Deborah Wiles's Blog, page 2

Writers Lab: Recap Week 2 September Sundays (Live):

Oy vey, Lab Coats. Choosing Google Meet meant a learning curve today, and we… learned a lot about what to do right next Sunday. As a result, we did not record any of today’s Lab Meet, but we did manage to gather, and do good work together. See how to RSVP for next week’s Live Lab below.

Here are the Lab Notes for Sunday, September 14, 2025.

BUT FIRST:

You are all remarkable. I love listening to how you work and what you’re working on. We have poets in our September Sunday group, musicians, novelists, picturebook writers, essayists; we have Lab Coats with entire manuscripts and Lab Coats starting their journey with a new story — a thrilling, heady mix.

We are a small and mighty group! We’re connecting through stories as we create a welcoming and nurturing writing space where we can hone our skills and champion one another’s voices.

CRAFT FOCUS:

This week we focused on beginnings: hooks, thresholds, and invitations. I used the first few paragraphs of Each Little Bird That Sings to demonstrate how a hook is a door, the first paragraph or two is the threshold, and then, nudging against that threshold, is the invitation into the world of the story, the mystery, the questions… and how the ending is held in the beginning.

First line: Hook

First paragraphs: Threshold

Close on the heels of those Firsts: Invitation

We talked about how all writing comes from:

WHAT YOU KNOW

WHAT YOU FEEL

WHAT YOU CAN IMAGINE

How, once you have made your lists and have circled the moment that calls to you, like one Lab Coat did today with a new idea, then you journal it or list what you know, feel, imagine for that new idea — you preamble it — so you have material.

From that material you’re going to choose “One Clear Moment in Time” to write about.

Then your question: WHAT HAPPENED FIRST? will give you your hook. From there we went into the Assignment, which you’ll find below Inside the Lab.

As ever — even if you haven’t attended the Live — the notes (above and below) will guide you as you do the Exercise/Assignment for the week, along with some excellent additional reading, watching, and listening links that will complement the Assignment. I hope you find it all useful as you write forward this week, and I hope to see you next week as well — two September Sundays left!

If you want to join us in the Writers Lab and work in community with this extraordinarily generous group of Lab Coats (and become a Lab Coat yourself! And eat cake!) you can do that here. Meanwhile, Lab Coats, read on:

INSIDE THE LAB:

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Writers Lab: September Sundays (Live!) Week 2

Morning, Lab Coats! Our second Storybelly September Sunday (Live) begins this morning, Sept. 14, at 11am Eastern Time.

Click on this Google Meet link at 11amET and join us!

Today we’re looking at how hooks, thresholds, and invitations bring the reader (and us!) into the story we’re writing… and how our beginnings are more than first lines (but don’t discount the power of that first line).

How does our beginning create a world, an atmosphere, characterize our players, and surprise or settle the reader for the journey? I’ll share my work in progress as well, and welcome your sharing and lively discussion. We’ll make time to write to the craft focus, too.

Our hour together:

Welcome

Craft focus — hooks, thresholds, invitations

Writing together

Sharing, Chat, Q&A with one another, etc.

This week’s Assignment, recommended reading/viewing for this assignment, and closing

Bring your notebook, your questions and experience, your new work ideas, and/or your work in progress…

Come as you are; time for …

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Writers Lab: First Things First

Morning, Lab Coats! Welcome to our second September Sunday LIVE coming this Sunday, Sept. 14, 11amET.

Beginnings do a lot of heavy lifting. They don’t just start the story, they set us up — for voice, place, character, and point of view. You signal to the reader that you are about to invent a world. You are inviting the reader in and along for the ride.

Think of these first lines:

“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”

“Where’s Papa going with that ax?”

“Murderers! You can’t have them all!”

“I come from a family with a lot of dead people.”

“His mother was ugly and his father was ugly, but Shrek was uglier than the two of them put together.”

“All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.”

“The only person left alive on the island was a baby girl.”

