Claudia Emerson, Partner
Welcome everyone and thank you for joining this Mishcon Academy session, part of a series of online events, videos, and podcasts looking at the biggest issues faced by society today. I'm Claudia Emerson, a partner in the real estate team here at Mishcons, and I'm hosting today's events. Before I introduce our guest, there are some housekeeping points to mention. If you're online, you've joined the session automatically on mute and without video. If you have a question, please use the Q&A function located at the bottom of your screen and we will pick this up. If you have any technical issues during the event, please feel free to let us know via the chat and one of the Mishcon team will help you. If you're in the room, there'll be some questions, time for questions at the end, so please just raise your hand. It's a real pleasure to introduce our guest today, international best-selling author whose books have comforted inspired and connected with millions of people around the world. Matt Haig, welcome.
Matt Haig, Author
Thank you, it’s good to be here.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
And it's especially great to welcome you during Mental Health Awareness Week.
Matt Haig, Author
Thank you, Claudia.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Thank you for coming. Whilst, uh, prepping for this, um, I realised that we have 3 things in common.
Matt Haig, Author
Right.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
The first is our fine vintage.
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah. 1975.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
The second is. 1975 shh. Um, the second is…
Matt Haig, Author
1975 is an example of a year.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Exactly. That's old people year.
Matt Haig, Author
Which is definitely not us.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah it’s not us. Um, we both spent time at Leeds Uni.
Matt Haig, Author
Oh yeah, we did.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah, and we both are a bit partial to country music.
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah, I mean lots of music, but yeah, country is definitely in there.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
One of them. And the reason I mention that is because there's a line in a Tim McGraw song that I always reflect on, and it says, I hope one day you get the chance to live 'Like You Were Dying.'
Matt Haig, Author
Yes.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
And when I read your new book, 'The Midnight Train,' I thought about that song, so.
Matt Haig, Author
I thought about that song when I was writing it actually.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Did you?
Matt Haig, Author
Yes. Anyone who doesn't know, Tim McGraw is this big American, quite cheesy.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah.
Matt Haig, Author
Actually, I think Taylor Swift's first single was called 'Tim McGraw,' which I thought was a very clever move when she was a national singer, um, to do your first song the title of which is a famous…
Claudia Emerson, Partner
He's going to get all his fans on board.
Matt Haig, Author
…country singer. Yeah, but yeah, I know he did that song, didn't he? ‘Live Like You’re Dying’ and yeah, we blast that. It's on the family playlist. We have a family playlist. Um, the one thing we sort of collectively do as a family, because we do quite a lot of long road trips. So me, my wife, two teenagers. Teenagers not into that song really, but we alternate. So my son will just be like hip-hop, my daughter will be Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, K-pop axis of that and then, um, my wife will just be whatever she can remember saying and then, yeah, I just put all sorts. But yeah, that one is a good, good car song. Anyway, I'm waffling so.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
It's all right. Um, I'd like you to introduce us to your protagonist in this book, Wilbur.
Matt Haig, Author
Okay, yes.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
And start off by telling us about his journey.
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah, um, Wilbur Budd is a man at the end of his life who finds himself at the point of death on a train station, and a train pulls into the station, and it's an old steam train that he recognises because he'd had a toy train like that as a child and he gets on the train and the train, as it moves, takes him through his childhood, through his life, stopping at various key moments, and he gets off. And at first he can't interact with his past at all, he just has to watch everything that's happened, and he sort of, you know, he realises all the mistakes he's made in his life, especially as he gets older. Outwardly he's a success story because he’s, uh, he becomes this massive businessman, he's got a chain of bookshops, you know, he's got like an equivalent of a Waterstones chain everywhere, and he's been on Dragon's Den, and he's this outward success story, but he inwardly feels like he's done a lot of things wrong. He messed up his marriage, he's done this, that, and the other that hasn't worked out. Um, so it's about him trying to undo the mistakes he's made, but he, he's not allowed to do that, because if you stay off the train, then you lose your own eternity and everything else, and time messes up and everything happens. So it's a story about that. So it's another, like The Midnight Library, it's another sort of what-if kind of story, another life-and-death story.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
And I think The Midnight Library, which is the reason I suggested this because it's one of my favourite books, that it's like a companion, isn't it, to The Midnight Train. So in The Midnight Library, you explore the choices we didn't make and how we often romanticise what could have been.
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Whereas this book looks at the choices we did make and how we may have done it differently.
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah, yeah, it's kind of a false experiment. I'm always obsessed, there's a great book actually by a palliative care nurse, Bronnie Ware. I don’t know if she's British or American, but she wrote a great book called ‘The Five Regrets of the Dying’, and inevitably those regrets are often tied to work, working too hard or not, you know, not making the most of relationships while you still had them and I've always been obsessed by that idea, you know, especially as you get older and life seems to move faster, about, like, am I, what will I be thinking at the end of life looking back? And so this book's just to try to get people to sort of, like, be nostalgic about the present, to sort of appreciate your life as it's going by, you know, imagine if we could live our life forwards, but with the knowledge of backwards. Do you know what I mean?
