog's back until she felt prepared to write. Weird? Perhaps. Effective? It sure seems like everything worked out for these scribes. Let's face it: Words flow in mysterious ways.

In Odd Type Writers, Celia Blue Johnson reminds us that the literary world is filled with plenty of examples of strange, shocking, and hilarious habits that some of history's greatest writers have put to good use on their way to winning major awards, wide acclaim, and legendary status.

The reality is that many writers—famous or not—have their own little eccentricities, and in many instances, they end up evolving into assets that boost creativity and authenticity. So, instead of staring at a blank notebook or screen for hours on end, try putting some extra effort into discovering and embracing the wonderful peculiarities that happen to work well for you.

WHY SOME QUIRKS WORK

It turns out that our habits help provide an element of psychological comfort and safety. They act as triggers, signaling to the brain that it's time to stop procrastinating and start creating. Routines can serve as anchors for focus or imaginative thinking, and embracing them might just help nurture your unique voice.

“A lot of habitually creative people have preparation rituals linked to the setting in which they choose to start their day. By putting themselves into that environment, they start their creative day,” Twyla Tharp points out in The Creative Habit. To help illustrate, she highlights composer Igor Stravinsky, who would enter his studio, sit down at the piano, and play a Bach tune every morning.

“Perhaps he needed the ritual to feel like a musician, or the playing somehow connected him to musical notes, his vocabulary,” Tharp explains.