How to Start a Blog During Nap Time

Pick a topic you can sustain

The biggest mistake: choosing a topic that sounds smart but you don't actually want to write about for a year.

Before anything else, ask Claude to pressure-test your topic against three questions:

• Can you think of 30 posts you'd be excited to write?
• Is there a specific person you're writing for, or are you writing to "everyone"?
• What's your unfair advantage — experience, access, angle — that makes your take different?

Narrow is better. A blog about "productivity" is lost in the noise. A blog about "building software businesses during parental leave" has a shot.

The 3-session launch

Session 1: Platform + domain + premise

Platform options: Ghost (best writing experience, paid), WordPress (most flexible, more setup), Substack (fastest to start, built-in audience), Medium (don't). Pick one. Register a domain. Connect it. Write the About page.

Session 2: First post

Write the pillar post — the one that explains your whole premise. This is the post you'll link to from everything else. Make it substantial. Claude can help outline, find gaps, and edit. Your job is to say the thing only you can say.

Session 3: Second post and publish both

Never publish one post and leave the blog naked. Write a second one (shorter is fine), publish both, add internal links between them.

A sustainable weekly workflow

• Monday session: Pick this week's topic from your running list. Ask Claude to outline it. Draft the first 300 words.
• Tuesday session: Finish the draft.
• Wednesday session: Self-edit, Claude review, publish.

If you only have two sessions, outline + draft on day one, edit + publish on day two.

Where Claude actually helps

• Outlining: Give it your idea, ask for 3 different possible structures, pick one.
• Research: Ask it to list the 5 best counter-arguments to your take.
• SEO: Ask it to suggest a better title and meta description without making it clickbait.
• Final edit: "What's the weakest paragraph and why?"

What Claude shouldn't do: write the whole post. AI prose reads AI. Readers can tell. Voice is the moat.

The "parking downhill" habit for bloggers

At the end of every writing session, leave three notes: what's drafted, what's next, any idea sparks you want to chase later. This becomes your running idea bank. Most bloggers stall because they run out of topics. You won't, because every session generates new ones.

What to ignore

• Don't obsess over theme and design in week one
• Don't install 14 SEO plugins before your second post
• Don't read 20 "how to start a blog" articles. You're reading one right now. That's enough.
• Don't launch a newsletter integration until you have 10 posts

The bigger picture

A blog built in nap-time windows isn't going to go viral in month one. What it will do: give you a home on the internet that you own, a body of work that compounds, and evidence to yourself that you're still a person who makes things.

The Nap Stack System is the full setup: Claude configured as an editor, weekly handoff templates, and the workflow that turns 45-minute windows into a consistent publishing habit.