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah.
Matt Haig, Author
Because it's always a first draught. So we're always making mistakes in real time. So it's getting, um, getting people to think about that because I think we're increasingly in an age where we're not encouraged to think about that and we're encouraged not to think about big picture stuff. And so what we have is all our anxieties about stuff become, I don't know, turned into a market. Like, so we worry about dying and growing old, so then we have a whole anti-aging industry around that. And so we never really think or engage with anything. We're just always trying to, you know, encouraged, uh, to commodify it. So I think books are a space where you can think about more philosophical things.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
And I think it, it tells you to live in the present. I think it's very easy to not live in the present nowadays, because everything is so fast, and we're so forward-looking.
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah. Definitely, definitely and so distracted and so sort of sideways. I mean, that was the idea of Midnight Library. It was almost like coming from social media, because we're always comparing, we're just cross-comparing our lives. Um, there's a fascinating statistic that about 200 or 300 years ago, the average person only saw 150 faces in their entire life. They only saw or met 150 people, because that was the size in sort of Western Europe of the average like mediaeval village or community naturally. It always averages around 150, so you get villages of 120 or 170, but it's always roughly 150. Now, of course, with Instagram, you can just, you can see 150 new faces before you've had breakfast. So we're just overwhelmed with everything. And it wouldn't be the cross-section of people you'd see in a village. It's like the most exceptional people. It's like the, uh, it’s Tim McGraw or it's uh, you know, it’s singers and like athletes or models or super rich people or super powerful people. So inevitably, you can't help but compare yourself against these impossible standards all the time and impossible lives. And when you're seeing other people, you're just thinking, oh, that's a version of me if only I'd have done this or that. So Midnight Library was about, you know, dealing with that.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah. And I think that, that sort of touches on another book, Notes on a Nervous Planet, which I think you've described in modern life as psychologically overwhelming.
Matt Haig, Author
Yes.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
And I think it's, you know, social media, constant comparisons, always being told that we've got to improve every aspect of ourselves.
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
So I think whilst your books, you know, it's amazing because they've opened up conversations about mental health for so many, but do you think we're also creating conditions that make it damage our mental health?
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah, I think one thing that's definitely changed, because I had a full-blown breakdown in like 1999, so I was 24 years old. I was very, very like suicidally ill for about 3 years; agoraphobic, depression, panic disorder. Um, in that time, the predominant feeling I remember, apart from the physical and mental illness itself, was a sort of profound loneliness like even though I was very lucky that I had family I could stay with, I had a partner, um, I was, the loneliness was a feeling that, Oh no!, you know, so melodramatic and so stupid, but it's like a feeling, oh, no one's ever felt like this. This is just like beyond any normal experience. And I think if that happened now, if I had that same first breakdown now, I wouldn't have that feeling because of the mental health conversation. In 1999, if you thought of mentally ill famous people, you thought of dead people.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yes.
Matt Haig, Author
You thought of famous suicides, you thought of Kurt Cobain, you thought of all the writers who died by suicide, um, and things like that. So mental illness just meant tragedy. It just meant that was an inevitable line. Whereas now, and you know, there's cringey aspects to it, and you know, people eye-roll about every celebrity having a mental health story and all this, but I still think that's preferable to the wall of silence we used to have.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah.
Matt Haig, Author
Now, at the same time, so that is definitely an improvement, there's sort of some of the stigma in some of the areas of mental health has gone down. But at the same time, we've also had the rise of the internet, social media, now AI. Uh, we've had incredible socioeconomic disruption and, you know, that is obviously counterbalancing that good, and more so because we're now in this sort of very, uh, distracted, chopped up kind of living, which sort of phones are exacerbating, which is definitely bad for mental health. I mean, there's, you know, it's not as clear-cut as that, there's good aspects about modern life and there's good aspects about social media and stuff like that. But as a net whole, I think most of us would say, you know, it, it's probably a negative. One of the things I'm addicted to on YouTube, um, is BBC Archive, because it's a way of watching TV from just before the internet, so documentaries. I watched a documentary recently, I told you backstage about British Airways training air stewards in like 1987 or something. And like, you know, I can remember 1987 and thinking it was all shiny and modern. And you look at them, you know, the lack of health and safety standards, for one thing. Probably shouldn't say this to a room of lawyers, but like it was incredible what they were like, what sort of stuff they were trained to do. They were just setting planes on fire and going in and putting out, that was their training and, you know, I remember having a laugh about it and a whiskey afterwards. But the world has changed in so many little ways that you don't even, uh, you can think of the big stuff, but the little social ways that our lives have changed. I mean, just with kids, I'm a really annoying dad, and I always talk about this with my kids. What I remember doing on the back seat of a car, uh, well, it was two things. No nothing rude. I'm quite an innocent person, I was just like, I can remember radio being on or something, and a Kim Wilde song being on and I don't know if anyone else did this, or was this just egomaniacs, but I used to imagine I was in the Kim Wilde video. So I'd make a video in my head of Kids in America.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
You would not be wearing a seat belt at that point either.
