Charlottesville Notebook: an Introduction
a chronicle of the book that was, an invitation to the book that is
Good afternoon, Lab Coats. This is a pinned post for the new Charlottesville Notebook section at Storybelly. As the first post in this occasional series and new section, it’s open to all subscribers, with the exception being the links for Lab Coats at the bottom. Here we go:
Recently, during a long stretch of revision, I finally surrendered to the inevitable and removed my first and most beloved sections of Charlottesville, my novel in progress.
I’ve been clinging to these gems for almost six years. But they aren’t working anymore with the story I am now writing. When I sold this book to Scholastic in late 2019, I thought the Unite the Right rally of 2017 was a stunning anomaly. It was — until it wasn’t. As it turns out, it was more a harbinger of events to come.
Like so many of you, I’ve been grappling ever since with the unbelievable, tectonic shifts in a divided America, while trying to understand what they mean for the story I’m telling.
I want somewhere to house these fabulous but no longer working pieces, and somewhere to chronicle the writing of this historical American novel through the whiplash of American history over the past decade. I want to understand my choices. And I want to create something from the leavings as well.
The Charlottesville Notebook
This is the first post in the new Charlottesville Notebook — a placeholder for what’s to come in this section of Storybelly.
I hope you’ll come along with me. Occasional posts will go to all paid subscribers — that’s all Lab Coats. Notebook posts will explore different aspects of writing as they arise in the work: research, fragments, questions of structure, plot, pacing, character, and setting — whatever strikes us about our own writing. I hope this becomes a resource for all of us.
From time to time I’ll share excerpts from the current Charlottesville manuscript as it continues to take shape. This is the fourth major revision of the book and, so far, the closest to the True North of this American story, in this American time, and in this American place… by this American writer. This is the draft I will deliver to my editor.
Some entries will be rough. Some will be unfinished. I’m sharing them here in the spirit of trust and conversation, and to help me (and you) stay at the page. Please don’t share or circulate these posts outside the Notebook space.
Below you’ll find links to the new section. There is also a Group on the Storybelly homepage where Notebook posts will appear as they’re published, visible only to paid subscribers. From the Charlottesville Notebook Group on the homepage, you can click on various posts you want to read without having to scroll through the Notebook itself.
I hope you’ll join me there, and I hope you’ll find the Notebook useful and meaningful to your own work.
See you there soon —
xoxo
Debbie