Early in the writing of my first historical novel, COME AUGUST, COME FREEDOM, I considered quitting.

After collecting notes for several years about Gabriel's Rebellion, one of America's largest planned slave insurrections, I had decided to write a young adult novel that would imagine Gabriel's life leading up to the thwarted rebellion of 1800. I dove in to the archives and spent a year reading and re-reading through primary sources, becoming familiar with the historiography of Gabriel's Rebellion.

The research was going well; my inner archive-rat was nicely tipsy off a strong, tall cocktail of centuries-old trial documents, private correspondence, legislative resolutions, and period newspaper ads. With each pass through the original documents and historical works, the details surrounding the insurrection plot settled into my mind more deeply, but new questions were arising in demand of answers that I didn't yet have. I understood the facts, but processing the meaning of those facts was proving difficult for me. There was so much to learn about: the U.S. presidential election of 1800, the Haitian Revolution, Virginia's shifting of its capital from Williamsburg to Richmond, the nature of slavery in Virginia during the early republic, geography, currency, and the criminal justice system.

I was in way, way over my head.

One morning I seized up, froze up, and almost gave up. The only reasonable response to that sort of paralysis is to get up and walk the dog. I needed to go do some thinking, reflect on all that I knew, and try to assess the gaps in my understanding.

So, I gave myself a good hour's walk to ask questions, consider new ideas, and try to aim higher in my thinking. I went walking to try to reconnect with my curiosity. On the day I took myself on the first of many thinker's-block walks with my dog, Biscuit, my interior conversation went something like this:

Discouraged Little Me: I don't write historical fiction. I'm not a historian. I truly don't even know if that sentence should be: "I'm not an historian." I can't do this.

Aim Higher Me: Come on, snap out of it. Don't be a baby. Think! What do you know about?

Discouraged Little Me: Nothing. I'm not a historian. Or "an" one. Whatever.

DLM was not cooperating.

We have a mantra in our family: dig deep. I'd like to say that Aim Higher Me helped Discouraged Little Me to dig deep and find her confidence, but there's a good reason for taking a dog along when you're off exploring. A hound dog companion lets no wild thing go unobserved, not the two crows taunting the juvenile Cooper's hawk overhead, not the lone cottontail trying to blend in to the brush, nor the last of the Monarch butterflies coaxing the tail end of summer to stay around. Discouraged Little Me picked her head up and sighed. Aim Higher Me tried again with a softer touch.

AHM: Come on, sweet child. You know about lots of things. Name one thing you know.

DLM: Cities. I know about cities. [Well, it was a start.]

AHM: Yes! You do! You know all about cities. Tell me something about cities.

DLM: Cities are where people live. [I didn't say it was a great start.] And where people work and learn. Cities have housing and transportation and employers. And ways of getting food to people, places for people to worship, to trade, and to have fun. Cities can be beautiful or functional or beautiful and functional. You can have walking cities or automobile cities or garden cities. Prince Charles made a city—Poundbury!

AHM: Good! Good! Now, how do cities relate to Gabriel? [See how long AHM waited to raise the REAL issue? At least thirty minutes of walking the big dog.]

DLM: I don't know.

Having come this close to a breakthrough, AHM didn't follow the pileated woodpecker down the creek and hardly noticed the eastern bluebird feeding its young on the power line.

AHM: You DO know. Come on. One thing.

DLM: Okay, Gabriel may have hired out in the city. He came into the city every Sunday to plan his business. When his plot was discovered, he escaped at the edge of the city by hopping a ship to Norfolk (a city!), where he was captured by the sheriff. He came back up the James River to Richmond. He walked through the city up to the Governor's house. He was sent to the new penitentiary in the city. He was tried at the courthouse on the north bank of the James. The same courthouse where he was tried in 1799…in the city!

AHM: See, you know about this city, and Gabriel knew about this city, too.

