The Non-Writer's Creative Process
Breaking down the nonfiction creative process when creating isn't your top priority.
Lots of people have written about the creative process or stages of writing a book, but it’s always in the context of writers or people who want to become writers. In my experience, the process changes when a book is just one part of your larger work in the world.
While working on this post, I went on the hunt for a specific articulation about the creative process that I was positive I had read before.
I searched everywhere. My co-working chats, my inbox, old courses, and of course, Google.
Google was the most disappointing of all. Looking for the “creative process” returned so many definitive questions. “What are the 5 stages of the creative process?” “What are the 6 steps to writing a book?” As though there’s something set in stone that we all should know, but apparently, we all have different sets of stones.
At the same time, each framework came down to the same basic principles: have an idea, build out the idea, refine the idea, publish a book.
Lists like those provide clarity for all of ten minutes. As soon as you hit a blank page, you’re no longer happy when someone says “Just bUiLD ThE iDeA.”
I finally found what I was looking for in an old newsletter of Jennie Nash’s. Pre-Substack. She said:
While the experience of the creative process is going to be unique for each individual writer, the creative process itself is actually not especially unique. All writers must go through key stages, including:
Landing on an idea that motivates them to bring it to life
Committing to that idea
Developing the skills and the habits to bring it to life
Revising and refining the work
Deciding when to be done
Finding a way to get the work into readers’ hands
A transformation journey will incorporate all these steps.
Now that is a creative process.
The acknowledgement of a transformation occurring, first of all, is wildly important. It reminds me of my midwives explaining that each time I birthed one of my babies, I also birthed the newer version of me who would become their mom.
Jennie’s steps also emphasize the investment of time and energy that the process of writing a book requires. There’s no watering it down with “6 simple steps” to keep you around long enough to buy into a program.
Nope. The only commitment here is to your own idea, and it’s an optional step. If you need to, you can opt out right there, no harm done.
If you had to, you could take this understanding of the creative process and make it work. (Thank you, Alice Sudlow for digging this out of your inbox for me! I knew we still had it!)
But let’s go one step further. Let’s adapt the creative process to the non-writer’s experience, as I’ve witnessed it during so many book “births” over the years.
1. Feeling the Pull
You’ve lived a full life. You’ve learned so much and have guided people toward those same realizations.
You know that you’re brilliant at what you do.
If that phrasing triggers some imposter syndrome, let’s put it this way: you have seen some shit, done some shit, or know some shit.
Yep, that’s what I thought.
So when that “Maybe I should write a book” thought tugs at you, a not so small part of you wants to listen. You know there’s something brewing that could be significant for you, for the people you serve, maybe even your whole industry. Maybe…
But as much as you’re pulled by what sometimes feels like a calling, you’ve already committed to what you know is your calling. And that calling does not include going back into learning mode to figure out how to write.
Normal challenges when you feel the pull
Who am I to write a book? HOW am I to write a book? There’s not enough time. I don’t know where to start.
Feeling guilty every time someone says “you should write a book.” Worrying about the resources a book will take up, especially if you’re in a transitional stage in your growth.
Looking for other books with the message that’s pulling you, hoping it already exists. Feeling capable in the rest of your life and lost when you start to think about writing.
Benefits of being a non-writer at this stage
The same self-awareness that gives you all of those challenging feelings is the awareness that will make your book great.
You care. You’re not going to add to the noise with a book for book’s sake. If you do step into this process, it’ll be for good reason.
Listen to the pull—it’s telling you what that reason is.
Plus, can I tell you a secret? You’ve already lived your rough draft.
All of your lived experiences, all of your hard-fought wisdom, everything you’ve learned—it’s all there already. Writing is just one tool we can use to sift through that raw material and decide how to package it up.
This is Jennie’s “landing on an idea that motivates you” stage, except you don’t have to search for that idea. It’s already found you. If you’re open to listening, it’ll show you where to go.
2. Gathering the Pieces
This step of the non-writer’s creative process might be the biggest differentiation from Jennie’s list. (And that’s okay—there’s room for all of us here.)