Matt Haig, Author
No, I wouldn't be wearing a seat belt. There's a good BBC archive documentary about seat belts, actually, it's very interesting. But, um, and also, the other thing, like if it was raining, I used to just watch the raindrops on a car window. And you'd just make a little race about which raindrop is going to win. And that was excitement in 1986. That was as good as it got. And that level of boredom and, uh, I can’t always remember a singer, I think it was someone like Ian Brown from the Stone Roses, he said that there would be no Stone Roses, no Oasis, no anything without boredom, you know, teenage boredom is where creativity comes from. And we're living in a world where, like, my teenagers, um, I hate to say this, but they're actively, like, so uncomfortable with boredom, like, like it's just like they writhe about and they itch with boredom so, and it's scary that we're in this world where we're always expected to be entertained all the time. So we end up sort of not being really entertained any of the time because we're in this flat state of stimulation and dopamine running out.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
The thing I say most often in my house, I think, is, please put your phone down. Um, and, you know, in car journeys, I've said to my son before, why don't you look out the window? And his response is, why? Because he's on his phone. Well you might see something amazing.
Matt Haig, Author
I know and my son is just worried about what technology like, if we're going somewhere exotic on holiday, he'll be like, you know, what's the tech? It's like, no. The place we're going to is the point. It's not what tech is there. But anyway, yeah, sounding like an old man. But, um, yeah, it's definitely a thing and I think because it affects mental health primarily, I mean, there's probably all sorts of physical health things that it's affecting as well. I think we've been slow to realise the technology as a health issue. I think we understand that putting fast food into our bodies, inhaling cigarette smoke, we can see how that's a health issue because it's literal consumption. But, um, when it's to do with our minds and neurons and thoughts, um, and nervous system, I think we don't really understand that as health still so, and I think that's one of the things, um, one of the reasons why stigma has always existed with mental health is because we have this separation between mental health over here and physical health over here. And the more you think about that binary, the more you realise it's sort of nonsense because what is and what isn't physical about mental health? Our brains are physical, our neurons. It's just that it's a physical health that's slightly harder to understand. We can understand a heart easier than we can understand a brain.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah. And I think touching on that point, um, it's so much more important to continue talking about mental health and making the conversation, normalising the conversation. Um, and 11 years ago you wrote Reasons to Stay Alive, which was very open and honest about your mental health journey. Um, so I guess I have two questions. Looking back now, was it, was it part of your healing to write that book? And is there anything you would add to it as a postscript today?
Matt Haig, Author
I'd write it very differently today, I think. Um, because as I say, there wasn't much of a mental health conversation, even in 2015, like, it wasn't that long ago, but it wasn't like a genre of books then and I think Stephen Fry had done quite a lot into it, done a couple of really good TV documentaries on depression. But beyond that, I don't think the mental health conversation was really there. So when I wrote ‘Reasons to Stay Alive’, and I wrote it thinking no one would read it and I mean, I thought they'd have a few readers, but we definitely, my publishers also thought no one would read ‘Reasons to Stay Alive’. I was writing it for what I thought would be a very niche, small audience of people going through suicidal depression and, you know, I got paid a quarter of the advance that I'd had for my novel before. I was asked by my publisher to turn it into a novel and I'd have got more money for it if I'd turned it into a novel. But I thought, thinking of myself going through depression, like I craved people who'd gone through what I'd gone through. I craved those storeys of survival, which, as I say, didn't exist because you were just thinking of Kurt Cobain and everything. So I was craving survival stories. So I just thought, you know, there's a place for fiction but I think when you're literally writing about something like this, raw experience, it helps for you've got to kind of say, this is my experience.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah.
Matt Haig, Author
So that's why I did it, and I was asked to do it because I'd written a blog about depression, and then someone asked me to turn it into a book. And so I was prompted to write it because I didn't see myself as a nonfiction writer, I'd just written storeys before that. And the book, I felt really good writing the book, I think because I've been quiet for so long about mental health that, um, writing it, it was all there. I didn't have to think. It wasn't like people say, Oh, having to go back to your most painful times. It's not like that. When you've gone through a very intense experience, it's kind of always there.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah.
