Deborah Wiles's Blog

Writers Lab: Staple the Reader to the Page

Greetings from the road, Lab Coats, where I’ve found myself happily ensconced in the world of a three-year-old, which is rich and wild and funny and completely captivating. In New England, no less, and in October. Bring on the pumpkin patches, the apple orchards, the brisk cool mornings and the firelighted evenings. And lots and lots of questions. “Why, Gigi?” Those are my favorites.

Some Housekeeping

If you haven’t introduced yourself in the Lab yet, please feel free to do so here, in Chat, where all Lab Coats can get to know one another and admire each other’s work. Start threads if you like — there’s a post for each Exercise. Join in however it works for you; I’ll be right there with you.

If you are a free subscriber (thank you, thank you) and want to participate in the Lab, you can upgrade your subscription here, which will cost you a few dollars a month. You can stop whenever you like. As a Lab Coat you will have access to all previous Assignments and Exhortations and all manner of ways to write and revise your story, memoir, poem, even grocery list. A toolbox for everyday life and writing — plus a stellar, crackerjack community of Lab Coats to welcome you.

You’ll also have access to this past summer’s foundational writing where each of us wrote Mission and Vision Statements and Core Values, offering us clarity and purpose as we write forward.

Last month we held four September Sunday Writers Lab LIVES! On our last Sunday, our guest was Jane Kurtz, who walked us through incorporating extraordinary details in our writing, and how to get started (among other wonderful gifts). Lab Coats can watch the recording of that session anytime — I’ll put the link below in The Assignment section of this Writers Lab post.

We’ve been having fun this week writing 5-minute poems every day and sharing them in Chat — another perk of the Writers Lab. Most importantly, we are creating together a writing community that is helping us feel like the storytellers we are, using all tools at our disposal, including song, poetry, film, mentor texts, and so much more.

Remember: All history is biography, and every person’s story is important. We tell our stories so they aren’t lost, and so that others can find them, whenever they need them. We write them so we can say we were here, so we can be seen, and heard, and celebrated. All voices are welcome. Come join us.

Let’s get right to it, with this week’s Lab post.

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Storybelly Digest: Countdown to October

Good morning from the ‘belly. Debbie here with some Countdown and documentary novel thoughts for you on the last Monday morning in September. It has been way too hot here for September, even in the South. But it has also been glorious and full of forward motion:

Irene, our screened porch in April, before renovation this month The Sixties Trilogy:

The idea for three books about the 1960s began to gel in the early 2000s, when I was criss-crossing the US (and the world), speaking and teaching in schools, conferences, bookstores, and libraries.

I realized (as I had seen with my own kids’ school days) that young people weren’t learning about the 1960s in their history classes, and so knew little about the richness and the chaos of those days — the civil rights movements, the space race, segregation and desegregation, rock and roll (!), and the vast changing America I had grown up in and that defined a generation — nay, generations.

At the same time, I could see that history was being taught — necessarily — as a series of dates, events, people, places… and not as the mosaic it is in real life. No event stands alone. People aren’t static. Moments aren’t monoliths. They depend on what came before — and on what’s happening alongside them.

If we can understand history in this way, we hone our critical thinking skills… and better understand that our country’s complex history calls us to choose our future with care and conscience

This is the way we live life, whether we notice it or not — we are dependent on what’s happening around us, what happened before us, and what we have, in the end, is choice. This is also the way I teach writing.

Since we ARE stories, when we write about our lives, we are writing about how we fit into the panorama of our own history, not to mention the history before us, the ancestors we come from, and the “moments, memories, meaning” we make of the story we want to tell.

Proposing the Sixties Trilogy

I came of age in the late sixties/early seventies, and my story is the story of a time in American history that has defined America as a nation. I proposed a series of three novels that would help young people understand how history is that tapestry of many things happening at once, backwards and forwards, weaving into and out of one another — each character in a story having their own unique perspective, for better or worse.

I wanted to write books that would help young people understand their history — collective and individual history — and write their own stories.

Scholastic said YES. We embarked on a project that had never been done before: the documentary novel with scrapbook sections containing the history of the moment while my characters juggle the chaos and unknowns of their young lives — family, friends, schools, neighborhoods — all shaped by the larger history unfolding around them.

The American history contained in each book of the Sixties trilogy comes from a story and is accompanied by scrapbooks full of the era — songs, photographs, newspaper clippings, advertisements, cultural touchstones, and much more.

