Larks and Owls by Misha Herwin

 

I’ve just read about a piece of research that has come to the conclusion that Owls, those of us who function better at night, are more creative than Larks. Being a Lark myself I found that an interesting conclusion to come to. It’s true that, unlike my owl friends, I work better in the morning, but that doesn’t mean that I produce less work than they do. In fact if I can make sure of a couple of undisturbed hours after breakfast I can get a lot done and I think that I have recently completed the last book in the Adventures of Letty Parker series speaks for itself. Six books in five years, plus three “Awesome Adventures of Poppy and Amelia” and the soon to be published “Friday Nights at Rosa’s” isn’t a bad record.

Does this disprove the theory? I doubt it. I’m sure there are a lot of owls out there who have written more and in any event the number of books or short stories are no real indicator of creativity.

There are other factors to take into account. Life style for one. Writers with full time jobs or young children have to grab whatever free time they have. Sometimes those few minutes are when inspiration strikes, or you re-write the paragraph you have been struggling with.

Then there is the three o’clock in the morning syndrome, when you wake with ideas teaming in your brain. When that happens to me I have to get up and capture them in a notebook otherwise I won’t be able to go back to sleep.

Does that make me a hybrid, a bit of an owl with a large streak of lark? Or is the truth that we all work in very different ways and it is impossible to stick a label on any writer?