How I Wrote and Published a Book in 60 Hours 📖

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The interview was transcribed from a verbal conversation, so answers are lightly edited for clarity where needed. You can find the full convo on Word to the Wise; as I’ve only pasted parts of it below.

Bailey: Tell me about your journey to writing The Cycle Syncing Handbook.

Angie: I never thought I would write a book about periods. I do remember being nine years old and thinking I'd be an author someday. But as a teenager, I started getting all of these messages from society and school and magazines about what my body should be doing, or what I should be making my body do.

Long story short: I ended up having a few years where I was extremely disconnected from my body. I lost my period for about a year, and then just as I was getting my period back, I had an ectopic pregnancy that ended up rupturing my Fallopian tube and led me into emergency surgery.

That was rock bottom for me, where I realized, “Oh wow, I’m so disconnected from my body that I didn't even realize I was dying.” The biggest part of my healing journey was learning about my body and becoming body literate, especially around my menstrual cycle.

I became obsessed with birth and fertility and pregnancy and everything reproduction. I began teaching people fertility awareness for birth control or for pregnancy. I was teaching people about menstrual cycle awareness and their inner seasons, and I got to a point where I could tell: This isn't it. This isn't the long-term business.

It was good for me to practice and start becoming a business owner, but it wasn't what I was going to do long-term. And, of course, that's when a publisher reached out to me. I got an email from a publisher in Berkeley, CA, that I thought was a scam at first.

On a phone call, they told me about their process for finding new authors. They have their sales and acquisitions team meet quarterly, and they start to look at the market for emerging trends and niche topics where there aren't a lot of books. Once they determine the topics that they would love to publish books about, they comb the internet for consultants and coaches and anyone with a small business who has some sort of body of work online that fits what they're looking for.

That ended up being me. I thought I’d closed that chapter of life. I thought I was done with the Hormone Hacker. But also, I'd had that lifelong dream of wanting to write books.

I feel weird saying this, because I know some people would kill to write a book and for me, it fell into my lap. But honestly, I saw it as, like, “Okay, you know what? This is a practice book. It is not going to be my life masterpiece.”

I don't actually focus on selling this book a lot, but it feels really good to have that opportunity handed to me in a way that I felt was going to give me a good foundation for whatever I do in the future.

Bailey: How did you decide you were going to take this opportunity, knowing this book isn’t the book?

Angie: I started off hesitant, because during that year, I kept telling myself I don't have to climb the wrong mountains just because I love to climb. This was a metaphor a life coach gave me, because I have always been the person to just say yes. I will take it on and spin a million plates at once.

I started to get overwhelmed, especially after I went fully self employed. I was so overwhelmed doing free work, underpaid work, helping other people out—and I still need to pay off my student loans.

The way that I look at the menstrual cycle is that I have four different versions of myself throughout a month. During my follicular phase, it feels like an inner spring where I'm really inspired. In my inner summer, around ovulation, there might be weeks of the cycle where I feel like, “I'll write the book. I'll do whatever. Give me more. You know what? I'll do it for free.”

And then in my inner autumn, in my premenstrual time, I would start seeing more of those obstacles to writing a book. Do I actually have time for this? Do I actually even want to do this? Will this help me with my goals?

When I finally get my period, that's when I feel my most intuitive during the cycle. So I decided, “You know what, I'm going to take a full cycle of days to really think about this.” I was not putting pressure on myself to make a decision right away.

By the time my next period rolled around, I knew intuitively that this was a super unique opportunity, and what's the worst that could happen? I spend a lot of time practicing writing. So I decided, let's do it.

Bailey: What was the writing process like once you decided to take this project on?

Angie: I definitely had an advantage, because I had had years’ worth of course materials and blog posts. To be honest, this book is definitely more of a culmination of all of those blog posts and coursework. It's not like this brand new material that I was creating. It's not the number one thought leadership book in the world.

It really felt more like a capstone to a project that I decided to sunset, and so I tried not to let myself feel guilty about repurposing what was already existing.