Some of the most rewarding teaching I’ve done in the past 17 years since the publication of Book 1, Countdown, has come from talking about life in the Sixties and encouraging and working with writers of all ages as they see themselves as a part of history and write their stories.

Countdown : 1962

It’s Countdown month in October. Each Monday in October I’ll share a piece of the story — the history, the scrapbook, the characters — and how it all fits into the mosaic of history for young readers.

Countdown’s main narrative event is the looming Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, but there are other things happening in 1962 that form the constellation of history at that time, and I can show these events to the reader in scrapbooks.

This is a still from a Countdown scrapbook. “James Meredith became the first black American to enroll at the University of Mississippi today. Federal Marshals escorted Meredith onto the campus where Governor Ross Barnett declared last week, ‘No school in our state will be integrated while I am your governor.’”

John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in February 1962. My character Drew — all of nine years old — so admires John Glenn and the space race, he wants to become an astronaut.

Franny, eleven, just wants a normal life (who doesn’t at that age?).

But at the same time, while she’s busy navigating fifth grade, a fading friendship, and her crazy Uncle Otts, the air raid siren screams at school. She ducks-and-covers under her desk (like I did!) during the drill. She’s making her plan, too: if the siren ever signals an actual bomb incoming, she won’t duck under any desk. She will run get her brother Drew from his classroom and race home. If she’s going to die, she reasons, she wants it to be in the arms of her family.

“You’ll Never Walk Alone” is the song that anchors Scrapbook 1. It’s a show tune from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel, so it is a backwards glance, although I was thinking of the 1963 rendition by Gerry and the Pacemakers as I chose it. Then there’s the Josh Groban version. :>

“When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high and don’t be afraid of the dark. At the end of the storm there’s a golden sky and the sweet silver song of the lark…”

I chose “You’ll Never Walk Alone” because of how it captures assurance and hope for the future that people clung to during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and also because, when I was Franny’s age in Countdown, I was in the Glee Club at Camp Springs Elementary School (Franny’s school, too) and we sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” so there’s more than a bit of me in Countdown as well, even though I was Drew’s age, nine, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

History is news, music, film, books, stories of all kinds, including yours. We’ll talk about writing personal narrative this coming month of October, right here in the Digest, and in the Writers Lab we’ll do just that — we’ll write. We’ll talk about turning personal narrative into story as well.

Next week we’ll explore a bit more about Countdown’s structure and how documentary novels work. We’ll examine the power of personal narrative and look for “ways in” to writing YOUR story.

I’m traveling this week, heading to family and friends in New England. I’ve been using Instagram Stories to document the way our home is physically changing, as we demolish a 53-year-old rotten deck and replace it with a new one, and as we update Irene, our carport turned into a gathering room many years ago, with windows, a fresh floor, and a new ceiling. Here are a couple of in-progress shots. There are more photos in the “renovations” highlight on my IG.

And that’s it for this Monday’s digest! Thank you for hanging with me. I’ll queue up posts for while I’m gone, and you can find me in between on Notes and checking in at Chat and elsewhere.

Have a good week, everyone.

Tell Your Story.

xoxo Debbie

Writers Lab: Recap Week 4 September Sundays (Live)

Evening, Lab Coats. You’ll find the LAB NOTES and suggested reading, watching, listening and THE ASSIGNMENT/EXERCISE from today’s Writers Lab LIVE below.

FIRST THINGS FIRST:

Wasn’t that an awesome Live! Thank you to the inimitable Jane Kurtz for sharing so much of her writing wisdom, and thank you to all of you for your richness of spirit and depth of heart — what a welcoming audience. This small and mighty community of writers continues to swell me with pride in our cohesiveness, our willingness, and (as CyndiC put it so well today) our curiosity.

COMING UP NEXT:Second Sunday Live Labs

We’ll meet three more times Live this fall, always on the second Sunday of each month. Our next Live will be on Sunday, October 12, 11amET, for 75 minutes.

If you’re just coming into the Lives, no worries, as each craft focus also stands alone, so wherever you are in your writing life, you can find good stuff to keep you company and help make your writing sing.

Also, once you are in the Lab, you’ll have access to all past Lab Posts and Assignments. If you’d like to join us in the Lab and be a Sweetheart of the Storybelly Lab, this is where you do it.

We’ll continue to use Chat and a weekly Friday Writers Lab post to stay in touch and keep writing together. More on that below.