"Dribbling. At the top of the key, I'm MOVING & GROOVING, POPping and ROCKING - Why you BUMPING? Why you LOCKING? Man, take this THUMPING.

“You can’t know what it is like for us now—you will always be one step behind.”

“A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer. A tool / for RULE.”

“As summer wheat came ripe, so did I, born at home, on the kitchen floor.”

Look at the variety here. In one way or another, these lines are taking us all to church. Each of them invites us across the threshold of story deliberately and differently, using comic exaggeration, a jolt of danger, a sly wink, a rhythmic beat, or a whisper of haunting.

In just one sentence, you’re offered several shadings:

Domestic and specific (To Kill A Mockingbird, Charlotte’s Web, The House on Mango Street)

Comic and outrageous (Shrek, Love Ruby Lavender, Each Little Bird That Sings)

Epic/haunting (The Birchbark House, Slaughterhouse-Five, Two Boys Kissing)

Rhythmic and voice-driven (The Crossover, Long Way Down, Out of the Dust)

That first sentence, along with a mighty assist from the first paragraph(s) or stanzas , showcases beginnings as hooks that accomplish different tasks:

they establish character

they define a place or situation

they signal voice

they promise a particular point of view — and sometimes a pole-vault into adventure, mystery, suspense

they invite the reader to settle in and be entertained, educated, moved, inspired, comforted, schooled, etc.

What is it you want your reader to carry away from your story? Keeping in mind, of course, that it’s none of your business what a reader thinks of your story, because once that story leaves your hands, it no longer belongs to you; it belongs to the reader, who brings all of their lived experience to that story.

At the least, you want your intrepid, fickle reader to stick with you! Which means that so much depends on those first few sentences, those opening paragraphs, and your first chapter. Let’s explore what that means for the story you’re currently dreaming of writing or in the midst of drafting or revising. I’ll share my work in progress as well.

Bring your preamble work! It will help you with your beginning.

Sunday, Sept. 14, 11amET on Google Meet. Particulars are below and will also be sent in a Writers Lab post on Sunday morning early, so you can click on 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: Romancing the Moon

Happy Monday, Storybellers! It’s good to be here with y’all. Thanks for coming over. Tea? Cake?

I woke up in the dark this morning and found my world awash in moonlight. Was it a full moon? Indeed it was. The moon painted a brilliant blue band of light so sparkling across my backyard, I had to pad to the front windows to make sure one of my neighbors hadn’t left a light on overnight. Had they? No.

There she was: the impossibly enormous Corn Moon, shining high above the hundred-foot pines across the road, and spilling her light across our shed, the forest garden, the grass, the rock pile by the pond, and the little wildlife pond itself.

As if he knew I was there, our resident bullfrog croaked. It was a definite daytime croak, a can you believe this? croak. Ha! Yeah, I can believe it, Froggo.

When I was young, many moons ago, I imbued the moon with special powers. I danced outside naked under every full moon, for good luck. The luck didn’t last, but the moon did, and lately, even though I’m not out there dancing au naturel anymore (you’re welcome) my luck seems to have returned.

Luck, of course, is relative. That reminds me of Remy Charlip’s book Fortunately. You can watch it read for you here (YT, 3 minutes). It begins:

Fortunately, one day Ned got a letter that said “Please come to a surprise party.” But unfortunately, the party was in Florida and he was in New York.

I first heard of this book when Brian Selznick read it for us at a conference where we were both speakers. Brian spoke about the influence Remy had on him as a writer and illustrator, and how, when he met Remy, he thought he looked so much like the filmmaker Georges Méliès, whose film “A Trip to the Moon” was an inspiration for Brian’s book The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The sketches of Georges Méliès in Hugo are all sketches of Remy! I love this story.

So now we are back to the Moon.

But let us not leave luck just yet. Running through one of my favorite films is the theme of the full moon (Cosmo’s Moon), and bad luck. A full moon night changes everyone in Moonstruck — here’s three minutes to show you how — and there is even howling at the moon (no dancing, though) in Moonstruck. And many references to bad luck. Still makes me laugh.

