How to: Write a Novel, Dissocial Mom Style

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May 18, 2013 by rebeccaannemarshall

Here I am taking a little break from the regular “mommy” talk, and for those of you who came by expecting a most witty and brilliant parent based blog post today, I sincerely apologize, for you will not find it here, not today.

Today I want to get a little bit more serious. Today’s post is something that many have wondered, and that is, just how does one “Dissocial Mom” write such a wonderful novel.

… OK so no one has actually asked that… but that is beside the point. Clearly once the novel is actually finished, and inevitably published, THEN said question is sure to be asked. So in preparation for the future I felt I may as well just answer this question today.

Lets begin.

NUMBER 1

BE a dissocial mom. If you find yourself without children not to worry, you my also just become a dissocial person. Now remember here when we say “dissocial” we do not mean the regular,… OK ACTUAL, definition of this word. No, we have somewhat re-defined this word here at the Dissocial mom to mean anti-social, socially awkward, socially out of the loop, what have you (Also it’s an acronym… but that is for another day…

BASICALLY if you have nothing to do in your spare time because you never go out, well then you are golden! Time to hunker down and write yourself a novel! Perfect!

(Disclaimer: Number 1 only really works if you actually LIKE writing, otherwise….. not so golden and don’t bother… CONTINUING ON!)

NUMBER 2

Stock up on chips. Or chocolate. Or pastries. Or candy or…. you get the idea. Whatever suits your fancy. Some advocate health foods such as fruit or raw veggies… maybe with a little dip. However, if you are going for the full on Dissocial-Mom-novel-writing experience I would highly recommend chips… of any kind really, and/or feta cheese stuff hot peppers which swim in a pool of delicious fatty oil. And coffee, lots of coffee.

Break into the stock at any moment you sit down to write. ANY MOMENT. That being early morning, mid afternoon or late late at night. There is never a time that is not good for junk food and caffeine when you are writing Dissocial Mom style.

NUMBER 3

MAKE SURE you have absolutely no idea what you are doing. It is best to fly by the seat of your pants. Pick your topic, preferably something you know nothing about so that you may spend a copious amount of time researching, and just start scribbling! It also works best if the topic you pick for research has a very small amount of literature written that you may barrow at your library. Something you have to do a lot of online research about, so that you may get sucked into doing exactly NOT that. That funny photo of the adorable kitten who is demanding you rub its belly, cute.

NUMBER 4

Be disorganized. Write a little in this note book, maybe a paragraph or two in that one. A couple chapters on your phone. Maybe the next few thousand words on your laptop and another ten thousand on the old mac-book you have upstairs. (Note: use your imagination if you are not as awesome as I, to have so many old hand-me-down electronics.)

Make sure you have bits and pieces of your novel scattered sporadically throughout the house in this form. This way you will then have to, rather occasionally, re-type your little collection of goodies up onto the main document. Great!

NUMBER 5

Lock yourself away. Be extra anti social. Find a room in your house (because you know you don’t go out to write) that has a lock on it… preferably NOT the bathroom… unless that is your thing. Make your hermit self comfortable for the next couple hours (or however long you can manage) and write. Be sure to spend at least half of that allotted writing time getting into comfortable clothing, gathering your junk food and scooping together all your scrap sentences and paragraphs from around the house. Once you have then managed to type up all previously written material, between breaks for sipping coffee and shoving dill pickle chips into your mouth, you should have a good 15 minutes worth of locked-up-quiet-writing-time to yourself!

NUMBER 6

Here is the big guy. THE IMPORTANT GUY. If you don’t take anything from this post, take this. Procrastination.

You need to truly master procrastination. Do not be afraid to take a weeks, even a months hiatus from writing your novel, this is clearly assuming you are awesome like me and have no literary agent or deadline.

It really shouldn’t be that hard to find other things to do…

It is also acceptable to write everyday so long as it takes you a good hour or so before you are ready to settle in to do it. If you plan to write in the morning simply find an abundance of other things to do first. Continue to do this until after dinner sometime when it is nearly time for bed.

If you are still having a hard time getting procrastination down pat you may go here where you will find a somewhat more in depth lesson on how to become an expert procrastinator.

So there you have it, an easy handful of tips on how to write a novel Dissocial Mom style. I will refrain from going into much further detail as I do not want to hand out all my little secrets, however much you may beg me to.

And with that I am off to go work on my novel… maybe…

Until next Saturday! Tata!

Becky A.M