“Developing the skills and the habits to bring it to life” is good, important work in a lot of cases. But in our case, it’s a good way to hide while beating ourselves up.
I want to reach through the Zoom screen and give my authors a hug every time I see their shoulders slumped, head down, shruggy “I just have to get it together and then…” apologies.
You have nothing to apologize for.
You already have so many skills and habits around the most important parts of your work. You are already disciplined where you need to be. (And I’m saying that as a big time ADHD autistic brain-chaos-monster, so no, I have it on good authority that you are not an exception.)
So what, you haven’t managed to set aside time from your business, your family, the professional transition you’re making, your big dreams for the future, and the bits of self-care you’ve learned to prioritize so you don’t burn all the way out AND THEN WRITE A BOOK?
That does not make you “too undisciplined” to write.
Be kind to you.
We can work on habits and practices if you’d like, yes. But that’s not the most important thing. First, we need to take the step of gathering all those pieces of your rough draft that you’ve lived over the years and give yourself credit for that work, even if it doesn’t look like a “proper” draft yet.
Writing as we’re going about it is not something you start from scratch. It’s about gathering all of that wisdom up and acknowledging just how brilliant it is.
This is less hunt for a missing puzzle piece in shag carpet and more gather shells on the beach and sort them out later.
Normal challenges when you’re gathering the pieces
Overwhelm. Feeling “all over the place.” Looking at all of the things you’ve written and said and done and knowing you should be able to do something with them, but what?
Thinking too hard about how to structure a book, all the steps left to come, whether anything you’ve got is “good enough.”
Not having a clear idea. Having too many clear ideas, but not knowing which one(s) are attached to the book that’s tugging at you.
Feeling pot-committed to whatever you’ve already written; not knowing what is worth keeping and what isn’t.
Trying to write to a blank page without gathering anything up. Trying to move the pieces you’ve gathered to the page too soon.
Trying at all, instead of just observing and curiously exploring the idea that’s brewing.
Benefits of being a non-writer at this stage
The presentations you’ve given. The blogs you’ve written. The notes you’ve taken in the middle of the night. The thing you’ve found yourself saying to people over and over again. The process that you’ve led so many times. The weird background you probably have.
Just being you.
If you’re feeling drawn to something as significant as a book and have a mission you’re still moving toward, then it’s probably not the first time you’ve chased multiple threads at once.
Being “not a writer” is not a character flaw. It’s part of what makes your perspective so unique all on its own. You don’t have to go digging for a cool idea and then force yourself to bring it to life.
You just have to get a fresh perspective on how powerful it is to just. be. you.
3. Aligning to Purpose
The thought of “committing to an idea” when you’ve already committed to a larger purpose can stop even the most powerful books from coming to life.
It can keep you in gathering stage indefinitely, or make you stop gathering all together. All while the pull is still pulling and the need for the book is still growing.
So, don’t.
The work of writing will be to connect the dots between the idea that’s pulling you, the pieces you’ve gathered, and your larger purpose. And where most of the writing world will have you do that on the page, you’re much better off taking a wider lens to the project first.
How can your book continue to serve the people you already serve, in a deeper way?
How can your book bring you to people you’d like to serve but haven’t yet connected with?
What impact are you setting out to make in the world? What role will your book play in that effort?
Giving your ideas a direction within the work you’ve already committed to will go so much further than adding a fresh commitment to your already full plate.
Align your readers to the people you’re already motivated to reach, align your authorship to the authority you already have or are building, and align your book to the work you know you’re here to do.
Normal challenges when you’re aligning to purpose
I can’t publish just anything—a bad book will jeopardize my reputation. I want to write this book, but it can’t get in the way of what I’m trying to do in the world.
Does my background qualify me to write this anyway? I don’t want to be laughed out of this industry…
Books are more permanent than we let ourselves believe other forms of media are. The internet may be forever, but at least there’s a delete button to make outdated content harder to find.