All to say that, even given this small handful of examples, we have long been fascinated, in one way or many others, by the moon and its magical properties, and I have written about the moon in almost every book I’ve published. There is usually at least one nighttime scene where characters talk or sit or sleep under the moon. In Night Walk to the Sea, Rachel Carson takes her young nephew to the shore after a storm, where they rescue a firefly in the roiling surf. Daniel Miyares illustrates the night sky (and a sea full of bioluminescence) so beautifully.

And, of course, you can find the moon throughout my Sixties Trilogy novels.

On September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy offered an address at Rice University in Houston, Texas, proposing that America land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

Here’s a 55-second excerpt wherein the famous phrase was first spoken: “We choose to go to the moon!”

It was utterly intoxicating, this race for the moon in the Sixties. It captured Americans, pulled them together in a Space Race against the Russians, gave them purpose and pride of accomplishment.

I was so captured by it as a kid! Then, as an adult, I created characters who are kids like I was in the Sixties, who sat in front of their televisions with their families to watch Neil Armstrong utter another famous line, the one about one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind — we were all space crazy.

from Countdown from Revolution from Anthem

So I looked out my window at the moon last night. I made my connections — moments, memories, meaning. I relived my romance with the moon.

All writing is about paying attention, asking questions, and making connections. Write about something you have recently encountered that has made you remember your connections to it.

Is it the moon? a meal? an encounter? Here’s one that I could make so many connections to, like I did with the moon, above. What about you?

Until next week, Storybellers! Thank you for joining me each week for the Digest. If you are working with me in the Lab, watch for a short post on Friday with particulars.

Until then, go gently, everyone.

xoxo Debbie

Writers Lab: Recap Week 1 September Sundays (Live)

Hooray for us! We came, we saw, we ate cake! Virtual cake, yes, but I did make one:

Yesterday in our very first Storybelly September Sunday (Live), we began at the beginning — even before chapter one. I shared some of the scraps and notes at the top of my Charlottesville manuscript, and how they have changed as I have changed, and as the story has changed. We looked at how “preamble” fragments can steady us and point us forward.

Then we wrote to that craft focus for about 15 minutes. Then we checked in with one another and shared what we wrote, and/or what we’re working on. The conversation was rich… and thrilling! It is always a thrill to be in-country with others who are writing their stories.

We had a terrific mix of stories and story ideas, too. So interesting.

We’re getting to know one another in the Lab, face-to-virtual-face, so we didn’t record the session, but we plan to record the first half of the hour going forward, for the next three Sundays — everything before our writing and sharing — so if you are a Lab Coat and you aren’t able to make the September Sunday Lab, you can still watch the intro and craft focus, and do the Assignment.

As always, if you want to join us in the Lab, and write with us — the synergy and camaraderie is wonderful — you can do that here.

Inside the Lab

In the Lab Notes below, you’ll find a wrap-up of what we worked on in our Live yesterday, along with the Assignment and a few elements to carry forward.

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Writers Lab: September Sundays (Live!) Week 1

[Chat sent a post to all paying subscribers (Lab Coats) but didn’t highlight the link (and won’t), so here it is, for Lab Coats only, in this post, same verbiage as the Chat post, sorry for the repetition. See y’all soon — xo Debbie]

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Writers Lab: Cake, Community, and Craft

Good morning, Lab Coats!

Coming up is our first September Sunday, a chance to gather in the Writers Lab, clap eyes on one another, and spend a little time writing together. We’ll meet each Sunday this month — four Sundays in all. I’m glad you’re here for the beginning. Ops-Guru Zach will be here as well, so you can meet him, too.

I’ll bring cake!

If you are not a Lab subscriber and want to write with us for the month of September, you can do that here. It will cost you about as much as one fancy coffee for the month, or a basil plant at the Publix. We’re a friendly bunch, every day we’re each beginners, and we want you to write your story!