Matt Haig, Author
So when you're writing about it, it's just letting it out. It's just, you know, taking something that's quite painful out of you. It's kind of how therapy works, isn't it? I mean, therapy is just words and I think, I know there's different sorts of practitioners and different practises in therapy, but essentially I think 70% of therapy is the person themselves externalising their experience. I think that's a massive part of therapy. It can be written therapy or it can be speaking. And that book did feel like therapy in the sense that I was gaining ownership of something that had been sort of beyond words. It had been like, sort of like, depression, when you're going through it, it's sometimes hard to even talk about, because it's, A, you can feel physically quite numb and like, my tongue was heavy and it was quite hard to talk and B, you just, you don't have the language for it. So, uh, with Reasons to Stay Alive, I was trying to sort of like visualise the depression, you know, there's lots of metaphors in there trying to, but the language is, you know, it's already wildly outdated. Like, I talk about committing suicide, which you're not meant to say anymore, so it's died by suicide now. I talk about myself as a depressive, which again is a little bit politically incorrect because you're meant to say with depression so. But I'm sort of glad I wrote it without knowing any of that stuff because it's very unpolished and it's very what I was feeling and very much what I'd say to a friend.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Which is probably why it's touched so many people.
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah, I think so. I think that's what I was trying to do. But it's also not people with depression who read it. It's often people who want to understand someone, because the annoying thing about mental illness is that it's invisible a lot of the time. I mean, there's visible aspects to it, but a lot of it, a lot of depression certainly, is invisible. So not only do you have the burden of having the illness, but you also have the burden of no one seeing and sometimes people even doubting the condition. So you have the burden of having to articulate what you're feeling as well as feeling it. Whereas if you've broken your leg and you're on crutches, then people don't need to ask too many, you know, it's obvious.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah. Am I right in thinking at that point you hadn't actually had any formal therapy?
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
It came later?
Matt Haig, Author
All I'd had was like speaking to GPs, um, quite unsuccessfully. The first GP I had was really bad because, well, you know, it was a different time and it was very stigmatising and, you know, I think one of the first questions was, ‘Have you ever taken recreational drugs?’ And I'm like, ‘Yes, I've literally lived in Ibiza for 3 years in the '90s’. Uh, but, uh, so I had to answer that, yes and then it was just like that. And that's another mental physical health difference. So we can all bring our own sort of morality and that code of ethics to someone with a physical condition, like if they've been smoking or whatever. But you wouldn't say, right, I'm not going to treat this person or deal with this person because of that. With anything mental health, there's always this kind of like moral…
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah.
Matt Haig, Author
Conditions that come with it. Uh, an idea that it's your, they want to find out how it's your fault. And then they find a thing and say, ah, it's your fault because of that. Um, the real question is, why was I that person who always felt the need to escape into alcohol and drugs and run away from my life to start with? It was mental health stuff from the start, you know, I got into all kinds of trouble as a teenager. I got arrested at 16 for shoplifting. I was just like yeah.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
I think that's another…
Matt Haig, Author
I'm suddenly conscious that I'm in a room full of legal people.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
It's all right, it's just us here. I think that's another theme through many of your books is that many of your characters, Nora…
Matt Haig, Author
Yes.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
…um, in The Midnight Library, Grace in, uh, Ibiza.
Matt Haig, Author
Yes.
Claudia Emerson, Partner, Partner
Wilbur, an actual alien in the human state, they're disconnected or they feel like outsiders.
Matt Haig, Author
Yes.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Um, and I just wonder how much of that comes from your own experience of growing up.
Matt Haig, Author
Well, yeah, as I say, like I was a, classed as special needs in some subjects at school because I was sort of like a bit dysfunctional, daydreamer, class clown, annoying. I'd imagine I was annoying to teach. And, uh, weird mix of like chronically shy but then overcompensating by being an extrovert. And then, um, yeah, so I had this sort of stigma hanging over me that I was like special needs. I already felt like a fish out of water because I was, for my school, by the standards of my school, I was posh in the sense that my mum was a teacher, my dad was an architect, um, and like very sort of like working-class, quite run-down school in the East Midlands and so I already had that sense that I was a bit different and so I was always trying to sort of like be downwardly mobile. And then, yeah, I was neurodiverse, I now realise, and that I always had this sort of outsider feeling. So I always looked like I was fitting in, but never feeling like I was. Which I think is relatively common. But. Um, yeah, I wrote a book called ‘The Humans’ and like lots of autistic people contacted me about that book and said, oh, thank you for writing a fable of autism. And I thought, have I written a fable of autism? I didn't know I was autistic at that point. But I think, you know, looking back now, I was writing about autism, this feeling of being quite an alien and not really understanding rules and the sort of hypocrisies of the world. And, uh, yeah, and, and so having that diagnosis now is quite bittersweet because you inevitably look at childhood and think, if I'd have known I was ADHD and autistic as a teenager, well, A, I'd have probably had medication, and B, I'd have just had a bit more self-compassion and not just felt such a weirdo, because we all become whatever the narrative of ourselves is. So if you're told you're a bad person, you inevitably start becoming that. So if you're telling yourself you're this weird person, you end up thinking, well, of course I'm going to take drugs right, this is just who I am so, uh, I think it's so, because I know there's a lot of debate, and it's like a political hot potato, isn't it? Something politicians like to say to seem tough, you know, like that people are over diagnosed and I still, I actually think if you really looked at the numbers, my bet would be if everyone had a sort of diagnosis, I, I still think numbers-wise we're underdiagnosing. That's not to say some people aren't being over diagnosed or some people aren't being misdiagnosed, but I can think of many people I know who've been misdiagnosed with physical health things.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah.
