Author interview: Emma Tourtelot on motherhood, grief, and becoming a novelist

Emma Tourtelot brings a rare mix of cultural fluency, emotional candor, and lived experience to her work. In this interview, Tourtelot reflects on motherhood as a creative throughline, her early-morning writing life, and the surprising rewards of seeing readers truly live inside her words, as she discusses her debut novel, No One You Know.

Q: What’s a memory of a story or book that made you realize you wanted to be a writer?
A: I grew up one town over from Roald Dahl–in Buckinghamshire, England–so I got to meet him at our local library when I was a kid. He was just as weird and wonderful as his stories. And so tall! (I just looked it up: He was 6’6”.) I read his books over and over, and I loved hearing about his little writing shed in his back garden. That was the first time I really thought about who was behind the stories I loved. My favorite was always James and the Giant Peach.

Q: How do you nurture your creativity when life gets busy or overwhelming?
A: I find that if I touch base with my writing project once a day–even just briefly, even just rereading a paragraph I wrote the day before–then I kind of stay in the dream space of the novel, and I’m always half-thinking about it as I go about my day. I’m constantly sending myself voice texts while I drive to work in the morning, as ideas come to me.

Q: What’s one writing habit you can’t live without and one you wish you could break?
A: A habit I can’t live without: I read everything I write out loud, over and over again. The rhythm of a sentence is so important to me, and I can only hear that when I read aloud. If I’m writing while my family members are around, I try to do this under my breath–a habit my daughter refers to as “bibbling.” Apparently, that’s what it sounds like to her.

A habit I wish I could break: I am an obsessive tinkerer. I edit as I go. I have never been able to do morning pages or free writing or any of those other writerly things that supposedly get the creative juices flowing. I put a sentence down and I immediately want to fix it. It’s why I’ve never kept a diary–that’s a first draft, and I’d be horrified if anyone, including myself, ever read it.

Q: What’s the best piece of advice another writer has given you about storytelling?
A: When someone tells you that something isn’t working in your book, you should listen to them, because that’s helpful feedback. That’s important to know. But if they go on to tell you exactly how you should fix it, feel free to ignore that aspect of the feedback.

Q: When do you feel most “in the zone” with your writing—early mornings, late nights, or somewhere in between?
A: It used to be evenings, after my kids were in bed. I was always a night owl. But then I got a job as a middle school librarian, so I was forced to become a morning person. Also, my kids are teenagers now and stay up way later than I do! Fortunately, they sleep until ten or eleven on weekend mornings. So, if I get up at six, I have hours of writing time before they’re awake. That’s when I’m most in the zone.

Q: What’s a book that changed how you think about writing or storytelling?
A: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott made me want to be a writer (and a better person, too), and On Writing by Stephen King reminded me that it was time to actually start.

Q: What themes do you find yourself returning to again and again in your work?
A: Motherhood. And especially what it means to love these human beings I brought into the world–knowing the world will hurt them, and knowing I can’t always protect them.

Q: What’s your go-to snack or drink while writing?
A: Coffee! And almonds. I always have a small Ziploc of almonds in my tote bag. I read somewhere that Obama’s midnight snack in the White House was exactly seven lightly salted almonds. I am not quite as restrained a snacker as he (allegedly) was, so I prefer the unsalted kind. Otherwise I’d be a very dehydrated writer. I told my daughter the other day that I’m an “almond mom,” but apparently that doesn’t mean what I think it means! Apparently, it’s not a mom who carries around almonds in her tote bag.

Q: What’s a quirky or unexpected detail about your writing space?
A: I mostly write in this sunny yellow armchair that my husband and kids refer to as the Golden Throne. It’s not officially my chair–it’s in our living room, after all–but my husband still asks for my permission before sitting in it. My teenage kids, not so much.

Q: Do you have any rituals or routines to help you transition into “writer mode”?
A: I didn’t start writing fiction until after I had kids, so I never got to be precious about it. I mostly write in the little pockets of time I find at the edges of my day–I don’t have time to sit around and wait for the muse to show up. I keep my laptop with me at all times, so if I find myself with twenty minutes to kill in a parking lot, while my son finishes up at soccer practice, I can jump right in. Being busy is a pretty decent way to avoid writer’s block, I’ve found.

Q: What’s the most rewarding feedback you’ve ever received from a reader?
A: Okay, so as a general rule, I am against dog-earing pages in a book. I’m a librarian! Dog-eared pages horrify me almost as much as someone leaving a book splayed open instead of using a bookmark. That said, it warms my heart when I see Bookstagrammers have dog-eared my book, or littered it throughout with Post-Its. The fact that there are all these lines they want to go back to—that’s the best feedback ever.

