News about my next book, getting banned from Facebook and embracing the Great Unknown

If a girl posts on the internet but her account is banned, did the news really happen?

Three of the four notebooks I filled writing about writing my new book.

I’m purposely writing this from the space in between — no news, heaps of uncertainty, exquisite, frustrating purgatory. I’m writing today in part because I want to fess up and remind myself to celebrate invisible victories; that life isn’t made up of big-boned events but rather the connective tissue of ordinary days.

Also I’m banned from Facebook. My account disappeared overnight, along with more than a decade of photos and memories, not to mention access to Messenger and even my somewhat neglected but still important-to-me author page. I can’t even log in. Facebook says I violated community standards but won’t tell me how, and since I can personally vouch for myself that I’m no community violator, I suspect I was hacked.

Which is terrible timing, because I wanted to tell you that I wrote another book. I finally finished writing my second novel this spring. I queried literary agents, got several offers and signed with an incredibly vibrant and passionate woman at a top tier agency. As of yesterday, we are out on submission, which is to say that she is approaching our dream editors at dream publishers in hopes of getting us a book deal. That could happen next week and it could happen in six months and it could not happen at all. (Hopefully, they aren’t looking me up on Facebook as we speak.)

Here are all the reasons I haven’t written a newsletter in seven months: I wanted to have news. Then I had news but it didn’t seem newsy enough. Then I had bigger news but didn’t want to jinx it. Then I had news but didn’t want to make my friends who don’t have news feel sad. Then I didn’t want to write a newsletter instead of writing a book. Instead, I got sucked back into New York Times Games. I doomscrolled TikTok and Facebook and Instagram. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I woke up seven times a night because of perimenopause, which is to say I stopped sleeping entirely. I doomscrolled Reddit and Facebook and Instagram instead. I wrote a thousand messages to support bots about getting banned on Facebook. (Okay, that last one was just this morning.)

In all seriousness, in my defense, I’ve had a big year. A year of big things, all while working full-time. Moving out of my long-time home, moving my daughters out of my nest, moving in with my husband. Launching and continuing promotion of my first book, and so much travel — I visited 50 book clubs alone. Then there are those life stressors that I’ve either opted to keep private or blocked out altogether. It’s definitely a pattern in my life that, the more I have going on, the less I say publicly about it. I wouldn’t want to violate community standards.

I was so tempted to write this newsletter right after I finished the new manuscript, because it felt like such a victory, one I wasn’t entirely sure, to be frank, that I could pull off. Writing Still True felt like a fever dream, mysterious but rarely difficult. The story just sort of flowed out. This new book, on the other hand, wrote itself in a hundred different directions, most of them dead ends. It was years of stops and starts, of thinking I was almost there, only to turn around and drive all the way back home and start over again. I don’t write by hand, but I filled four notebooks with my questions and scribbles and maps and timelines and neuroses. I finally finished a bloated first draft in January 2023, then tore it to shreds because it wasn’t right. I spent six months not writing a word, just thinking and talking through everything that happened before page one, sending epically long texts to my husband about characters and events as if they were real. Finally, in September 2023, I sat down and wrote straight through March 2024 to a much stronger draft. I took it as far as I could, then crossed my fingers and sent it out into the agent-query abyss. The agents’ enthusiastic response is buoying, but far from a guarantee. So here I am, telling you about it even though it might end up being embarrassing for reasons I refuse to type into the ether. (Why breathe life into the negative unknown? Let’s just sit in this moment together, when all good things are still possible.) This morning I simply typed this all out and I’m trying not to overthink it, or even edit it at all — no analysis paralysis, no perfectionistic doubt. Here’s a newsletter, hopefully I write another one soon, the end.

As for Facebook, well. I admit I’ve fantasized about deleting my account, so maybe this will end up being one of those silver-lined blessing things? Or maybe my account will be restored before you even read these words, and you’ll be like, what was she going on about again? Or maybe there’s some third possibility, one that hasn’t occurred to me yet, because that’s how life works, if we’re lucky.

Upcoming events

Would you believe I’m still traveling around promoting Still True? I’ve got some particularly exciting events coming up, including a dream invitation to present and lead a workshop at this year’s Washington Island Literary Festival, which is one of my favorite lit fests of all time. I couldn’t be more thrilled. I’ll also be presenting at the Wisconsin Writers Association annual conference in October and I continue to visit libraries (Oostburg, I’m coming for you tonight!) and book groups. I’ll also be the guest on Book Pop!’s season finale episode, which we’re recording in front of a live audience this Sunday night—tickets are still available. As always, you can keep up with some of my events on my personal website, maggieginsberg.com, and my one true social media love, Instagram. Good day to everyone except Facebook.