Books are also more vulnerable than shorter form content tends to be. If we have to fill up the pages with personal stories or present the ideas as though we have some kind of authority, will it backfire and make us look bad?
Benefits of being a non-writer at this stage
Have I mentioned how much you care?
The book Snow Leopard talks about Obvious and Non-obvious content that addresses Obvious and Non-obvious problems.
Writers who want to be writers are often drawn to solving Obvious problems with Obvious content. Snow Leopard harshly, but not wrongly, categorizes this content as “stupid.” It might go viral, but it’s not going to change anyone’s life.
If you’ve ever looked at an author’s catalog of books and thought, “This is so basic. If they can do it, I definitely should be able to…” take a second look at what they’re writing.
Could you let yourself write that kind of material? Or do you only want to create book-length material if it’s going to mean something to yourself, your people, and the world?
I know this is terrible news for the part of you that wants to move quickly.
But the part of you that wants your work to matter? That’s the part that will make the book worthwhile once it’s done. It’s the part that will make a book that changes people.
Your book might not go viral, but it will make waves into the future in ways you can’t possibly predict.
So don’t stress about committing to the right idea, the best idea, the idea that someone else wants you to produce. Instead, spend time getting clear on the direction you’re headed and who you’re bringing with you. And then see how the book aligns to that movement.
4. The Resistance Pause
This step is not named in any creative process I found, and it’s not because writers don’t experience it. All writers face resistance. Steven Pressfield wrote a whole book about it.
That’s exactly why I want to be clear that it is a normal, recurring, difficult, important step in the creative process. Especially for a non-writer.
I also want to warn you that this step will likely happen more than once. It’s not something you can check off of your to-do list and never revisit. But it is highly likely to show up here first, just after you’ve seen your book fitting into the direction of your life’s work.
It’s something you can’t unsee, which means it can’t be ignored. Which means every protective mechanism in your brain that wants to keep you “safe” in the status quo is going to sound the alarms.
While Pressfield led the way with heartfelt, wisdom-born advice to stay the course and maintain your practice in the face of resistance, remember that he was talking to writers. Artists in general, but writers specifically.
Writers are writing to deadlines, surviving via the writing they produce, and thriving through the act of consistent creation. They do need a reliable way to keep moving in spite of resistance.
If powering through is not working for you as a non-writer, I’m not surprised. And it’s okay.
The only reason you’ll reach this point is because you’ve gathered enough pieces and created enough clarity and alignment to bring the book into view as an important part of your larger work.
If you shift gears now to focus on the outcome of “finishing a book,” no matter how intense the feelings of resistance get, no matter how much stress it creates—would you still be in alignment with your purpose?
Without keeping your focus dialed in to the bigger vision of life with a book, you’ll lose your alignment, and then your energy, and potentially your ability to keep moving toward your larger purpose.
Pause. Realign. And then move forward.
Normal challenges when you’re in the resistance pause
Perfectionism rears its symmetrical (but still ugly) head here. But it’s different than in the early stages.
It’s not a perfectionism that stops you on the merit of your writing ability or your understanding of the book-writing process. It’s on a deeper level, causing you to question the merit of your ideas and worthiness compared to others.
What’s worse, you’ve gotten far enough into the process that you see that you actually could be able to write a book and that it would be a powerful part of the work you’re doing.
So now, when you feel stuck, you’re more compelled than ever to get unstuck.
When you question whether you should keep going, you feel a sense of loss now that the vision for the book is more than just a vague potential.
You try to overcome those thoughts by rekindling excitement for the book. But then you picture the permanence of a finished book—or all the steps left to get there—and overwhelm kicks in again.
All of the experiences and expertise that felt so robust when you were gathering the pieces now feel weird or inadequate compared to other authors you admire.
In short, your inner critic is loud, and the emotional weight of writing a book feels heavy.
Benefits of being a non-writer at this stage
Because the work of writing is where the magic happens, and because your larger purpose is the priority more than the finished product, there is absolutely no cause for concern when resistance rears up and leads to a pause.