Matt Haig, Author
So again, it's that mental health, physical health difference. We have a different standard when it's mental.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
And for you, the autism and the ADHD diagnosis, it helped explain and maybe allow yourself to forgive yourself for some behaviours?
Matt Haig, Author
Totally. Yeah.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Be kinder to yourself?
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah, I mean, I'm not even on medication for it, but it's helped me, uh, yeah, it helped me be, helped me in all sorts of ways. Helped me become teetotal, for instance, because knowing I was ADHD would mean I recognised impulsive behaviours.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yes.
Matt Haig, Author
And that, you know, it gives you a kind of mindfulness by saying, Oh no, this is because you're ADHD and so in all kinds of sort of ways, it's a help to know. So yeah, I don't like it when politicians say that there's too much, too much, um, too much diagnosis, and it just seems a bit pandering to a certain generation and viewpoint.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Although I think, what would you say? There is still some stigma. There shouldn't be, but there is still some stigma attached to it and you may have a young person who rejects the label, even though it helps explain their behaviour. Maybe it says, well it just makes me even more different to have this label. But what, what would you say to somebody who, you know, embrace it, you know, use it?
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah, I mean, my, my son had diagnosis before us, and he's more, I suppose visibly autistic. You know, he'd walk around on his tiptoes and he'd stim quite a bit and, uh, but I feel like among him and his sort of peers, there isn't really a stigma. Like there's an expectation that everyone's something and like, it's not the sort of like a thing that it's a positive either, it's just a kind of thing. He doesn't think of it in any way other than, you know, it's like thinking like it's a star sign, you know, it's just the thing that he has.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah. And just going back to sort of success and Wilbur being hugely successful but perhaps not, you know, relishing that or, you know, not getting what he needs from that. After The Midnight Library, you spoke very honestly about struggling mentally again, um, and feeling that you should be grateful or that you shouldn't be struggling. And I think there's, what, what would you say to people who are actually, they're finding things hard, but they almost feel ashamed to admit it because from the outside it looks like they're acing life?
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah, um, well, I think it's often the way, because it's often, this is why you see so many like celebrities and musicians who are a bit of a mess is because the thing that's driven them towards success has been some kind of lack or discomfort inside themselves where they've felt that what it's to do with is to do with a lack of something so they go out and get the thing. And then you get the thing. And it's not just in terms of fame or success or celebrity or money. It can be a relationship, it could be anything. It's easy to think when you haven't got something I'm sad, I'm depressed, I'm anxious because of that lack.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah.
Matt Haig, Author
And then, so when you get the thing, you don't have that thing to blame anymore. So you suddenly, you know, you get money and then you feel exactly as you did 5 years ago and you think, okay, so it wasn't that, so it's me. And then that creates a lot of sort of self-blame.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
And you move your goalposts.
Matt Haig, Author
And you move your goalposts. But then if, if you got to a point where you've achieved quite a few different things like I can remember saying, I'm going to be so happy forever if I get a book published. And I'll be happy forever because I went for about 50 rejections and I just kept going and going. Then I got a book published and I think it lasted for about 2 week before you've got the next goal. But you want to be on the table. And then you want to be on a bestseller list. And then you want an international deal. And then you want to be number one bestseller. And then you want a film, you know, there's always a goal.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah.
Matt Haig, Author
And so once you recognise that pattern, then a sort of crisis hits so you think, okay. That's when it gets a bit existential because you think, okay, I'm on this train track, and it just keeps going and, you know, how do I step off that train?
Claudia Emerson, Partner
And I think that's a theme that runs through many of your books, is that meaning comes less from great achievement and actually, it's connection, it's being present, it's the ordinary things, um, that sort of create real meaning.
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah. I mean, for me, that was to do with recovery. Because I can remember my life before depression, I needed such extremities in some ways to be happy. Hence alcohol, hence drugs. But even things like going for a meal, I'd always want to have the spiciest curry. I'd always want the loudest music. Even if I was reading a novel, it had to be like the edgiest novel. I mean, this is a very '90s thing where everything was a bit edgy, so the big novels when I was growing up, you know, like Trainspotting, The Beach, American Psycho. It was quite intense. And so after I had a breakdown, um, the recovery was just like appreciating. It was like arriving as an alien on a new planet, because it was appreciating just like very little things that I'd never appreciated before. It could just be like the colour of grass, or the colour of the sky. So you become this annoying golden retriever of a person where you're like, everything's wonderful.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah.
