BOOK SUMMARY
Ellie is having the worst Monday of her life. She messes up
her school speech for the class vice
presidency position, she manages to take the world's worst school picture, she bombs softball
tryouts, and the icing on top of this
awful cake: her perfect boyfriend who is in a high school rock band dumps her.
At the end of the day, Ellie wishes she
could redo everything. When she wakes up the
next morning, she discovers that it's Monday again! She has six more
chances to redo the day in the hopes of having everything go exactly the way
she wants. But in the process, she just may find out that what she really wants
and what she actually needs are two very different things.
Jessica Brody is the author of several popular books
for teens, including the Unremembered trilogy, 52 Reasons to Hate My Father, and The Karma Club, as well as two adult novels. She splits her
time between California and Colorado. Find out more at jessicabrody.com.
ELLISON “ELLIE”
SPARKS: An idealistic, ambitious sixteen-year-old junior with a lot on her plate.
Those were the first words I ever wrote about Ellie Sparks. They
were written in a synopsis for my publisher when I was first trying to sell
them on the idea for a book called A WEEK OF MONDAYS.
Of course, you can’t write an entire book about a
one-sentence character. Just like you can’t live your entire life as a
one-sentence person. But every character has to begin somewhere. And this is
where Ellie began for me.
As an idealistic, ambitious sixteen-year-old junior with a lot on her plate.
In my mind, this is who she had to be. I thought, if you’re going to write about a girl who
relives the same horrible Monday over and over again, trying to “get it right,”
these are the adjectives that must describe
her. She has to be idealistic enough to think she can fix everything in
her life. Yet, she also has to be ambitious enough to try it. And how
else are you going to fill seven Mondays with interesting storylines if the
main character doesn’t have a lot on her plate.
So there was Ellie. And there was me, ready to write her, thinking
I understood her. Thinking I knew everything I needed to know about her.
This is the writing process for me. I start with an idea of
who someone is. I draw a box around them, like an identity fence. I stuff them
inside and I lock the gate. I tell them, “This is who you are. Don’t try to change
that. Don’t try to be or do anything else. I don’t have time for detours. I’m
on a deadline.”
I never learn.
A WEEK OF MONDAYS is my tenth published novel and I’m still
trying to lock characters inside fences. Eventually, though, they always break
free. They always get bigger than their boxes. And even though I try to adjust,
I keep drawing bigger and bigger boxes around them, trying to contain them to
the world I built, the world I envisioned, they never quite want to stay
inside. Just like people. You can try to identify them, label them, build a
fence around them that makes you feel
safe, and yet they’ll always surprise you. Because no character—no human being—fits
inside a box.
One of my favorite reviews of A WEEK OF MONDAYS says, “Watching
Ellie relive her horrible day is something like peeling an onion. Each Monday,
a piece of her people-pleaser facade melts away, revealing more of her real
self.”
I smiled when I read that because it wasn’t until then that
I realized exactly what had happened in the writing of this book. I had done it
again. I had tried to put yet another character in a box, and she had slowly,
word by word, page by page, Monday by Monday broken free.
This book is ultimately a story of self-discovery.
Seven days. Seven chances to completely reinvent yourself.
Wear different clothes, make different choices, explore different paths, say
different things, be different people.
Because sometimes it takes a whole week of Mondays to figure
out who you really are. And when you finally do, you may find yourself thinking
'Thank God It's Monday' after all.
For the next five Mondays, blogger friends across the
internet will be sharing their best and worst Monday. Follow along with us
online with #TGIM and #AWeekofMondays, because whether a Monday is memorable
for good reasons or memorable for bad reasons, we stand to learn a lot about
ourselves.