Now for Lab Notes and this week’s Resources in film, books, and songs for you to take into the week and into your work. You’ll also find the link to the recording of this week’s Live, below.

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Writers Lab: September Sundays (Live!) Week 4

Morning, Lab Coats! Our fourth and last Storybelly September Sunday (Live) begins this morning, Sept. 28, at 11am Eastern Time.

Click on this Google Meet link at 11amET and join us! (You can actually click anytime and find yourself in the queue before 11AM. Check in, grab your coffee or cake, get comfy.

Today we’ll expand and expound on our first three weeks, which were:

Writing preambles — what is the story about? What helps me tell it? What thoughts, questions, links, quotes, mentor text reminders, and possibilities can I post where I look at them as I begin each day (often at the top of the ms)… and how does that help me keep going?

Crafting Beginnings that tug a reader into a story and invite that reader to stick around — tempting and rewarding readers (and us) along the way.

Scaffolding Dialogue that creates character, moves your story forward, and provides needed information (an excellent way to handle exposition, too, and insights).

Jane Kurtz is joining us! Writer, author, teacher,…

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Writers Lab: September Sundays (Live!) Week #4

Good Friday afternoon, Lab Coats (and all Storybellers). Debbie here, excited to announce that, for our final September Sunday Live (Sept. 28, 11amET), we’ll be going to church with Jane Kurtz! Woot! Jane is an author, poet, teacher extraordinaire, and all-around amazement. You can check out her books and bio at her website.

Janie on zoom with me

Jane’s newest book is Oh, Give Me a Home. It’s a memoir to my mind, an almost true story in verse to Jane’s mind, “based on a true story of the author’s one-year adventure as a young girl traveling between Ethiopia, Africa and Boise, Idaho with her family, and with the question:

“What does it mean to call a place home, anyway?”

There are SO many ways we can go with this 75-ish minutes we’ve got on Sunday. As I told Janie when we talked by phone this week, the Writers Lab is already brimming with stories, poems, and memoirs, and I’m excited to hear Jane’s take on what she calls “the distilled language and rhythms of dialogue and how they add power to stories, songs and poems.”

Personally, I’m looking forward to talking about how this perspective helps us structure our work as well.

****And there will be writing time together, of course.****

So set your calendars and clocks. Same time, same place. Our last September Sunday Live on Sept. 28, 11amET.

Join us!

Below you’ll find the link to the Google Meet. If you are not yet a Lab Coat and you’d like to join us in the Lab anytime, for a Live or for a weekly craft focus and some writing to an (optional) Assignment, you can do that here.

More Lives!

There will be three more Lives this year, each on the Second Sunday of the last three months of this year: October 12, November 9, and December 14. We’re looking at the possibility of actual workshops together in the new year. Stay tuned.

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Storybelly Digest: The Here and Now

Mornin’ y’all, and welcome to the Autumnal Equinox of 2025. I love thinking about the equal daylight we all share for one day (2:15pm is the magic moment, here in ATL today), as the sun crosses the celestial equator.

Jim hugging a tree in 2014, with a cemetery waiting to be explored in the background (as you do, if you’re with me). I think this was near Stone Mountain, Georgia. Photo by me.

On the equinox, we experience an equal time of sunlight and darkness, up and down, in and out, ebb and flow… the opposites, such as freedom and oppression, justice and injustice, life and death — the opposites that Uncle Edisto tells Comfort we can’t live without in Each Little Bird That Sings.

The equinox brings us a momentary balance between those opposites. Then there is the opposite of equanimity that is expressed so well (in context) in John Irving’s The Hotel New Hampshire that I’ve always remembered: “You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed. You have to keep passing the open windows.” (The entire passage is here, at Goodreads, and worth reading today.)

That was a mantra of mine after I read Irving’s novel, lo these decades ago. I was 28 years old and full of passions. I still have plenty of passions, but, somehow, I have a more temperate way of working with them today. More equanimity, more balance.

Ha! Who am I kidding? Yes. No. Maybe so. It depends.

And ain’t that the truth with every story we read, watch, listen to, or write? I’d love to hear about what you are reading and writing and watching these days. What is speaking to you, opening up your mind and heart… what is it asking you to think about? What are you discovering? How is it helping you navigate the days?

On Sept. 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that as of January 1, 1863 "all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

I’m steeped in this history at the moment because of my Charlottesville work-in-progress. The Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, the passage of the 13th Amendment, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and Charlottesville’s 2017 Unite the Right rally are all profoundly entwined.

