What I personally do is to first type the title, then press either M-> or END to jump to the end of the buffer, and then just keep typing from there.

You can however place the date above the title if you want:

    (setq howm-view-title-header "*")
    (setq howm-template "%date %file\n* %title%cursor")

By adjusting the new file template, you can type the title and then just press enter and keep typing the content from there. Howm still understands where the title of the note is, since it looks for the first title header.

(If you like the default equal signs, you can skip the first setq above and replace "*" with "=" in the template.)