We’ll get together on Google Meet this Sunday (Sept 7). I will amend Monday’s Digest to reflect this. We can’t see or hear one another on Substack Live (yet), and creating a writing community is the whole point, so I’m moving us to Google Meet and we’ll try that for week one.

All you need is the link, which is free — you don’t need a Google account, although if you’re coming to the group on a phone, you’ll need the Google Meet app on your phone.

My experience with Meet is cleaner and easier to navigate than Zoom, but we’ll see. If we love it, great! If it feels clunky, we can switch to Zoom next Sunday. Either way, the link will come to you in advance on Sunday morning in an email and you’ll also find it linked in Chat for all Writers Lab participants.

This Sunday in our very first September Sunday (Live), we’ll begin at the beginning. When I start a new manuscript, I don’t dive straight into chapter one (although sometimes I have a beginning that I scribble down — we’ll go over this, and I want to hear your thoughts and experiences as well).

I begin with notes — scraps that pile up at the top of my document: half sentences, lists of things I want to remember, questions I don’t yet know the answers to. These scraps are my preamble . They steady me, remind me what I’m circling, and help steer me toward the story.

Do you do this too? On Sunday we’ll look at those beginnings-before-the-beginning and see how they can work for us like focus sentences work in a shorter piece. They don’t have to be polished (mine never are). They just have to get us moving.

This is the kind of material writers often jot down before the real drafting begins, or, in my case, alongside the drafting (and even alongside revision), when I have a thought or discover a gem that’s going to help guide me as I write. Such as:

notes about what-the-heck I’m writing, at the top of the manuscript;

scraps and fragments of ideas, quotes, inspirations;

mentor texts, characters, settings, etc that come to me as I’m writing;

questions to self, and more.

Why are these important? Because I said so. Lol. No. Because they matter! Sometimes these notes and scraps go on for pages. They live at the top of my manuscript-in-progress (in this case, Charlottesville) for the duration. We’ll explore how these “preamble” fragments can steady us, point us forward, and give us a way “in.”

I should be able to screen-share in Meet and I’ll show you what I’m talking about.

Don’t be shy about whatever you want to write — we welcome everyone with open arms, big hearts, and a story to tell, a song to sing, a pocket to pick — wait…

What I mean to say is come hang with us and have some fun in September.

Our weekly hour together will look something like this:

Welcome and introductions

Craft focus, questions, and set-up for writing together.

Writing together

Sharing and chat — room for relish and delight (my favorite)

This week’s Assignment and closing

More on the easy navigation of Google Meet and the link to join us, below.

I can’t wait to see your faces on Sunday, Sept. 7, 11amET, and write together. Here is the link you’ll need, below. All Lab Coats are welcome.

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Storybelly Digest: September Sundays

Good morning, Storybellers! Are you ready to be taken to church?

I bring you two Americans today who spoke their truth with such intensity it felt like a sermon. Both of these sermons were delivered at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in New Jersey. (photo of Fannie Lou Hamer: Bettman/Getty)

On August 22, 1964, Fannie Lou Hamer sat before the Democratic National Convention’s Credentials Committee and delivered her searing “I Question America” testimony. Her words were raw, unflinching, and rooted in lived pain. She spoke as a sharecropper who had been jailed and beaten for daring to vote, and she spoke truth to power. She took us to church:

You can read the entire speech here — it’s powerful. The famous quote from this speech is included in the clip:

All of this is on account we want to register, to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?

Five days later, on August 27, 1964, Senator Robert F. Kennedy addressed the Democratic convention in tribute to his slain brother, President John F. Kennedy. Though he had spoken earlier that spring in support of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, this was his first major public appearance on the national stage since his brother’s November 1963 assassination.

His legs shook as he spoke. His voice was measured yet trembling, elegiac and full of heartbreak. He was not built for the stage, as one commentator later observed, but everything in his life had to change after Dallas. That night, Kennedy laid bare his grief before a grieving nation. After it was over, he sat alone on a fire escape and wept.