As a non-writer, you're free to explore your ideas and let them evolve, without being boxed in by industry standards or deadlines. You have the unique ability to let the book develop at its own pace, while applying your growing sense of clarity to smaller, more accessible projects as you go.
I will not tell you to fight through resistance to get to the book, because the book isn’t the point.
Everything you’ve gathered and aligned to this point has already told you more about yourself and your work than you’d named before the creative process began.
And you’re never, ever stuck in this process for its own sake. You can take the work you’ve done and apply it to something other than a book whenever you need to.
Nothing is ever wasted. Not even time.
And as it turns out, resistance can’t bully you when its old jabs don’t land anymore.
Instead of fighting against resistance until you have a book, fight for your larger vision.
Use this pause to double down on your alignment and move other aspects of your mission forward. Take the noise of resistance as a sign that you’re on the right track toward creating something powerful, and let that reassurance energize you in the spaces you can access.
The pause isn’t a failure—it’s a necessary step when you’re bringing a powerful vision to life. It’s a normal part of growth, for both you and your work.
Let the process breathe, and trust that the time will come when the energy flows back to the book. And when it inevitably does, the work will be richer and stronger because of the time you took to realign.
5. Stretching (without Pulling a Muscle)
By this point, your pause has ended (for now) and the work of writing is in full swing. It’s where “revising and refining the work” comes in, with a catch.
Now that you know you’ve already lived your rough draft, you consider all of the written work as “revising and refining,” even if it’s happening on a blank page.
And because you’ve doubled-down on alignment with your purpose, you’re starting to see which of the pieces you’ve gathered can be used and where.
You’ve stopped trying to “write a book” and instead spend time creating a specific experience for a specific reader. You’re working from your strengths instead of fighting your most natural flow.
You might even find that your conversations around this topic are starting to change, bringing up new insights you’ve discovered about your perspective throughout this process.
You have traction and even some momentum, though you’re constantly aware of how fragile that momentum could be.
If you look too hard at your words, you know your inner critic is just waiting to jump in and take over. If you think too hard about how much work is left, you know overwhelm could stop you in your tracks. If you listen too closely to the “write a book in 6 months” or “just put your ass in the chair and write” crew, you’ll fall right back to square one.
Meanwhile, life goes on and so does your work, sometimes at an accelerated pace because of the work of writing.
The transition that was once on the horizon seems more accessible now, and you’re taking more opportunities to get there. The growth you were hoping for gets its own traction thanks to new ideas you’ve come to, and that’s taking up more time too.
In the movie Finding Nemo, a glowing anglerfish draws in the two main fishies with a hypnotic sense of calm and happiness…until the whole fish is revealed, the spell is broken, and the character Marlin deadpans the line: “Good feelings gone.”
Stretching without pulling a muscle is understanding what your limitations are and how you can press into them before hitting the “good feelings gone” moment and having to swim for your life.
Normal challenges when you’re stretching
Am I wasting my time? Is this any good? Why don’t the words on the page look like the ideas in my head? How much longer will this take? Can I sustain this energy for the entire process?
The “learn to write” and process/template/ghostwriter approaches are heavily sold to this stage of the non-writer’s creative process. If you lose sight of your alignment, it’ll be easy to fall into their recommended paths. Be careful, though, because sometimes they are the cause of some seriously pulled muscles.
“Learn to write” addresses the immediate concerns you’re feeling about the quality of work on the page, and it may even sound aligned to your slowed-down pace that allows for the book to emerge when it’s time.
However, that emergence is about the message coming to life, not your technical skills while writing it.
Skilled writing is a lifelong practice that you can begin now and never fully complete. And the protective part of your brain that doesn’t want you to step into this brand new level of growth will absolutely use that lifelong practice to keep you busy learning instead of sharing.
When the pendulum swings in the other direction and you just want to be done already, someone’s time-bound program or process or tool will catch your attention.
But if those processes are ultimately designed to create books-as-products, the odds are good that they’ll push you through it until you have “a” book in hand.
Not because it’s the book you felt the pull to write, but because their social proof depends on you completing the project.