Q: In your experience, what has been the best way to market your books? Where have you found the greatest return on your investment (whether it be time or money invested?)
A: I have been pleasantly surprised by the world of Bookstagram. It’s incredibly heartwearing to see all these people (mostly women) talking about books. If you spend enough time on Bookstagram, you’ll have renewed faith in our nation’s attention span. I’m kind of late to the party on this, I know. I learned about Bookstagram when students came into the middle school library where I work, asking about books they’d seen online (Booktok, too). To promote my novel No One You Know, I spent a lot of time reaching out to Bookstagrammers whose reading taste seemed like a good fit. I’ve felt so lifted up by these women.

Q: Have you ever had to cut a scene or character you loved? How did you handle it?
A: Yes! My original draft of No One You Know was about 20,000 words longer. Every time I cut a scene that I felt attached to, I saved it to a separate file and told myself I could go back and reuse it at any time. I don’t think I ever did, but it was comforting to know it was there. It’s the writerly equivalent of storing junk in the basement for a year until you’re ready to donate it or trash it.

Q: How do you define success as an author? Has that definition evolved over time?
A: When my agent shopped my novel around, I got so many rejections. Really nice rejections! And I was so dejected, it was really hard to write anything new. I remember telling my husband that the thing I was most sad about was not writing–I missed wanting to write. He asked me what I pictured when I thought about being published, and I told him I wanted a physical copy of the book to give to my mom (it’s dedicated to her) and a launch party at our local library with all my friends. That’s when I connected with She Writes Press. My mom now has the book and I had the launch party this week, so…done and done! I need to keep reminding myself that everything else is just gravy.

Q: What have you written that you found to be the most fun to write?
A: The prologue of No One You Know is set on the Taconic Parkway, which is a terrifying road to drive. It actually has cross streets! How is that even allowed?! It was pretty cathartic, getting to express my strong feelings about the Taconic on the page.

Q: Do you have an all-time favorite writer, or does your favorite change over time? Who is your favorite writer today?
A: I should probably go with E.B. White, seeing as my only tattoo is a quote from his book Charlotte’s Web (“this lovely world, these precious days”). It’s been my favorite book since I was a kid. Reading Charlotte’s Web was the first time I thought not just about story, but about the writing, too. It was the first time I noticed good writing.

Q: What is your favorite genre to read? Do you write in that genre? Has that always been your favorite genre, or has your taste evolved as you have grown as a writer?
A: I really love dystopian literary fiction (like Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel). And, this is more of a niche genre, but I’m huge fan of chronicles of isolation (I adored The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff; I also enjoyed North Woods by Daniel Mason, The Bear by Andrew Krivak; and Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy).

My next project is an attempt to combine these two things. It’s been fun to experiment with, and I’m learning a lot about plotting a novel, which I don’t usually do. It’s a dystopian A.I. story about the end of the world. It’s also about the lengths a mother will go to in order to protect her children. Because apparently that’s a subject I’m not quite done with yet.

Q: If you could live in the world of one of your books for a day, which would it be and why?
A: Any Jane Austen novel. There’s that famous one-star Amazon review of Pride and Prejudice: “Just a bunch of people going to each other’s houses.” I want to wear one of those dresses and go around to people’s houses for tea.

Q: If your life were a novel, what would the title be?
A: Shh! (I’m a librarian by occupation and also in my heart.)

Q: What’s a surprising or unusual skill you have that might make its way into a story one day?
A: I have this weird ability to visualize the location of every single item we own, anywhere in our house – from the sour cream at the back of the fridge to a tool in the basement. My husband and kids never bother looking for things, they just ask me. Even when I’m not home!

Q: What’s one thing you hope readers take away from your latest book?
A: No One You Know is a sad book, but it’s also got humor and hope and heart. I hope they see the love in it. Ultimately, it’s about a mother and a daughter finding their way back to each other.

Author Bio

Emma Tourtelot is the co-author of eight nonfiction books about sex and relationships, as one half of the celebrated advice duo Em & Lo, and she has penned regular columns for New York, Glamour, and the Guardian, among others. She was also the co-creator of Nerve Personals. After being a sex advice writer for almost two decades, Emma is now a middle school librarian in the Hudson Valley, which turns out to be a lot more controversial than her first career. She currently lives in Rhinecliff, NY, with her husband and two teenage children. No One You Know is her first novel. 

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