I’m not able to embed it here, but the Internet Archive has the story here, as part of the RFK documentary at the American Experience. The first 3 and a half minutes are what you want for church.

The entire documentary is well worth watching — it was research for me when I was writing Bobby, just as Fannie Lou Hamer’s speech was part of my research when writing Revolution.

You can read Bobby’s speech here, at the JFK Library, in its entirety. The most compelling “telling the story” of that speech, however, is at the link above, at the Internet Archive. It’s church.

Two voices, opposite in register: Fannie Lou Hamer’s urgent, visceral testimony; Kennedy’s restrained, soft-spoken, grief-stricken remembrance.

They could not have come from more different worlds — a Black sharecropper beaten and jailed for trying to vote, and a white senator from one of America’s most powerful families.

Different as they were, both called America toward the same place: justice, compassion, and dignity for every human being.

There are many ways to take people to church. That’s what I want us to explore in the Writers Lab this fall. It’s also what I work for in my writing: I want to take you to church. These books are two of my attempts:

We each have our own way of speaking to the world — our own way of taking people to church. In the September Writers Lab, we’ll explore how to listen for, trust, and shape our unique voices on the page.

For as long as I can remember, September has felt like a beginning; all those years of new shoes and shiny notebooks and zippered pencil cases for my four kids, spread far enough apart in age that we had September starts for 25 years. When they were all grown up, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing in September.

And so.

After the long, hot summer of mission-vision-values work in the Writers Lab — Foundations! — we’re shifting into a new rhythm for September, one that I think will help me move forward with my own work-in-progress, and that I hope helps you do the same.

Come along as we speak truth to power in our own voices that are raised high like Fannie Lou Hamer’s, spoken with quiet gravitas like RFK Sr.’s, or that land anywhere in between, wherever you find yourself and your writing. If you aren’t part of the Writers Lab section of Storybelly and want to be in September, you can join us here.

More on this in Friday’s Writers Lab post, but briefly, here’s what’s new:

Fridays: a short Writers Lab note with a preview of what we’ll do together on Sunday. If you can’t make Sundays, you will have the info on Friday so you can prepare to work on your own, as many of you do already.

Sundays: Storybelly Sundays, a live gathering for Lab Coats, right here at Substack (you’ll get a notice when we’re live, at 11amET) where we’ll write side by side. We’ll start with a small craft focus, move into a quick-write, and leave with a light Assignment you can carry into your week.

Mondays: I’ll post a short note with Sunday’s Assignment in Chat, so you’ll have it, if you missed it.

Each Sunday I’ll draw directly from my current work-in-progress — my novel Charlottesville, set during the 2017 Unite the Right rally and weaving into the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. I’ll share scraps, struggles, and discoveries as I draft. I want to work with you in real time, with real stories, to explore how stories take shape, and to use those craft tools in our writing. Again, if you’d like to join the Writers Lab and come along for September Sundays, you can do that here. So:

Storybelly September Sundays: A place to gather, to practice, to share, and to move our stories forward together.

Bring your notebook, your questions and observations, your work-in-progress, your curiosity, your willingness, and your sense of humor.

Come as you are. We’re going to church.

We’re back to Digest format here each week, after a summer of essays. You can find all essays here, and I’ll link to them below as well.

Welcome to Storybelly Summer!
Let’s Begin: Everybody In!

The Summer the Pool Closed:
Three Essays on Memory, Mississippi, and the Making of Freedom Summer

The Revolution that was Freedom Summer…
…and the Revolving Doors of Childhood

The Sense of Wonder
Writing About Rachel Carson

The New Superman Movie
…and the Sacred Spaces that Hold Us

The Eagle Has Landed
In Praise of Poets, Teachers, and Moon Landings

The Things We Carry
The Inheritance of a Writing Life

Sunday Drive
The Forgotten Ritual of Nothing Much

August 11, 2017, Charlottesville, Virginia
Acts of Resistance and Creation

Go Gently, Mom
A 100th Birthday

Time, Folded
Dispatch from Another August

The Storybelly Digest is always free to all readers, landing on Sundays or Mondays, depending on what’s happening at my writing desk, and in the chaos of Uncle Edisto’s ode to the messy glory of life.

