“SO HOW’S THE BOOK COMING ALONG?”

I get this question a lot, ever since I started writing my book after getting DOGE’d this past spring. Usually I respond with something like good, great, or coming along well thank you!

That’s not totally untrue, but to be more specific, it was coming along well for several months and then recently I hit a wall and began avoiding writing at all costs.

What’s the book again??

If you’ve been around here for a little while, you know it’s been my long-time dream to write this book. Here’s the work-in-progress blurb:  

A riveting exploration of identity and coming of age, AT THE EDGE OF THE KNOWN WORLD (working title) is the poignant and funny tale of a young American woman struggling to manage a youth center in the world’s largest Syrian refugee camp. In her debut memoir, Georgie Nink critically examines the humanitarian aid industrial complex and her own flawed role in it, even while detailing embarrassing Arabic mishaps and humorous stories of daily life as an expat living in Jordan.

This story explores what it means to truly witness and support people as they navigate the trauma of war and displacement. But the serious is juxtaposed with the tragicomic as she deals with celebrities who visit the camp for Instagram photo ops, leads fake-it-till-you-make-it funding negotiations with the UN, and improbably befriends the brilliant and witty Syrian refugees who make up her team at the youth center. Relatable and boldly honest, AT THE EDGE OF THE KNOWN WORLD will change how you see your world.

I probably should have been an anthropologist, because this book is about catapulting myself into a foreign world, culture, and workplace, and ingratiating myself with a team who at first viewed me as a three-headed alien. This experience was beautiful, meaningful, exhausting, absurd, funny, and life-altering, and I’ve had this book inside me for seven years – ever since I quit that job in late 2018.

Meanwhile in 2025, America feels like it is being quickly ripped to shreds by polarization, violent rhetoric, political division, tension, and assassinations. And this story is fundamentally about building relationships with fellow humans who are inherently other – a story which could perhaps, you know, be useful at such a time as this.

My book is not going to save the world, or even America. But it’s (I’m showing my bias here) a fascinating exploration of what it really means to engage with people who are very different from ourselves. Yes, it’s about what happened with me and that refugee camp job, but it’s also (I hope) a more widely relatable story about building community outside the usual echo chambers we all find ourselves in.

The part where I was full steam ahead

Anyway: for this and many other reasons, I’m excited about the book, and I’m grateful I got to spend the last several months working on it. Here’s a quick recap of how that happened:

• January 20: Donald Trump is sworn into office for the second time.
• January 24: Trump signs an executive order pausing all foreign aid funding. I immediately texted my colleague that day: “Um, are we out of jobs?” He responded right away, “I think so??” This kicked off days of office-wide confusion as everyone tried to figure out what the hell was going on with our funding, our jobs, and the U.S. government.
• Late January: Unfortunately, the government itself (or at least, the government reps we worked with) had absolutely no idea what was going on either. Someday I’ll write more about this insane time, but for now I’ll just say it involved a lot of confusion, panic, and daily calls to my sister who got DOGE’d at the same time as me.
• February 1: I’m furloughed without pay indefinitely along with my entire team and most of my company’s staff in the US. I apply for unemployment benefits in Massachusetts.
• Also February: I begin applying for jobs and writing my book.
• March: Officially laid off after my project is terminated by the government (thanks, Elon!).
• April: Interview for a new job and get offered the position, but turn it down because I feel strongly that I need more time to write my book.
• Late April: Realize if I want to prioritize my book so much that I would turn down a job offer, I shouldn’t be spending time on job applications anyway? So I stop applying to jobs and start working full-time on my manuscript.
• May: Write.
• June: Write.
• July: Write.
• August: Write.
• September: Pause writing, restart job searching.

Of course, this is a wildly oversimplified timeline, and it does not touch on the elephant in the year: the fact that my ex-husband and I separated in May and that in June, I moved into a new apartment on my own.

That process took buckets of time, tears, and energy. Splitting and packing and moving was absolutely horrible. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, and in the wake of the move, I spent many hours staring vacantly at the wall of my new apartment while half sunk into the cushions of the light blue couch I’d brought with me from the old place to the new one.