There's also plenty that didn't make it into the book. The book doesn't teach you how to chart your cycle, for example, because I didn't want to write a more science-y book where people would get mad at me if they did it wrong and ended up pregnant when they didn't want to be.

So I made it a mindset book. I decided I was going to take all that I have about periods and menstrual cycle awareness and the four season framework and repurpose it.

I started off thinking, “I'm going to have structure. I'm going to write X-thousand words a day, and I'm going to do it exactly in this order.” And within a couple days, I was like, “Whoa. That is antithetical to everything I'm talking about in this book.”

In fact, in the creativity chapter, I have a table showing what linear writing would look like, which is forcing yourself to do X amount of words a day, or making yourself show up to your desk every single day, even when you're not feeling inspired. This is versus more cyclical thinking, which would be some days, I'm writing zero words and other days I'm writing 5,000 words.

Some days I feel like really in the mood for editing, where other days I feel more in the mood for outlining, and other days I feel really like the words are just coming out, and I can really trace those to the different parts of my cycle.

So I decided I need to practice what I preach. If I'm writing a book about how to use your menstrual cycle for creativity and living a happier, happier, healthier life, then that's how I'm going to write the book.

It really ended up being so unstructured. And I know some people might balk at that and think, “Oh my gosh, I need structure.” We all have different preferences and personalities. But I wonder what would happen if you just tried for a week to really tune into your energy. Are you in the mood for editing? Are you in the mood for creating, drafting?

I almost feel ashamed sharing this. It feels a little risky to say, like people would get mad: I tracked my time pretty diligently, and it took me about 60 hours total to draft and edit the 35,000 words. In the grand scheme of things, that’s nothing. I think that kind of proves that the method really worked for me.

Bailey: What would you do differently for your next book?

Angie: One thing that I don't know if I'm necessarily insecure about, because I did make the conscious decision of making this a capstone of what I had existing online, but I do think that the next book would be a little bit more… stand-out.

It would have to repel certain people more. I think when I was writing this book, I was trying to write it for every menstruator, and I'm really leaning into the season now of come at me if you don't agree with me.

I’m going to declare what I believe. And if you're not my people, you don't have to be my people. I want to be more radical in my messaging. I want to be super out of the box.

I want to show off more of my thought leadership, instead of trying to be something for everybody. I have an idea that I think will be the book someday, and I think that it's going to be maybe more controversial, something I'm okay with people hating if they hate it.

Plus some background on working with a publisher and money:

It gave me some background on the nuts and bolts of writing a book with a publisher, because I got to skip the proposal. I didn't need a literary agent. I had a lot of privilege, to be honest, in the fact that an indie publisher identified me and then came to me.

It also means that their budget wasn't big, right? I got a $4,000 advance. Actually, here's a tip, if an indie publisher comes to anybody... They offered me, I think, a $3,000 advance. I hemmed and hawed for a bit. I decided that because I’d need to take some time off work to focus on writing the manuscript in just five months, could they do $4,000? They immediately said yes, and I immediately thought I should have asked for more.

99% of people won’t rescind an offer because you ask for more. It is always a conversation.

Now that I have an idea of how the nuts and bolts work, I think I would consider self-publishing or working with specific publishers that I have a connection with through my other work.

I would weigh the pros and cons of self-publishing versus indie publisher versus big publisher, and figure out not just energy-wise and how much I have to put into marketing myself, but also how many hours are going to go into this, and does that advance really pay off?

I think $4,000 for my next book wouldn't be enough. That might mean that I self-publish, because if I could sell that through my other work, then I have a better chance of selling more copies

Check out my book!

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Wondering how you got here? Hi, I’m Angie! 👋 I’m a creative director and not-elite-just-enthusiastic athlete living in the mountains and rivers of Washington. I talk about the tough stuff — Blood, Sweat, and Fear — with the goal of building a happier, healthier world for women. You can check out all the ways to work with me here, or follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn.

For Fall-Winter 2025, I currently have some space available for 1:1 women’s creative consulting as well as sports and outdoor brand support.