Each week you’ll find a mix of book news (including what I’m working on now), cakes worth baking, the everyday home economics of family and stories, and anniversaries from history that keep my books — and our larger American story — alive. And, as always, there will be an open invitation into your own writing life.

I’m proud of the publishing partners who helped bring these books into the world, and I’m grateful to the teams who have carried them to readers. Most of all, I’m thankful for every reader who opens these pages and finds a bit of history and home, community and compassion. My hope is that these stories meet the story you carry, and that you find echoes of your own heart within them.

You can learn more about each book at my website; you’ll also find ways to purchase them there or through your local indie bookstore. Many of my books are also waiting for you at your local public library, or, if you’re in school, check with your school librarian! They are often your best guides. For inquiries of any kind, start here.

What happens after you walk past this sign? Poetry, please. And share with us in comments!

Happy writing this week, Storybellers!

Lab Coats, watch for a Lab post on Friday with details about our first Storybelly Sunday. I hope to see you there.

Remember: Come as you are. We’re going to church.

xoxox Debbie

Writers Lab: From Why to What's Next

Good Friday afternoon, you Sweethearts of the Storybelly Lab, Lab Coats one and all!

WE NEED CAKE!

hahahaha! I do not remember who put the peeps on this chocolate cake, but I love it for today… it was the first photo that came up when I asked Google Photos for my photos of cakes. I’m sure I made the chocolate cake… probably A put on the peeps, for her April birthday.

You’ve done it. You’ve traversed the entirety of the long hot summer. Along the way, if you’ve been working with the exercises in the Storybelly Summer Project, you have likely uncovered your deep-down writing WHY. It makes so much sense now! Right? No wonder you write about such-and-so — “ahh…. this is my work in the world.”

Today I want you to pick a photo — any photo — that represents your writing work at this end-of-summer moment. Put it where you’ll see it, and let it remind you where you were when you finished your foundational work — writing your Mission Statement, your Vision Statement, and your Core Values for your writing. Let it remind you of what you’re writing now.

Here’s my photo, at this juncture — a reminder for me of the history I’m writing into and through:

I’ve been hot on the heels of getting a Charlottesville draft this summer — not done yet — and my Mission, Vision, and Core Values are all wrapped up in finishing this project, a project I have been calling #thelostcauseproject for years now. What about you?

This is a statue that no longer exists: General Robert E. Lee, Commander of all Confederate Armies including the Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War; Marse Robert, mounted on his steed, Traveler, in Charlottesville, Virginia. The statue that brought the Unite the Right rally to Charlottesville, Virginia three times in 2017 and that led to the chaos and trauma of August 11 & 12.

Here is the Lost Cause of the Confederacy writ large, and a reminder, as I write, of the weight of the American history I wrestle with. This project has been a time of exploration and discovery for me… as every writing project is.

I’m interested in what you have discovered this summer in your own foundational work, your own writing. Will you share?

As we move into fall in the Writers Lab, I hope what you’ve uncovered and explored this summer will guide you as you use your Mission, Vision and Core Values… to write. Questions to answer this week:

What are your goals, coming out of this summer of discovery?

What do you want to write going forward? It could be something you’re working on now, or something new.

How will you write it?

Where do you want that writing to live?

Below you’ll find a recap with links to previous Storybelly Summer Project posts, and an invitation to share with us what you gleaned this summer. Here are questions I’d love to hear you talk about:

What inspired you?

What was a surprise?

What felt Just Right, and what Changed?

Where will you go from here?

And here’s something important that I want to know:

Share with us why you are here, in the Writers Lab, and — now that you’ve done the foundational work of summer — what do you want to see in the Lab in the weeks ahead? What would be most helpful, the most fun, the most important, given what you’re now seeing as your work ahead?