To that end, here is a passionate monologue by Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln insisting on getting the two votes necessary for the passage of the 13th Amendment. (At this link, and below.) The Emancipation Proclamation was a wartime measure that only applied to states in rebellion against the Union, leaving many enslaved persons in border states or areas under Union control still enslaved.

Those of you who are Lab Coats working in the Writers Lab with me will remember we explored yesterday how monologue is similar to dialogue (and there IS dialogue in this scene) and how it also serves to move us in a passionate way. No equanimity and balance here:

“See what is before you. See the here and now…
that’s the hardest thing.”

And isn’t that one of the many hardest things we grapple with today — to see the here and now of history and recognize ourselves in it. Whether with equanimity or in the heat of passion, “we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

I know. I’m careening from Spielberg’s Lincoln to Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, but hey… whatever gets you to the point you want to make. My point, I suppose, is that Lincoln’s “here and now” monologue feels unbearably fractured and at the same time impossibly familiar.

What’s before me, here and now, is to finish a novel that has both deep echoes backward to the first colonizers on American shores, and correspondingly broad touchpoints forward to today’s political, social, and cultural climate.

I wish I had adequate words to describe what it’s like to be living in centuries past with this novel, while watching the same historical touchpoints unfold around all of us today.

It would take too many words, and I can’t do it dispassionately, and I’m saving all my passion for the page and for my characters, as much as possible right now.

I do think and will say that books for young readers are and will continue to be a vital link in helping to bridge our national polarization. I feel the burden and the privilege of that as I write Charlottesville . As I write anything.

I’ll bet you do, too.

I realize this is saying nothing. Who was it who said (paraphrasing) if you want to know me, read my books… probably a lot of writers have said that.

I’m leaning on Vonnegut right now, and his opening to Slaughterhouse Five:

“All of this happened, more or less.

The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.”

Vonnegut’s character Billy Pilgrim becomes unstuck in time, in order for Vonnegut to write about the horrors of the bombing of Dresden in WWII, which he survived. Likewise, my characters are well-known by me, beloved, and unstuck in time.

I’m also leaning on Tarantino and his endings to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Inglorious Basterds. I’m not at the end of my novel yet, and I have probably been avoiding it because I know how it ends. Or do I?

I lean on words, images, beauty, comfort, and on an autumnal equinox that has returned with its balance and its promise of another season to come, a marvel of days ahead, days in which to find my way through this story, please god and nature and those who have come before me, before us. I think of these words from the scene above spoken by Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln, and I insert, in place of Lincoln’s fight to end the 19th-century’s slavery, today’s national estrangement — a splintering that feels like war:

“I can’t listen to this anymore. I can’t accomplish a g-damn thing of any human meaning or worth until we cure ourselves of slavery and end this pestilential war.”

And then I turn to Lincoln’s own words, spoken at his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861, as seven states — South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas — had already seceded from the Union:

“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends.

We must not be enemies. Though passion may have

strained it must not break our bonds of affection.

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every

battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and

hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the

chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely

they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Amen. Shanti, shanti, shanti. Peace, peace, peace.

xo Debbie

Writers Lab: Recap Week 3 September Sundays (Live):

Afternoon, Lab Coats. You’ll find the NOTES and suggested reading, watching, listening and THE ASSIGNMENT/EXERCISE from today’s Writers Lab LIVE below.

FIRST THINGS FIRST:

BRAVA, Lab Coats! Take a bow. What a fabulous 75 minutes of live interaction this morning! Thank you for coming to the Lab today. I’m struck, truly, by the variety we’ve got going in these Sunday Lives, and everyone’s willingness to write together, share together, and cull from story, film, and song, to make us the best writers and storytellers we can be.

To each of you: YOUR WORK IS SO GOOD — and we’re just getting started.

One more LIVE next week, before we hit October and the run to the end of the year.

COMING UP NEXT:Second Sunday Live Labs

Let’s try a Live Lab on the second Sunday of each month in October (12th), November (9th), and December (14th). We’ll keep building on what we’ve done so far. If you’re just coming into the Lives, no worries, as each craft focus also stands alone, so wherever you are in your writing life, you can find good stuff to keep you company and help make your writing sing.

Also, once you are in the Lab, you’ll have access to all past Lab Posts and Assignments. If you’d like to join us, this is where you do it.

