Author’s note, October 2026: I don’t write this way anymore.
The process below is how I drafted my first book during NaNoWriMo in 2017. It worked … sort of. I got a full draft. But by December, I was so wrung out that I didn’t open it for a year.
These days I write with the moon. I draft from new moon to full moon and edit from full moon to new moon. No daily word count. No sprint. That’s how I wrote my third and fourth books, Intuitive Writing and Writing with the Moon, and they were the easiest books I’ve ever written. (Explore them here).
I’m keeping the original process here because parts of it still hold up. The index cards. The batched blog posts. Writing whatever chapter feels alive that morning. Take what helps and leave the 1,667 words a day behind.
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Happy October! Cue annoying posts about the scent of fallen leaves and pumpkin spice lattes.
Cinnamon and cloves aside, fall is for writing.
You might even know October as “Preptober” if you’ve taken part in past NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month challenges in November.
🪦 RIP NaNoWriMo
As of this writing in October 2026, NaNoWriMo is no more. They’d been in the news for some not-so-awesome reasons. I wrote about some of them here as I share my sustainable, more suited to women NaNoWriMo alternative.
A few years ago, I quit attempting NaNoWriMo-style writing challenges. I found they left most people (mainly women) overwhelmed, burnt out, and defeated.
Before 2021, inside my writing community, we used to play with NaNoWriMo. I say “play” because, as a writing coach, I encourage my clients to do things on their terms — like writing 50,000 words of content instead of a novel. Or writing 20,000 words of content and 30,000 words for a book.
While many business owners are all too familiar with all the writing that comes with running a business — website copy, sales emails, blog content, podcast show notes, social media captions, proposals, email newsletters … so much writing! I’ve been writing professionally for 20+ years. More than half of that has been online, with three books and a decade of blogging. So I know just how much writing a business owner does.
Business owners decide to write books for many reasons. A book can serve as a calling card for their business, or perhaps it’s a personal passion project. Writing for a large project, such as a book, is a different beast for several reasons.
I first took part in this book writing project during NaNoWriMo in 2017, and published that book over three years later. It took three years because I ignored my NaNoWriMo draft. By the end of that November, I was so tired from cranking out 1,667+ words a day that I didn’t even want to look at that draft. That draft had been collecting digital dust for an entire year before I picked it up again.
How do you plan to write a book?
A business owner inside my writing community recently asked this:
How is a big project like a book different from writing a blog post? How can you be more creative about writing longer pieces?
There are many nuances to writing a book, and having published a mini-book and a memoir/self-development book, and drafted another book, I have some experience.
When you’re writing your first book, it can feel super challenging. It’s because you haven’t yet created the neurological container for writing a book. And once you DO write your book — you’ve proved to your unconscious mind that yes, you are an author — making writing the next book 99% easier.
If you decided at the last minute to write a book or simply hate planning, the good news is that you can take the unfussy road to book writing and fly by the seat of your pants. Prepare to be flexible! You can totally do this.
Here’s an intuitive approach to planning for Preptober when you have a business to run:
1. Preptober Planning.
In October 2017, I made very loose plans. I had a rough idea of the topics I wanted to write about. I grabbed 30 index cards, pulled out my Sharpies, and cranked up Metallica with the goal of one topic on each card. The whole process took 15 minutes.
2. Getting ahead on content creation.
Because I knew that I’d spend November writing 1,667 words a day on my book, I didn’t want my blogging to be an afterthought. And I had been blogging pretty consistently for five years at this point. I planned out my blog topics for November and wrote them all over the course of a week in October. Here is what my process looked like:
Monday - draft blog 1
Tuesday - edit blog 1 and schedule, draft blog 2
Wednesday - edit blog 2 and schedule, draft blog 3
Thursday - edit blog 3 and schedule, draft blog 4
Friday - edit and schedule blog 4
That’s a month’s worth of content written in a week in 1-2 hours a day. Another approach you can take if you plan ahead is to work on November content starting in September.
3. Surrendered First Draft (SFD) book writing.
Within the container of NaNoWriMo, knowing I had 30 chapters (and would later combine or scrap some), I created a spreadsheet to track each chapter. Each morning (mostly in the morning anyway), I’d either choose a topic randomly or flip through the list of topics, choose the one I felt most excited or energized to write about in the moment and write as fast as I could, SFD style, to get to 1,667 words or more. Sometimes, I’d write for 30 minutes and come back to it in the evening. Sometimes, I’d write for an hour. No editing, no revising, no revisiting. I barfed it out, closed the Google dDoc and moved on to client work for the day.
4. Repeat 29 times.
The next day, I did the same thing: I didn't go back and edit; I didn't look at them; I just got the shitty first draft out of my brain, then moved on to the next one. I did that for 30 days and then went back in, revisited everything, and did some edits.
5. Putting it all together.
I created a separate Google Doc for each chapter. So when it came time to put it all together, I could put it in the order that made sense. I still reordered it many times later, which is totally fine. Then I put it all into one big document, with chapters, to do a few more full revisions.
What I did differently with my fourth book.
I started drafting my fourth book in spring 2024, and it came out as Writing with the Moon in May 2026.
It was a joy to write. Easy, fun, surrendered. So easy, in fact, that I barely remember writing it.
Here’s the whole process:
New moon to full moon: write drafts
Full moon to new moon: edit those drafts
That’s it. The moon does the planning for you. I tested the materials in this book on myself and my clients while writing it over two years.
If you want the full method, with daily practices for every phase, it’s all in Writing with the Moon.
Done prepping? Here’s where to start writing.
Finding Flow begins on the new moon, November 9. For 29 days you’ll get a short daily prompt from me and a live call each week, so all that October planning turns into published words.
