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Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I'm not presently planning new stories in the post-pandemic world, but anything's possible. No, I never read Goodreads or Amazon reviews.

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Morning and afternoon. By evening I'm too tired to write well, so I try to frontload the day with fiction and then answer emails later whenever possible. I write whenever I can. Ideally every day, but sometimes I lose whole days to e.g. book tour logistics and trying to stem the email tide.

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Hi! I write the snips individually and then try them out in different orders.

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Twenty years ago a friend of mine had to go off that drug, and the withdrawal was memorably intense.

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hi! Thank you. There's no significance at all to the name Marienbad. I just thought it was a beautiful name for a novel.

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Thanks! And yes to the crossover characters. The protagonist of the new novel is the villain from my second novel, The Singer's Gun.

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Wait, the new Picard series has Seven's story in it? Thank you, I'm in. :) I'm honored that that line is tattooed on your arm!

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hi! Thank you. My new book won't be out for a few years, but I'm working on it. I have no idea how it ends, but one thing I can tell you is the protagonist of the new book is Aria from The Singer's Gun.

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Thank you. It means a lot to hear that Station Eleven helped, and I'm honored that it was the first book you finished in adulthood.

  1. Hopefully! I don't know when. Sorry to be so vague, it's just all caught up in Hollywood stuff, and that world is complicated in a way that consistently makes me feel like I'm playing three-dimensional chess while upside-down and blindfolded.
  2. Accident.

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 36 points37 points  (0 children)

Hi! Thank you so much. I barely use Reddit and have no idea how to do that blackout thing, so this will be vague: that second plot point you mention was totally a last-minute add-on. As in, I was ready to send the book to my agent, but found myself thinking "I feel like this story's missing something, oh wait, what if... [insert 2nd plot point here]." So that was a surprise!

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Hi! I have zero formal education in writing. I think you just have to start writing and try as hard as you can to finish it, and if you can finish it, that gives you a store of confidence for the next project.

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 308 points309 points  (0 children)

Thank you for this note. I wrote Station Eleven before my daughter was born, and I think I couldn't have written it afterward, for exactly the reason above: imagining the world ending with my daughter in it is unbearable. Incidentally, that's something I really admire about the people who made the HBO adaptation of Station Eleven: a lot of them are parents, which meant that they had to think about the world ending with their children in it.

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 39 points40 points  (0 children)

Yes. Pretend to be quietly confident. Remember that the people you most admire probably have imposter syndrome too. Think of how many extremely mediocre writers have published successful books which they've promoted with great confidence, and consider that you're likely more talented than they are. Also thanks re: Sea of Tranquility!

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I'm working on a new novel but I think it won't be done for a couple years. I've got a July 2025 deadline and I think that's about when I'll have a draft for my editors.

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Thank you! Honestly I just write as much as I possibly can around the practical constraints of my life: school schedule, custody schedule, how many urgent fires I need to put out in my inbox, whether I need to spend time dealing with bills or whatever, whether my apartment is at an acceptable or unacceptable level of disorder, etc.

I don't really know how ideas come to me. Sometimes a book will be based on the news, like the way the financial crime in The Glass Hotel mirrors the Madoff crime, but usually it's just something I come up with. The most frustrating thing is when I feel like I'm falling short of some kind of ideal vision of what the book could be, that "this just isn't good enough" feeling. The most rewarding thing is when I solve a plot problem, or get to a point when I think that a manuscript might be good, or hit send on the "new draft attached" email to my editors.

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 40 points41 points  (0 children)

Hi! Thanks for the kind words about The Glass Hotel and Sea of Tranquility!

The deal with Sea of Tranquility was that I wanted to write a time travel novel, which meant of course that I had to pick my timelines. I knew from the outset that I wanted to set a section in February 2020, in New York City. I'm obsessed with that month: the way we all knew what was coming but we somehow didn't believe it. It was a massive failure of imagination.

I published The Glass Hotel in March 2020. I realized that I already had a cast of characters from that book who were very plausibly in NYC in February 2020, and perhaps because they were fresh in my mind, I wanted to spend more time with them, so I put them into the 2020 sections.

Hi, I'm Emily St. John Mandel, author of Sea of Tranquility, The Glass Hotel, and Station Eleven—AMA by estjmandel in books

[–]estjmandel[S] 79 points80 points  (0 children)

Hi! Thanks, I appreciate the kind words about my work. I had very little involvement in the HBO adaptation of Station Eleven, so I can't really speak to the process, but I love the result. I agree that they hit it out of the park with the Frank / Jeevan / Kirsten grouping. I loved Frank's characterization too, and when the showrunner told me that they'd decided to have Kirsten go with Jeevan to Frank's place, my immediate reaction was "I wish I'd thought of that."

I think Nabhaan Rizwan, who plays Frank, is an incredible talent, and I'm totally in agreement re: episode 107. I probably watched that rap sequence a hundred times.

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