Matt Haig, Author
So people talk a lot about depression and how miserable it is, but the flip side of that is how wonderful recovery can feel and how magical recovery and surreal it can feel. And, uh, so, yeah, I mean, I've definitely had more happiness this side of depression than I did before depression. So I'm actually thankful for having the most horrendous 3 or 4 years of my life with relapses ever since. I'd still take that than to risk not having had that and to have been low-level depression all the way through, not really seeing myself, always masking.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Because the darkness makes the light even more special.
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah. I did, um, I did art history at uni. I did history, but I did modules on art history and there's a great art history term, chiaroscuro.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
You taught me that term in your book.
Matt Haig, Author
Oh yeah, well, I like using, I don't know many art history terms, so I'll drop that in wherever possible.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Excellent.
Matt Haig, Author
I do like a little short word, monosyllable, but I like putting in chiaroscuro, even if I can't say it. Um, and that's just the contrast of light and shade so like if you look at a Renaissance painting, they'll have like Virgin Mary or Saint John the Baptist, and to make the painting seem more religious and spiritual, they'd have like lots of heavy shadow and darkness around and then the light would be so much brighter and sort of supernaturally bright. Like if you go to the National Gallery, you can stand in front of the right painting, you get like tingles because it just seems to have this otherworldly effect. And, uh, life can be like that in terms of like, you know, going back to that point about how everyone wants to be this sort of flat state of happy and entertained all the time. The real value of life comes in having the contrast of having the boredom and the excitement, the darkness and the light. And I worry that we're sort of flattening into a sort of neutral state of, you know, distraction. Whereas, you know, in my own life, I think I needed the darkness sometimes to value the good.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah, it reminds me, we had another wonderful guest, was Richard E Grant, and he talked about his wife Joan who made him promise to look for a pocketful of happiness in every day.
Matt Haig, Author
Oh wow.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
And I often think about that, um, and it's just looking for the great in the ordinary, isn't it?
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah, that’s so amazing.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yeah. What, what are those small things in your daily lives that keep you grounded and well?
Matt Haig, Author
Um, teenagers keep you grounded.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yes.
Matt Haig, Author
Too grounded. Um, they don't give you anything. Um, golden retriever.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Opposite of a teenager.
Matt Haig, Author
Walking, walking on, yeah, we live in Brighton, so I walk a golden retriever every morning and, uh, I think just getting out, getting outside. I hate the term touching grass, but there's some kind of truth in it, like in terms of just getting into the world a bit more. And I'm not talking about necessarily nature. Even in London, like I always try and walk, like, I'd rather take a slightly earlier train and have the walk to know where I am in London. I think, I can't remember who said it, writer Will Self said it, like most people in London just see a tube map in their head of where they are, but there's something about just getting above ground and walking and feeling your bearings to actually know where you are. And in Brighton it's quite good for that because you've always got the sea, so you can always find your bearings. I think just, yeah, connecting to the external world is healthy.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
And you've mentioned books, obviously books have a huge part of your life, um, and I think you've said before, you know, they allow you to experience a different reality to the one that you're, um, experiencing and, and Wilbur was, is a great bookseller, and one of his gifts was recommending books to people who come into his shop. Are there any books that you would say to us, you have got to read, not your own, you've got to read apart from Midnight Library and Midnight Train, you know, are there any others that have changed your life, or you would say you can't stop?
Matt Haig, Author
I could say a book of mine you definitely shouldn't read like my early, my first 3 books were the most depressing books ever. I definitely recommend no one to read The Possession of Mr K. Like everyone sees me as a happy writer, and so they go back to my early books. But in terms of other people's books, yeah, all kinds of things. I mean, I honestly believe the greatest self-help book ever written is Winnie the Pooh. Um, I feel like it is. Because A A Milne, if you know about A A Milne's life, he'd gone through First World War, shell shock, you know, PTSD, but it wasn't seen as PTSD then. But he'd had a lot of trauma at a personal level as well in his life. And it was during this, during the state of depression, waking up with nightmares and stuff, He wrote Winnie the Pooh in that. And I think when he created the Hundred Acre Wood, he was creating a space of imagination where his mind could go into. And if you actually think, through our sort of slightly naff modern terminology, at the characters of Winnie the Pooh, you can sort of diagnose them. So you've got, uh, Eeyore with depression. You've got Piglet with anxiety. Owl with sort of narcissism and dyslexia and various things going on. You've got, um, Tigger, who is definitely ADHD. You've got, uh, Winnie the Pooh, who I would controversially say is an addict. He's an addict to, a honey addict. He's a honey addict. I mean, he gets into trouble. He falls into a lot of holes and gets stuck in holes for the pursuit of honey. Honey. Um, and then you've got Christopher Robin who's hallucinating the whole thing in the forest. So he’s obviously…
Claudia Emerson, Partner
One of the first books on mental health.