But anyway, that’s not what this post is about. It’s about how the book is coming along, so please forgive the incomplete timeline of my year and the glossing over of many important details.

In the months I spent writing, I wrote more than half of the first draft of my story. The next steps are to finish that draft and then revise, revise, revise.

Most people are not aware of the steps it takes to transform a story from an idea into a physical book in a bookstore. I don’t blame them; I didn’t know either, until recently! Here are the steps I’ll need to tackle next:

1. Finish the manuscript. (Yikes!!!)
2. Write a book proposal (even more yikes!!!). This is separate from the manuscript, and is required for pitching a memoir to agents and publishers. It includes an overview of the book and author, information about my target audience, a marketing plan, sample chapters, and how my book fits into the existing universe of memoirs. In short, it’s my business case for why my book should exist in the world, and why it will sell.
3. Send my book proposal to agents.
4. (WITH A LOT OF LUCK), get an agent, and then revise the book proposal in collaboration with the agent.
5. Send the revised book proposal to publishers (the agent handles this part while I wait around, probably biting off all my fingernails).
6. (WITH A LOT MORE LUCK), get a book deal and sign a contract with a publisher.
7. Revise, revise, revise, now with a professional editor. Oh, and probably come up with the actual title.
8. Do a ton of pre-publication publicity, such as giving interviews or placing essays in online magazines or literary journals, to drum up interest in the book before it’s released.
9. PUBLISH. Launch my book into the big scary world.
10. Throw a party? Hide under the covers? Read the reviews? Don’t read the reviews?

This list, too, is wildly oversimplified. You can hit snags at so many points along the way. #2 (the book proposal), for example, is so overwhelming I’d like to just hop back in bed and stay there forever.

Getting from #3 to #4 (securing an agent) could itself be a sticky swamp: you could send your book proposal out to agents and not hear back from any, or be rejected. Same for getting from #5 to #6: your agent could send your book proposal out to publishers and not hear back from any.

Then there are other steps I may add to that list, such as hiring a book coach to help me prepare my book proposal for agents, or having beta readers read my manuscript and give me feedback. And I’ve been off of social media for awhile now, but I might even need to reestablish myself there in order to show The Gatekeepers that I have a (dun dun dun) platform!

!!!

The whole process is incredibly daunting, especially for a first-time author. But I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m complaining, because I most certainly am not. What I wrote a few months ago has still been true these past months: “My dream was to write this book, and I’m writing it… Most days now, I wake up before my alarm with a feeling of excitement buzzing in my chest, and I think: I get to write today!“

So though it’s a long process, I have a sense of the roadmap. I know where I’m trying to go, and I’ve made it pretty far on a manuscript draft.

The part where I got stuck

Things were going along swimmingly and then in the last month, I hit a wall and didn’t progress at all. Not one word. To be fair, this coincided with starting to job search full time again, which has been taking up all my time.

But also, I think my avoidance of this beloved project is likely fear-based. Writers, artists, and all types of creatives can probably relate to this. I get all these voices in my head: I have more than half the story written down, but is it any good? Will anyone like it? Will the gatekeepers of the publishing industry want to buy it? What if it’s terrible?  

And so now when I came across a block of time I had previously scheduled for writing, I suddenly find it is vitally important to do a load of laundry, bake banana bread, or clean out my email inbox. My writing desk is swimming in a lake of lava and I need to stay as far away as possible.

It’s tempting to linger forever in this middle space, having a half-done manuscript and telling people, “Yes, yes, it’s coming along!” while baking endless loaves of banana bread.

But I know myself.

This book is my dream and I won’t rest until I launch it into the world.

Maybe I need to join a writing group or something? Assign someone to kick me and make me keep going?

This is the real story of how the book is coming along, but the nice people who ask me this question don’t need all that detail. They don’t need to hear about the wins, the losses, the insecurities and fears. It’s coffee hour after church, after all, or a chance meeting in a coffee shop, and they just need a short and neatly packaged response.

So I usually just tell them: “Coming along well, thank you, and how’s work?”

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Have you had this experience with writing or any other creative project?
How did you get unstuck? Please help! ⬇️

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