So, newly invigorated with a fresh way of organizing my thoughts about Gabriel, I sprinted home up the hill and made straight for our library. I knew Jane Jacobs could help me. I grabbed our copy of her book, THE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN CITIES, from the social sciences shelf and read enough to reframe how I was approaching the facts. By then, I had started a research wiki; now I added a reflection section and wrote, paraphrasing Jacobs:

Takeaway from this book: A city exists as a problem of a sizable number of variables that are all interrelated to the organic whole. A city is an organized, complex problem. So, was slavery also an organized, complex problem? (not a simple problem b/c there are more than 2 variables, not disorganized b/c why?) So if slavery is an organized, complex problem...(lots of interrelated variables) what does this mean for Gabriel and how he ultimately decides to take the problem on? I think there is evidence to suggest that he DID understand the interrelated aspects of the problem and how it all came together in 1799-1800. How then, to illustrate this kind of thinking?? Can the city itself be the metaphor? Does living in the city, working in the city, teach him something about the problem of slavery and what he ultimately comes to see as the solution? Or is it the problem of freedom that he is giving his thinking to? (Go read just a tiny bit about radiant city, garden city, city on a hill refs)

I wondered, what the heck just happened? It was awesome!

"That's called metacognition," my friend Meg Medina told me. "Thinking about thinking. Knowing about knowing. Look it up."

Metacognition. With a name that big, surely, then I could replicate the experience whenever I needed to:

1. Go explore.
2. Ask questions.
3. Express a new idea. Just try!
4. Aim higher.
5. Reflect on the experience of exploring and thinking.
6. Record my thoughts.

Here's another example. After finishing up some research in Colonial Williamsburg, I went exploring, this time in the College of William and Mary's bookstore, and picked up NOTES OF A NATIVE SON by James Baldwin. The question I was pondering at that time was: what biases do I have that I don't even see?

I sat down and read his essay "Everybody's Protest Novel." In it, Baldwin links together Harriet Beecher Stowe's UNCLE TOM'S CABIN and Richard Wright's NATIVE SON as protest novels that reject life and deny beauty. I read Baldwin's words accusing Stowe of covering the nakedness of Africans with the hidden values prescribed to color-language in her novel. He wrote, "For black is the color of evil; only the robes of the saved are white." I had asked the question, "What bias do I hold?" Baldwin had answered. Before even returning to my manuscript, I knew I would find I also had equated the color white with goodness and light and black with malice and evil. A different question arose: What do I do now?

Having been made aware of my bias, I had two choices: forge ahead unchanged or evolve. I recorded in my wiki, "White and black are just colors; we can assign to them any value or symbolism we want. Does my current use of color symbolism make sense for Gabriel? Does the way I've written about colors make sense for this story?"

Here's the thing: Gabriel was a blacksmith. He spent his life in the black of the forge. He planned the insurrection by a creek in the dark of the woods. For his story, I realized, the color black should represent safety, freedom, and salvation and white would equate with blinding injustice and evil. Reading "Everybody's Protest Novel" didn't directly relate to Gabriel's life, but exploring and questioning did help me grow as a thinker and as a writer.

Seeking out metacognitive experiences can shape us into passionate lifelong learners. Curiosity, inquiry, and reflection can and do occur naturally—as when my walk led me to Jane Jacobs and a new framework for processing many variables. And, cultivating such periods of exploration and reflection, as with James Baldwin's essay, can transform our self-awareness—not to mention our thinking about the world we live in.

Gigi Amateau is the author of the young adult novels COME AUGUST, COME FREEDOM (Candlewick Press, 2012) and A CERTAIN STRAIN OF PECULIAR (Candlewick Press, 2009). She also wrote the middle-grade novel, CHANCEY OF THE MAURY RIVER (Candlewick Press, 2008). Her debut young adult novel, CLAIMING GEORGIA TATE (Candlewick Press, 2005), was selected as a Book Sense Children's Pick, a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age, and a VOYA Review Editor's Choice. She also contributed to the acclaimed anthology, OUR WHITE HOUSE: LOOKING IN LOOKING OUT (Candlewick Press, 2008). Gigi is a native of Mississippi. She grew up in Mechanicsville, VA and graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in Urban Studies and Planning. She lives in the city of Richmond, VA with her husband and daughter. Visit her online at http://www.gigiamateau.com/.

© 2012 Gigi Amateau. Author photo: L. Leigh Meriweather. Please do not reproduce in any form, electronic or otherwise.