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah, eaten a mushroom somewhere and he's having an experience.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Um, we've spoken about it's not always about pushing ahead, but what's next for you? There's some exciting stuff I know.
Matt Haig, Author
Oh, what film stuff?
Claudia Emerson, Partner
The film.
Matt Haig, Author
Oh yeah, uh, yeah, I mean, I've sort of known this for a while, but it's become official this week is Midnight Library film is 99% happening, and it's Florence Pugh as Nora, and it's a, um, great guy, Garth Evans, directing, who directed a film called Lion. Which was amazing, with Dev Patel. He's a great director and it's got a good script that's not written by me. And it's all set. And I have, you know, sorry, my phone. Um, technology ruining things. Um, yeah, it's exciting. But I, I was asked if I wanted to write the script but I said no, because I like, I've had experiences in that film world where you sort of get too involved and you go a bit insane. So I'm quite liking it as a sort of like just standing back, waiting for a film to be done, and then go along to see it.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Okay. So you're not going to be in it.
Matt Haig, Author
Well, you know, if I'm invited on set, I'll probably go on set. But, uh, beyond that, I'm not actively involved. So it's just like feeling like you've sort of, I like the feeling of feeling like you've won a golden ticket and you get to visit it all and stuff. But I don't want to be too involved, because film world compared to book world, like book world, you write the thing as you want to write it and do it. Film world, um, a bit more like normal work, I suppose. It's more compromises and more things and I'm not very good, necessarily, at like battling with someone in a room about what I'd want to have or, so I'm better to sort of go away and do my thing. So I'm very happy to just let it happen. But I also retain a little bit of necessary healthy pessimism. My very, very first book, which no one really read, was a book called The Last Family in England, 20 years ago. And within about a month of publication, Brad Pitt optioned it for film. And like we were massively in debt at that point and, um, Rue was struggling and I still had my own struggles. So I thought, oh, I'll be living in Malibu by the end of the month. I'll just be like yeah, and then obviously that was 10 years of things nearly happening and not. But I mean, this looks, I mean, I've had a film happen and this seems to look like what that did so yeah, I think it's going to happen.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Any more books in the offing or too busy with this one at the moment?
Matt Haig, Author
I think, I think there might be one day a third Midnight book because I think 3 is a good number for books and, uh, but it won't be my next book.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Right.
Matt Haig, Author
I'm thinking maybe possibly writing another nonfiction, but about being sort of special needs and, you know, being a teenager in the '90s and '80s and not fitting in and, uh, shoplifting from Boots and, uh, things like that.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
I have so many more questions that I could ask you, but I think it's probably unfair.
Matt Haig, Author
You’ve had some very good questions Claudia.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
I think it's probably fair to open up the floor and see if anyone has any questions. Oh, we've got one already. Is there a, there's a microphone, I think, roving. We've got one here and then one over there.
Audience
Um, I'm a massive over thinker, um, and I've always thought, oh, I wish I'd done this and I wish I'd done that about decisions I'd made in life or, you know, jobs they're taking or not taking or friendships or whatever. Um, and I've read The Midnight Library and I found that really insightful and I was just wondering, was that your intentions for, was that your intention for readers to read the book and sort of realise that there is no, life is always imperfect no matter what the decisions you make?
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah, I think so and also to get out of that, we often think that the sort of shiniest life is going to be the best life, and we're encouraged to think that more and more, like with social media and stuff and I just know, like, from my own life, like, a lot of the best moments are like the smaller moments, and it's not the things that people think you should be, as soon as someone thinks I should be happy for something, it sort of makes me not happy for it. So it's often the unexpected things that make you happy. And it's about people. Did I mention that Five Regrets of the Dying book earlier?
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Yes.
