Questioning Your Sanity and Other Dark Secrets of Meeting Your Editing Deadline by Monica Ropal

1.   Stephen King says to “write with the door closed, and rewrite with the door open." This is sage. Especially when working with kids at home because a closed door will not keep them out, it just makes more noise when they come in and out every five minutes and will slowly drive you insane.

2.   When deep in to edits, make sure that everyone else knows that you don’t have time for hair appointments, doctor appointments, returning phone calls. Showering. This will save embarrassment later.

     3.   Keep the coffee pot on all day. Because I SAID KEEP IT ON

     4.   Have an escape plan. Keep all paths clear. To the bathroom. Because . . . see #3.

     5.   When finally breaking out of the editing cave to forage for food at the grocery, do not question lingering feelings of angst, longing, and heartbreak as you wander the aisles. These feelings are not yours, they are the feelings of your characters. No need to question your sanity, it’s just part of the process.

6.   Question your sanity.

7.   When you go to bed at night, leave your browser open. Because you might be back at one a.m. Because now you have insomnia. Awesome.

8.   Put all activities and social engagements on hold. And your gym membership. Because hahahahahaNO.

9.    Love your characters. Because it’s lonely in the editing cave.

  10.       Chocolate.

 Monica Ropal

The Body of Cooper McCay, Running Press Fall 2014

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Bio: Monica Ropal lives in friendly Minnesota with her husband and three children--to whom she lovingly refers as her three-ring circus. In addition to writing and playing ringmaster, she works part-time as a Hospice Nurse. Her contemporary YA The Body of Cooper McCay is her first novel, and will be released by Running Press in the Spring of 2015
 

Darkly Delicious Male POV in YA Lit by Monica Ropal

I’ve read some amazing male POV YA in the last couple of years, and while I’m usually prepared for the honesty of the sexuality of the teenage male mind, I am surprised again and again by the absolute complexity of the emotions of these books.

I love drama in YA--voice and narrative that has me swept up with pangs of love and loss and hope and all the rest. But I often am surprised that the ones that cut me the deepest are the ones told by male characters (not necessarily male authors). I think that’s because of the honesty of these narratives--the absence of fear of being complicated and messy and raw in their exploration of issues.

When I sat down to right this post I made a list of male POV books that have lately made an impression on me:

Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going, Saint Iggy by K.L. Going, Winger by Andrew Smith, and The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp.

What I found myself thinking about was how the POV characters of each of the titles and how each one have a varying sense of bravado in how they externally encounter the world, they all have, internally, a vulnerability that makes us love them through all of the layered imperfections.

With female POV, on the other hand, I find sometimes (even in my own writing) a sense that the female must be an everyday Katniss Everdeen and display attributes that we want young girls to be proud of: Brains and guts and independence, etc. We would never want our female lead to play the victim. But the authors writing these fellows, seem more concerned with making the lead be human. Allowing them the room to have seeming inconsistencies—to be both scared and brave, insightful and oblivious, damaged and hopeful.

I may not be writing a male POV character this next time around, but I want my main character, no matter who they are, to embody all of the complexities of the male POV characters that inspire me. I want to brave and raw and complicated. I want her to be honestly . . . human.

      

    

What are some YA male POV’s that have inspired you?