Here are all links to the Storybelly Summer Project work — if you are just coming to it, or need a refresher, feel free to plunge in and start anywhere that suits you:

Our Summer Project, Week 1:
The “Why” of What We Do: Join Us!Your Mission:
Should You Choose to Accept ItYour Mission, Part 2:
Morning, Lab Coats!What’s Your Vision?
Writing Beyond the Mission StatementWhat’s Your Vision, Part 2:
It’s Hot; Your Tired; Let’s Write Anyway20 Projects to Make a Poem
A Jovie Little Guide to Writing Your Fizzy Summer PoemThe Manifesto:
A Declaration for the Writing Life Sets of Three:
A Simple Practice for Writing from the Inside Out, Into Your VoiceCore Values:
The Poetry of Knowing Who You AreCore Values, Part 2:
Your Writing, Your Terms: What do you Refuse to Compromise?

We’ll keep on going with this foundational work, from time to time — I want to think with you about your writing Goals, and put into place some Action Items that make your goals a reality. I’ll lace those tasks into the syllabus for fall, which will guide us as we tackle new work.

But now, right now, it’s officially Labor Day Weekend — no more work! Take some time for yourself if you can.

THE ASSIGNMENT (easy-peasy for the holiday weekend!):

As Lab Coats, please take what you’ve come up with for your summer project and:

Mix well.

Avoid explosions.

Share results with the class.

Think about a photo you’d use for where your writing is right now, where your heart is, where your effort is. You can share your photo in Chat this weekend, or tell us about it in comments.

Let me hear from you about what would be most helpful to you in the Writers Lab going forward,

Now: heave-ho (or slip’n’slide, or glide, or tip-toe, or race; your choice!) into your weekend. Many thanks for the emails and DMs and comments — and manuscripts! — this summer. I have so appreciated your presence and your willingness to work alongside me. I have enjoyed every minute. I feel like we’ve accomplished so much!

Here’s to a fall full of good words and good writing.

Happy end of summer! (So many exclamation points… and you are all worth it.)

xo Debbie

Storybelly Digest: Time, Folded

Happy last week of August, everyone! As we approach the Labor Day weekend and September, I offer you a post from August 2019, below, a post I wrote before anyone knew there would be a pandemic among us a scant few months later, just as ANTHEM was coming into the world in fall 2019… and KENT STATE had no idea it was arriving smack into the pandemic in April 2020.

I had sold a book about one of my heroes, Rachel Carson, and I was in Southport Island, Maine in the summer of 2019, staying at Rachel’s cabin, walking where she walked, writing where she wrote, and exploring the shoreline next to the sea she loved.

We were treated to such exquisite views all week — the sea, the salt pond, the nearby town of Boothbay Harbor, not-so-near Bath, and a trip over the water to Monhegan Island one day to visit friends.

Here are some photos of Rachel’s cabin and close-by environs — they are so pretty, and maybe right now, a dose of beautiful is what we all need… well, I’ll stick to what I need, and this is it.

It’s funny (not ha-ha funny, maybe poignant is the better word) to read my thoughts about my work life in 2019, which you can read, too, under the photos, and to remember, now, how it was all upended soon after. I ended up publishing four books into the pandemic, and putting Charlottesville on hold as I tried to wrap my head around what we had experienced at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. It led me to reconfigure that book, and it has taken time to bring it almost all the way home, here in 2025.

Such is life, yes? It’s like Uncle Edisto’s messy glory. “Open your arms to life!” etc. I’m glad I wrote about these days below in 2019. I’m glad to be here now. And I am very glad for your company. Thank you for being here.

xo Debbie

August 3, 2019

Well, it's August, and we've made it as far as Ruby in Summer Reading, hahaha. Lord it has been a busy time. I'm declaring Summer Reading can go into fall and even winter -- I won't abandon it. I hope you stay tuned.

In the meantime, there is this:

…from the research trip and getaway I made last week to Maine, to Rachel Carson's cabin by the sea. More on this soon.