Now for Lab Notes and this week’s Resources in film, books, songs for you to take into the week and into your work until next week’s last September Sunday. I’ve copied the dinner table scene from Revolution here, too — a good example of dialogue that characterizes, provides information, and moves the story forward. It’s the one I meant to read from today, so do give it a look-see with those tasks in mind for your own work.

AND NOW, TODAY’S LAB RECAP:This week we talked about:

how Dialogue is a Workhorse;

how it is closely related to SHOW, DON’T TELL;

how it utilizes BEATS;

how it CHARACTERIZES,

provides INFORMATION and context,

creates suspense or comfort, and can foreshadow, and finally,

how it MOVES THE STORY FORWARD.

INSIDE THE LAB:

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Writers Lab: September Sundays (Live!) Week 3

Morning, Lab Coats! Our third Storybelly September Sunday (Live) begins this morning, Sept. 21, at 11am Eastern Time.

Click on this Google Meet link at 11amET and join us! (You can actually click anytime and find yourself in the queue before 11AM. Check in, grab your coffee or cake, get comfy. As soon as I arrive, I’ll open the doors wide — I see some of you are already there!)

Today we’re digging into the art of dialogue — how it provides insight, reveals character, and moves your story forward. It is a cousin to “show, don’t tell,” and it pairs beautifully with last week’s craft focus on hooks, thresholds, and invitations that bring the reader into whatever story you’re writing, telling, or singing/reciting… Dialogue keeps the reader with you. It’s your workhorse; let’s talk about why.

Bring your work with you (or begin something new) so we can play around with some tactics for sharpening, focusing, characterizing, and moving your story along.

I’ll share my work as well.

One additional …

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Writers Lab: September Sundays (Live!) Week 3

Evening, Lab Coats!
Welcome to our third September Sunday LIVE coming this Sunday, Sept. 21, 11amET.

When you’re plotting your novel, short story, poem, picture book, song, memoir, vignette — whatever it is you’re writing — dialogue is never just talking, never just shootin’ the… stuff (or shouldn’t be). Dialogue has a specific purpose.

Dialogue is a Workhorse.

It has heft and meaning and courage and flavor.

It showcases your characters and their situations.

Let’s take a look at what well-written dialogue does for your story:

Dialogue reveals character. Dialogue provides needed information for the reader and other characters. Dialogue pushes the story forward.

Dialogue is a close cousin of Show, Don’t Tell, and we’ll explore how that works on Sunday as well.

See if you can identify the work that dialogue is doing in these short examples below. These are mostly one-liners in a particular scene. We’ll talk about scenes on Sunday and scene partners as well, and study the beauty of writing “in-dialogue,” which is how those three tasks of dialogue shine.

My favorite kinds of dialogue scenes to write? Gatherings — especially at the dinner table, where we get to hear lots of opinions, lots of voices, lots of emotion. It’s such a great way to learn about your characters, even if you don’t include the scene in your story (but I bet you do). Dinner table scenes allow dialogue to do all three of its tasks beautifully, in one fell swoop. There’s an energy to them that opens up your story.

WRITING-IN-DIALOGUE

Writing “in-dialogue” also gives your characters their unique VOICES. Dialogue is a power move: quiet power, crazy power, chaotic or tender power. Dialogue affects RHYTHM, TONE, TENSION, AND PACING. What a marvel is dialogue.

AND DIALOGUE IS FUN TO WRITE!

It’s creative! It’s crafty! It’s heartfelt. It’s cool. It’s funny! It can be whatever you want or need it to be. Dialogue is one of the most important tools in your writing toolbox.

Think about what dialogue is accomplishing in these one(ish)-line excerpts from books you may have read:

“I’m right and you’re wrong, I’m big and you’re small, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

”You can’t always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now.”

“May the odds be ever in your favor.”

“You’re a wizard, Harry.”

“You don’t want me because I’m not a boy. Oh, what shall I do? I might have known it was all too beautiful to last. I might have known nobody would really want me.”

“I think the world is a series of broken dams and floods, and my cartoons are tiny little lifeboats.”

“He’s not safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

‘There is no market for roses now. The people are too poor. They buy food, not flowers.”

“D-I-V-O-R-C-E.”

”I’m not stupid. I know everyone thinks I am. I just don’t like answering their questions.”

“We can’t stop here. This is not the place we’re meant to be.”

