Storybelly Digest #8 Writing From the Heart of History

Charlottesville: walking the ground that shapes your story

Good Monday Morning! It has rained buckets here; all day yesterday and still today, raining. I worked in Fauquier County schools in Virginia last week (story here), then spent a day in Charlottesville, Virginia doing research for my work in progress (got sprinkled on a bit), drove home late Friday through some spitting rain but was spared a deluge while on the road, did a walkabout in my yard on Saturday (see IG) and saw how thirsty everything was, vowed to water “in the morning” and then the heavens opened.

Thank you! Although, if you could have seen me’n’Jim outside during a downpour, clearing the drain by the driveway so the downstairs won’t flood, you’d laugh.

Meanwhile, here is a photo I took on Friday of the Rotunda on the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville. This photo includes the front of the Thomas Jefferson statue:

It might be the rain sprinkles on my camera lens that made my UVA photos look wonky here and there, or maybe the herringbone bricks did it, but they are all weird, and I’m having to accept that. This is the Jefferson statue outside the Rotunda at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

And here are two views from behind the Jefferson statue, one taken by me on Friday, April 4, 2025 and one (photo credit Getty) on another Friday, August 11, 2017:

“Go there” has been my mantra about writing historical fiction. Go there, if at all possible. Sometimes, of course, it is not. But the benefits of seeing and feeling (and smelling, touching, hearing) a place for yourself are incalculable. Even if you knew it once, like I knew the landscape of my childhood in Countdown, to go back 30 years later is to re-enter that time and place.

I’ve avoided going to Charlottesville partly because I had to, during the pandemic, and partly because I knew that the pulsating energy from the demonstrators and from the protestors, from the living and from the dead, the history of not only those two days but of the ancient days before and the inadequate days since the Unite the Right rally in 2017 would still permeate Charlottesville…. and it does, like a living thing, for better or worse for my wee psyche. But go I did, and I felt that literal vibration with every step I took on Friday.

I’ve written about the saga of trying to write this new book (story here) about the Lost Cause of the Confederacy and the Rise of White Supremacy, having sold it to Scholastic just before the start of the pandemic as my next YA book and then researching deeply and trying to stay in the story through the isolation of lockdown, the unbelievability of Jan. 6, and my agent’s call “Are you sure you want to write this book right now?” and my assertion that I do indeed want to write it (I have had to affirm this, to myself as much as anyone, these past few years), that it is taking the time it takes, given all we have collectively been living through since then, along with big heavy sighs and an admission of my own tender heart feeling brutalized every time I approach the page.

But I’m making progress. I went to Charlottesville for the day on Friday, on the heels of my nearby school visits, and I will be back again soon. I went to Greenwood, Mississippi four times (three for research, one on book tour) while I wrote Revolution, and I have no doubt I’ll be in Charlottesville again and again as well. The first trip is always for a walkabout:

Here I’m trying to get the geography right. I’ll go into detail in Wednesday’s Lab post when we talk about how we write about a place. Maybe you can see, though, how I’m charting a path for my characters, and along the way I need to know the size of objects, what they are made of, the flora along the way, and the path I’m trying to describe… all part of being as authentic as I can be in my story universe.

If you’re interested in writing with fellow Lab Coats (aka Sweethearts of the Storybelly Lab), you can upgrade a free sub and join us in the Lab every week, and every day in Chat, if you wish, right here:

So this week in the Writers Lab we’re starting (the second half of) our Spring Quarter with Notebooks. And in that notebook we’ll be writing about Place. More on Wednesday. If you don’t have a notebook you want to use for assignments this spring, now’s the time to find the just-right one.

This week’s reading — for me — has to do with Charlottesville:

1. A 220 page “Independent Review of the 2017 Protest Events in Charlottesville, Virginia” researched and compiled by Hunton & Williams

2. Standing Up to Hate: The Charlottesville Clergy Collective and the Lessons from August 12, 2017 by Michael Cheuk

3. Cry Havoc: Charlottesville and American Democracy Under Siege by 2017 Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer.

Eez a lot, as we say around here. I met the Rev. Dr. Alvin Edwards, pastor of Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church, on Friday, and I’m anxious to read Standing Up to Hate then meet with Dr. Edwards again on my next trip.

This week’s outside will be planting seeds — you? Flowers and vegetables.

And maybe I’ll get back to the gym. Bwahahahahahaha!

Actually, in the spring, the edible yard and garden project becomes my gym (not that I won’t get back to the pool, my stretch class, my routines):

I’m proud of the publishing partners who helped give birth to these books, to the teams that have helped them find readers, and I am grateful for every reader who opens these books and sees a bit of history and home, community and compassion. I hope readers connect to their own place in history and home when they read my books. You can find out more about each book, and you can buy them, too, at my website.

I’ve got Charlottesville and the Unite the Right rally heavy on my mind right now. So I’d like to ask you, what does this photo (I’ve got my laptop open to #1 in my reading, above)… what does this photo make you feel? 100 words. Keep for yourself, or put in comments. Word count is optional.

And that’s it for this week’s digest! It’s warm and wet and springy, here in ATL, and I’m counting on a week of good reading and writing ahead. I hope the same for you, those of you who want to/can get to reading and writing… and living, of course!

I’ll leave you with this post by

Jeanette Winterson: Mind Over Matter

about flooding the zone with light. Yes and Amen. May your zone be flooded with light this week, and may you be the light, if you can, when you can.

We need all the light we can get. Send me some, too.