Stretching without pulling a muscle is pressing into new areas of practice and ability while staying fully present to those areas. And you’ll have to keep a lot of internal and external voices at bay to do so.
Benefits of being a non-writer at this stage
This isn’t your first experience with personal growth, and it won’t be the last. You’ve weathered other transitions in your life and career. You can get through this one too.
The trick is to remember that you’re still you, with all of your expertise and wisdom. Nothing about you has changed just because you’re writing a book, and there are no rules about how you are allowed to go about it.
Lean on your strengths as much as possible. How do you like to create presentations? Lesson plans? Retreats? What is your creative process within your business or for your clients?
Are you a verbal processor or a written processor?
Do you love spreadsheets and PowerPoints?
Do you journal every morning by hand?
Do you talk to a specific person regularly who soundboards your ideas?
Start in those spaces and stretch from there.
I have multiple clients writing their books inside of powerpoint right now, because we haven’t hit a wall yet where that isn’t a comfortable space for them. And if it isn’t broken, we’re not going to fix it.
Use familiar strategies to make regular progress, hold lots of grace and space for the times you need to stretch into unfamiliar practices, and partner with a coach and/or editor to support you through the rest.
6. Seeing the Light
Eventually, after rotating through the previous steps at least a few times, your book comes together.
There are moments where you’re fed up with it and don’t want to take another look. There are others where you’re blown away at what you’ve been able to articulate and can’t wait to show it off.
Either way, it’s clear that the time of writing is ending and the time of authorship is around the corner.
I love that Jennie calls this “deciding when to be done,” because that’s 100% the case. All writers could stay in the incubator of creation forever, if they wanted to. But that’s not why you stepped into this process.
You’re here to bring a specific message to a specific person, and now that message is clearer than it’s ever felt before.
And that clarity is exactly what will help you decide when to be done.
As bittersweet as it might feel to transition out of the process of writing (especially if you were working closely with someone and don’t want to lose that collaboration), you’re beginning to see that the process gave you so much more than a book.
It helped you wrap your head around a mass of ideas until one clear message emerged.
It helped you see yourself and your work in a different light.
It gave you a new perspective on your audience’s experiences and how to meet them in it.
Even before the book is published, you’ll have the ability to connect with people on a deeper level than you ever have before. And maybe, just maybe, you’re ready to start doing that now.
Normal challenges when you’re seeing the light
Finalizing your book is an emotional rollercoaster. The rewards are incredible, but they pile up just as much as the fears until the whole thing is running away from you.
More technical steps are introduced, like types of editing or design choices or publishing logistics. You’re working with more people than you have up to this point. Every decision that you have to make feels either way too heavy or too silly to waste time on.
It’s a whirlwind.
But in my experience, the whirlwind feeling is about more than just the details. It’s that the details constantly remind you how close you are to letting the project take on a life of its own.
The good news is, that’s exactly why we’ve taken time with each step prior to this one. Because yes, all of the same imposter feelings from Feeling the Pull are here again. But you’re not the same person you were back then.
Slowly, without realizing it, you’ve become an author.
Benefits of being a non-writer at this stage
The pull that you felt back in step 1 hasn’t stopped. You might not notice it as much, but that’s because you’re following it instead of fighting it. The tension is gone, but the movement is still happening.
And that pull is an advantage you have that a “writer” might not.
Deciding when to be done with a fantasy novel that has a million possibilities for its universe? Hard. Deciding when to be done with the novel that you’ve worked on since college? Hard. Deciding when to be done with a self-help book that some agent asked for because your TikTok went viral? So hard.
But when you’re following the pull of a bigger idea, and you’ve seen how that idea is aligned to your purpose or life’s work, it’s so much easier to know when you’re done.
This is why we’ve kept our eyes on your larger goals this whole time, from keeping the book connected to allowing space for you to keep pursuing it. Because it’s a hidden strength that sets apart the non-writer’s creative process.
