A Little Happier: For Writer Isabel Allende, January 8 Is the Right Day to Begin. | Gretchen Rubin [Skip to content](#content) [  ](https://staging.gretchenrubin.com)
- August 30, 2021
# A Little Happier: For Writer Isabel Allende, January 8 Is the Right Day to Begin.
Happier with Gretchen Rubin
[Listen OnApple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/little-happier-for-writer-isabel-allende-january-8/id969519520?i=1000533513974)[Listen OnSpotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/05Qr88EZizJMB8s3iSxf0h)[Listen OnPandora](https://www.stitcher.com/show/happier-with-gretchen-rubin/episode/little-happier-for-writer-isabel-allende-january-8-is-the-right-day-to-begin-86428569)
Little Happier: For Writer Isabel Allende, January 8 Is the Right Day to Begin.
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EPISODE NOTES
In my book about habit change, *[Better Than Before](/book/better-than-before/),* I describe the 21 strategies we can use to make or break our habits.
One important strategy (well, they’re all important) is the [Strategy of First Steps](/articles/video-for-habits-the-strategy-of-first-steps/), which is all about the right time to begin. **The most important step is the first step, because until we take that first step, we haven’t begun. But beginning is hard.** That’s why the Strategy of First Steps is so important: it helps us figure out how to start.
I’m always fascinated to learn about different ways people grapple with the 21 strategies, so I was very interested to read about how the writer [Isabel Allende](https://www.isabelallende.com/) used the Strategy of First Steps by finding an auspicious day for her beginnings.
In 1981, Isabel Allende was living in Venezuela as a political refugee after the military coup in Chile, and working at a school.
On January 8, she got a phone call that her beloved grandfather was dying in Chile, and she couldn’t go back to say good-bye.
In her grief and frustration, she began writing a letter to him, a spiritual farewell, and this letter turned into her first novel.
She recalled:
> *I remembered everything he had ever told me—about his life, the family anecdotes, the history of our country. As soon as I began the letter I realized it was not a normal letter; it was part novel, part memoir, part family saga and political chronicle. My grandfather died without reading the letter and I continued to write at night and on the weekends in the kitchen of our apartment. I had a day job in a school and I worked 12 hours a day, so I didn’t have much free time, but I was obsessed with the writing. By the end of the year I had 500 pages of a very dirty manuscript on the kitchen counter. My first novel, The House of the Spirits ([Amazon](https://amzn.to/37VNfQz), [Bookshop](https://bookshop.org/a/15926/9781501117015)), had been born.*
That novel was an enormous international success, and for luck, when she started her next book, she began writing on January 8. That book, *Of Love and Shadows* ([Amazon](https://amzn.to/3AZhBhg), [Bookshop](https://bookshop.org/a/15926/9781501117046)), also did well, so, she explained:
> *After a few years and a few books, January 8th became a good habit; it gave me discipline. By then my life was complicated—I had to travel, lecture, do innumerable interviews, I was getting tons of mail—so if I didn’t organize my calendar I would never have the time, solitude, and silence I needed for each book. That’s why I have kept January 8th as my sacred day in the year, the day I lock myself away and start a new book. I have not started something new every year, because sometimes it takes me more than a year to write a book, but I have started every book on the same day.*
**For Isabel Allende, January 8 was a date that resonated deeply, and gave her the right time to start.** She held it as a sacred day, a day of remembrance and renewal, the right day to begin.
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# Like what you see? Explore more about this topic.
- [Habit Change](https://staging.gretchenrubin.com/secondary_tag/habit-change/), [Reading](https://staging.gretchenrubin.com/secondary_tag/reading/), [Writing](https://staging.gretchenrubin.com/secondary_tag/writing/)
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