“You’re from the North. Our teachers don’t teach history like yours do. Up there, you learn all about the Negroes leaving the South for freedom. We don’t learn that part.”

“It wouldn’t kill you to be nice, Delphine. You don’t always have to be in charge.”

“The beautiful town of Kent, Ohio.
Small. Peaceful.
The kind of town where you know your neighbors.
Where you leave your doors unlocked.
Where you wave to everybody.
The kind of town that would never see a massacre.”

“Stay gold, Pony Boy, stay gold.”

“This is our town, too. You just don’t want to see us in it.”

We fall in love with characters.

Want to figure out how to characterize? Let your characters talk. The characters above are each very different! From Matilda to Revolution to Kent State, to One Crazy Summer, to Brown Girl Dreaming, to A Wrinkle in Time, to Holes, to Esperanza Rising, to The Absolute True Diary of a Part-time Indian, to Anne of Green Gables, Hunger Games, Because of Winn-Dixie, The Outsiders, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Harry Potter — all sorts of different structures and genres, too. Including Country Music.

What they have in common is an extraordinary use of dialogue to tell their story — and to create unforgettable voices. Let’s take a look on Sunday. And let’s write some dialogue of our own. We’ll write it in-scene. Bring your work in progress. We’re going to have more writing time and sharing time this Sunday, as we decided en-group last week to add fifteen minutes to the hour, so we’ll go to 12:15. Come as you are, stay as you can.

Sunday, Sept. 21, 11amET on Google Meet. Particulars are below and will also be sent in a Writers Lab post on Sunday morning early, to Lab Coats only, so you can click the link and settle in at 11amET.

If you want to join us and write together in the Lab, live, on September Sundays, you can do that right here.

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Storybelly Digest: My Three-Hour Love Affair

Good morning, Storybellers, and welcome to mid-September.

A little something from the road this past week:

An Open Letter to Heritage Freight Warehousing and Logistics about your Tractor #2191 and Trailer #6353 traveling on Interstate I-20 between Birmingham, Alabama and Jackson, Mississippi on Wednesday, September 10, 2025.

Dear Heritage Freight (very dear),

I traveled in tandem with your truck #2191 on Wednesday last week for 236 miles, and I was so impressed. Your driver was the most courteous and thoughtful trucker I have ever encountered on an interstate highway… although I never saw him. Her? Them? In my mind, it was “him.”

He drove at a steady 73 miles per hour, mile after mile, as did I. We passed each other now and again. We made the same moves to pass a car or truck in the left lane, then — turn signals on again — we shifted back to the right lane, neat as you please, like we were consciously following each other, which, I decided, we were. The road is long, as you know, Mr. Heritage Freight, and highway hypnosis can settle in if one is not vigilant.

Sometimes 2191 drove ahead of me for a while. Sometimes I was ahead of him. It was like a play, a waltz — heck, it was almost like foreplay. We never lost sight of each other.

I had been listening to my Spotify playlist of random “liked songs” ever since I left my home in Atlanta that morning, and now, since meeting 2191, the songs took on new meaning. I began to conjure my new friend. He was gallant, of course — he had already proved that, politely allowing me to pass him and then following me dutifully for a long stretch. He was courteous. Practiced. Kind. Alert. Law-abiding. And handsome, I decided. Definitely handsome.

I pictured him with broad shoulders under a flannel shirt, with both strong hands on the wheel, and a toothpick between his teeth. Ed Ames sang “My Cup Runneth Over” and Vanessa Carlton sang “A Thousand Miles,” and I knew that I would follow 2191 a thousand miles, just to see you again. It was… love.

I danced wild imaginary dances with 2191 to “Footloose” and “Viva La Vida” and “Jump (For My Love)” and when the Fine Young Cannibals sang “She Drives Me Crazy,” I knew 2191 was falling in love with me, too.

“There She Goes,” sang The La’s, and 2191 wanted me to know we were about to be dang near inseparable…. and then Earth, Wind and Fire launched into “September,” and it became Our Song, until Johnny Mathis crooned “The Last Time I Felt Like This,” I was falling in love, and the Moody Blues followed it with “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere,” and I decided, as 2191 made a smooth move into the left lane to follow me while I passed a phalanx of trucks, that the two of us would never lose one another, ever.