Seeing the light at the end of a long, sometimes scary tunnel is still bittersweet. It’s still emotional. But instead of being an even scarier “go towards the light” or anglerfish moment, it can be that last jolt of energy you need to complete this project.
Take some time to reflect on how far you’ve come. To celebrate who you’ve become. And then get ready. Where you’re going next is a whole adventure of its own.
7. Birth and Rebirth
The truth behind this entire post and every other creative process article or school of thought out there is this: creation is creation is creation.
The way your steps fall will be as unique as you are, but the underlying functions will be the same.
And nowhere is the creative process more evident than in the process of birth.
There is an anxious, excited pull of “this might be happening” that energizes last bits of nesting in the early stages of labor. There is a rush to make sure your expected birth plan is in order, or to adapt if something has changed.
Often, there is a stall in progress that can be incredibly disheartening if you’re not prepared for it. When you take the opportunity to rest and allow everything to realign, the difficult work of staying present during intense contractions begins.
Emotions peak as you transition from laboring to birthing, often with some seriously irrational thoughts like “Never mind, I don’t want a baby anymore, we can be done now.”
And then the baby is here, and you are too, but in a fresh, raw way that you aren’t quite sure what to make of yet.
Now, just like every birth will be different—different speeds, intensity, complexities, victories, tragedies—so will every creative birth. A process is not a prescription. If you fall outside of this “range of normal” in this creative process, it doesn’t mean you are wrong or broken. It means you’re creating.
But keeping this process in mind can help you gauge your expectations and relax into stages that can’t possibly be normal (like pausing without being afraid that resistance has “won”) but absolutely are.
That brings us to our final step. And just as the work of becoming a new parent is never really over, your life as the author of this book has just begun.
Normal challenges when you’re birthing the book and rebirthing yourself
Anxiety before the book goes live. A sometimes anticlimactic publishing day. An emotional crash once the book is live.
Fear around leaving the “nest” of your writing space to this point. Fear around what might happen once the book is out of your hands.
Worry that all of the confidence you’ve gained in your voice and message over the months of creation were for naught. That you’re going to step into the world with excitement and no one is going to meet you there.
You’re also facing new unknowns around being published and what that needs to look like. In a way, you’re cycling back around to “feeling the pull” all over again, with the same anxieties and overwhelm.
But you still have every single tool, practice, and mindset shift you gained along the way. And as long as you stay aligned to your purpose and committed to the reader you want to reach, you’ll have everything you need to keep up the momentum that writing has created.
Benefits of being a non-writer at this stage
Writers do two things here: they “find a way to get the work into readers’ hands,” per Jennie Nash’s process, and they find another book to write. Steven Pressfield starts his the very next day after sending the book off to production.
Unless your transformation has shifted you from non-writer to writer, your book-parent life will probably look and feel quite different.
The good news is, you’ve spent time in every step before this one articulating what that could look like. You’ve probably started moving in that direction already.
The better (I promise) news is, you’re going to keep growing and changing.
When Tim Ferriss wrote The 4-Hour Workweek, he spent most of the book hyping up what life was like as “the new rich” and how you could optimize your life to mirror theirs.
But there is one tiny little chapter near the end titled Postpartum Depression, where he gets real. He talks about the crash that happens after you reach a big goal, especially one that is transformational. And he has no real solutions.
From what I can tell, he was right in the thick of it at the time, trying to sort his way through. It was a blip of a moment in an otherwise tactical book.
And then he went on to become the writer that we know him to be, producing more books and content and happily getting paid to do so.
You may experience a similar crash after publishing. I’m not going to take that out of the non-writer’s process. But you don’t have to stay there.
Because you know where you’re going next.
You have goals that this book was always meant to help you reach.
Whatever happens on launch day. Whatever bestseller tags you do or don’t get. Whatever your sales look like in a month or a year—none of that matters.
You’re out to change your corner of the world. You’re going to be busy with that for a while. And now you have a book to help you do it.
However your creative process unfolds, remember this: The process of writing is where the magic happens; a book is just one way to see that magic manifest.
Want to dig into this topic further in a workshop? Reply or comment to let me know.