I'm juggling (delightedly, gratefully) a particularly rich time in my writing life right now. Here is just yesterday's work:

I finished researching niggling details and sent in final revisions, author's note, acknowledgements, dedication, etc etc, to a picture book I've written about Rachel Carson that publishes next fall (Random House), art by the stupendously talented Daniel Miyares -- all very exciting.

I sent in a revision of the galley letter that will go in front of all KENT STATE galleys -- which will be here very soon. That book publishes (Scholastic Press) in April 2020. Also exciting. We have an amazing cover for this book that I can't wait to share when the time is right.

I prepared for Scholastic's sales conference in NYC next week, where I'll be speaking about KENT STATE to sales reps from across the country. I'm scripting myself for this 5-8 minute talk, and selecting some slides.

I spoke with my agent about illustrators for a picture book I've worked on for many years that may be sold soon. The editor in question wants to take it to acquisitions with an illustrator and vision in mind. Very exciting! So many books take me such a long time to figure out.

I worked back-and-forth with Scholastic audio on listening to auditions and selecting a reader to be Molly for the audiobook of ANTHEM. Also very exciting! We've been bouncing this around for some time -- we have decided on Norman, and we have our narrator, and we were trying to get Molly just right. I think yesterday we found her.

I corresponded with my uber-talented and patient webmistress about moving A LONG LINE OF CAKES off its prominent "new book" position on my home page and moving ANTHEM into its place, and I set up a training time with her, so I can make these changes myself in time.

I answered a backlog of email.

When I showed up mid-afternoon to get my hair cut, here is what I heard: "Your hair is very emotional today!" hahahahaha. Yeah. It's an emotional time. And so very busy. I know how lucky I am.

I got mostly off the road late last year, which has given me the opportunity to write more and have days like I had yesterday, and like I hope to have more of going forward.

I've been writing professionally for 35 years now, in one capacity or another, and working in this book business for a little over 20 years now, publishing books since 2001, and this is the first time I've had TIME stretching out ahead of me.

Part of it is age, and stage, part of it is getting off the road, and part of it is finishing up major projects, like the Sixties Trilogy (which I sold in 2008) followed immediately by KENT STATE.

It's also the first time in 11 years I haven't woken to a publishing deadline. Everything is turned in, finished. It's luscious. I don't want to give up that feeling! But I have work to do. So -- what now?

I have two proposals to write, both for big writing projects. I spoke with my agent this week about those. I have picture books to go back to. A bunch of other writing and home projects I'm eager to paddle around with, in what's left of this summer.

Also, there is housekeeping.

I have a new website! Is it not GORGEOUS? Thank you, Cyndi Craven! We are still tweaking, and having fun with it, and I am ever grateful for such a professional looking site. I hadn't updated my website design in 9 years, since COUNTDOWN was published. Ulp.

Check out the BOOKS page, so lovely, and see how each book's page (click on REVOLUTION for an example) now has excellent information for readers, teachers, librarians, parents, and more. I see this new website as a beautiful workhorse for me into this next part of my writing life. I'll have to do a separate blog post about it at some point.

I'm moving this Blogger blog to my WordPress website soon, just fyi. It's already there, actually, and you can go sub there soon as well, although I won't be completely away from Blogger for some time yet, so no worries if you want to hang out here on Blogger with me while we transition everything.

My idea is to "own my own content" and eventually be off social media platforms and have everything about me at my website. I was off social media for four years, and it did me good. I'm trying to figure out a way to return that works for me. Hence, having all content in one place. More on that as we transition.

In the meantime, I am once again (mostly against my will, hahaha) at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (you'll find me here most often because I like the visual storytelling, and it feels less nekkid-making).

And I'm at Pinterest, never left Pinterest, as this is where I catalog resources for my work in progress, so it's a work tool, it's messy, but it's process, and maybe useful to readers... it's certainly useful to me, and I love this tool for that reason.

And I'm here, once again, at the blog, and very happy about that. Thanks for hanging out with me.

xoxo Debbie