“What a Feeling” sang Irene Cara. “Your Wildest Dreams” sang the Moody Blues, and when Redbone warbled “Come and Get Your Love,” I pictured myself gliding purposefully — already trusting 2191 to do the same — into the next rest area and parking on the car side of the welcome building while 2191 parked on the truck side. “Start a love train, a love train,” sang the O’Jays as, in my imagination, I turned off the ignition and made a beeline for the bathrooms from my side of the building, while 2191 ambled in from the truck side with his tallness, his sturdiness, his steadiness, his groundedness… and his baldness.

I shook my head — he was my husband! The man who has never driven — and never will drive — a semi tractor trailer truck. Definitely handsome. Definitely love.

It was his birthday on Wednesday, and I was driving through Alabama and Mississippi all day. I missed him. There he was in my imagination, just as Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell began to sing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” to keep me away from you, babe. It happened just as I-55 appeared on the horizon and I had to change lanes, change direction.

2191 did not follow me. He stuck to I-20 while I breezed up the ramp to I-55, And do you know what I did, Mr. Heritage Freight? I rolled down my window and I waved at 2191. A grand, grateful wave. The fresh air was exhilarating. Cleansing. Reviving.

I imagined 2191 waving back, thick of hair and strong of build and in love with me anyway, because I was certainly in love with him on that mind-numbing, long-driving day, in love with a gentleman and a good driver.

Please thank your Trucker 2191 for me. Sign me off with Peter Cetera’s “We Did it All for the Glory of Love” with thanks from your friend and imaginary three-hour love, Debbie

Thank you for humoring me, here at the ‘belly. It helps, because this week feels loaded with history that touches on what I write about, some of it very heavy. I am particularly interested in what it means to be an American, so my books focus there, ultimately, good or bad, right or wrong, up or down… those opposites that Uncle Edisto talks about in Each Little Bird That Sings.

I’ll highlight the anniversary that is harshest.

“Sunday morning September 15 it was Youth Day right after Sunday school. Addie May Collins, Carol Robinson, Denise McNair, and Cynthia Wesley are getting ready to go into the choir…”

Some books and Spike Lee’s documentary “Four Little Girls” for you this week:

The Watson’s Go to Birmingham - 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis

Birmingham Sunday by Larry Dane Brimner

Carry Me Home by Diane McWhorter

Birmingham, 1963 by Carole Boston Weatherford

Spike Lee’s “Four Little Girls” is available to watch at HBO. You can find many interviews with Lee online as well, about his work, about “Four Little Girls,” and about movie making.

I could linger here, but — to quote one of my characters in Charlottesville, “It makes me too sick at heart.” So a little lighter now, with an assist from the American flag company Allegiance:

The baseball strikes of September 1994 meant that there were no playoffs or World Series that year. Baseball — the American pastime — was a huge part of my childhood, so I have written about it in The Aurora County All-Stars, Countdown, and Revolution.

In 1978 “Muhammad Ali defeated Leon Spinks at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans to win the world heavyweight boxing title for the third time in his career, the first fighter ever to do so.” Ali’s wit, bravado, and brilliance were a steady presence in the backdrop of my childhood days; I have written an “opinionated biography” of Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali in Revolution.

Last week I was in Mississippi with family. This week I’ll be home and my days will be all about Charlottesville. I’ve got a new idea I want to put into place — I was up into the wee hours last night trying something I think is going to work for structure… something that occurred to me while we were chatting live in the Writers Lab yesterday, in the second of our September Sunday Lives.

Come join us in the Lab, if you’d like to work on your own writing of any kind — we’re a friendly bunch of generous hearts and keen minds, and we’d love to have you join us. You can do that here.

A short Writers Lab post is going out on Friday, a calendar reminder on Sunday, and then our third September Sunday Live 9/21/25, 11amET. We are finding that we really like having time to write together in silence, so we’re expanding the Live by 15 minutes, to 12:15pmET.

We talked on Sunday about how to continue writing together after September. Right now my plan is to host one live a month on the second Sunday in October, November, and December, and then possibly move into a workshop model in 2026. We’ll see. Tell me what you think.

Two prompts today:

Write about an imaginary love — the kind that makes you laugh at yourself later. A stranger, a fleeting moment, even a trucker on I-20. Where does your mind wander? I would LOVE to read it.

Write about a moment in history you lived through but don’t fully understand. What do you wish you knew? What could you imagine differently?

What you know, what you feel, what you can imagine — this is the start of every story on the planet.

Until next week, friends. Fall in love, fall into fall, fall head over heels for those you miss, and for those you love.

xo Debbie