Matt Haig, Author
Yes. Well, that book, I forget because I did a podcast earlier where I also talked about it so I thought, did I do that there or here? Where am I? And, um, but yeah, the various regrets were sort of like, to do with that mentality of like work and success and stuff. So I think that's a fixation of mine because I'm someone who used to be very, very ambitious, like 20s, 30s, as people tend to be when they're younger. But, uh, yeah, and I'm pleased I was ambitious because I got a career going and everything like that. But I sometimes think, at what cost and what was I missing out on? Like if I had a train going back through my life, you know, I probably would want to sort of pass, like when my children were very young, because that's when my career started to take off. I was just so away from them and we didn't even have that many videos to look at, because it was sort of all photos then. So I do miss that. But I didn't take it, uh, um, so seriously. So yeah, The Midnight Library is about, uh, about that grass is greener thing that we're encouraged to have. I feel like the whole economy basically is run on our dissatisfaction because they've known for a long time now that fear and unhappiness are great motivators, you know, if we were happy with everything and with what we had, then where do we buy the next thing? So it's almost like it's inbuilt into the sort of system that everything we buy is kind of temporary, and then we're going to need the next thing, and we're going to and it's been exacerbated by technology and these things, because everything's an upgrade. And because we live in this world where we value the upgrade, we end up thinking that we need to be upgraded. And we have New Year, new you every year and we feel like we're an iPhone that needs continual upgrading. And now, you know, there's always a new body part we're meant to be shaving or working on. There's a new injection we're meant to be having. There’s, and you go back, or a sort of like fitness thing, or a supplement we're meant to be taking, and it goes up and up and up. And it's like, we're quite finite, messy, imperfect creatures and I feel like, hopefully, the thing I'm hopeful about, and I see traces of it in Gen Z, uh, and my own kids, is there's a new embrace of messiness, of imperfection, and of the real. Like vinyl is coming back and, uh, things like that so I feel like there's a slight move away from this endless thing. And it makes sense if you think about it, because now you've got AI, and it's going to make all these perfect-looking people and stuff. We're never going to be able to compete with that but what we can do better than AI is be human. We can be human better than AI. So I think, I think there will be an embrace of imperfection and messiness and have that more in art and hopefully our own lives where we're not trying to be the most someone else, we're trying to be the most us.
Georgia
We’re going to a question online. So, um, an anonymous person. I felt the possessions for Mr Cave was really different. Was that you grappling with your role as a father?
Matt Haig, Author
Oh yeah, Mr Cave, is literally the most depressing book I ever wrote. It was my third book. Literally everyone dies in that book. No one read, well, obviously one person read that book, but very few people read that book. That book was the reason I got dropped by my first publisher, because they paid quite a lot of money, and it did not earn back that money. Um, and so I have bad memories about that book. It's like looking at an old photo, and you think, what was I doing with my hair. I mean, I miss hair generally but, um, yeah, The Possession of Mr Cave. What was the question? About, about how, what?
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Struggling.
Georgia
Struggling with your role as a father.
Matt Haig, Author
Uh, no, because I hadn't had kids then. I was sort of predicting my role as a father, I think, possibly worrying about possibly becoming a father. It's about this bad father who thinks he's doing everything right for his teenage daughter, but he's being overprotective. And he ends up being the danger to his daughter, even though he's trying to do everything right. So it's about being too possessive, too protective.
Georgia
Thank you. Any more in the room?
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Over here.
Matt Haig, Author
Oh, we've got one here as well.
Audience
Hi, thank you. Matt, it was a really interesting talk. I really enjoyed, uh, your Midnight Library book as well. Um, I just wanted to ask you about your writing process and your creative process. I'm always in awe of people who don't work in an office and can still manage to sit down and do anything productive. Um, can you share your process or your thoughts on that?
Matt Haig, Author
Well, I'm actually the opposite because I came, I came into novel writing weirdly when I was ill and still agoraphobic, so it would have literally been impossible, that was when I was 26, to be in an office and to like, and the jobs I'd had before had sort of lasted 3 weeks, and then I sort of either walked out or got the sack. In about 3 weeks. It was always 3 weeks. So it was never a full month to get my pa, it was like 3 months. So I'd be selling printer cartridges in Wembley or advertising space in Croydon and I'd last 3 weeks, and then I'd be out. Um, actually, every time we move house, I always think, right, I'm going to have this as my office space. And the house I've got now, it's got a shed and I thought, I'm going to be like Roald Dahl and work in a shed. But the moment I turn it into sort of like a workspace, I dry up a bit. So I actually work best if I'm just pretending I'm not working. Like, I feel like when you're making up stories, if you're just sort of sitting down on the sofa and you're just pretending this is your hobby, and that you're not thinking about the contract, you're not thinking about a deadline, you're not thinking about your editor, you're just sort of messing about. That's when you get the best sort of like, most fun, creative ideas. So yeah, it's bad for my back, because I've got a really soft sofa, and I just slump like that but it's good for the book to sort of try and pretend. And often the best ideas come when you're completely away from the computer, like when you're just travelling, or when you're, when you’re just thinking. I'd say 90% of a novel isn't writing the novel. It's when it's just sort of brewing and bubbling in your head, uh, like The Midnight Library, I had that idea, not called The Midnight Library, but I had that rough idea about 10 years before and it was just sort of always there, and it would always come back to me. So, uh, there probably won't be that many books that I write ahead of me that I haven't somehow thought of before, if that makes sense. Um, but yeah, so I think it's trying to kid yourself, uh, when you're writing that you're doing it for fun, which might be hard with law.
Georgia
I think leading on from that question, how do you start creating characters for your books, and at what point, if any, do you feel as though they become real?
Matt Haig, Author
Uh, I think you're always like, writing different versions of yourself in a book and readers are probably, when they read a book, they're seeing different sides of themselves. And I think that's a great thing about books because now, algorithms and stuff, they try and funnel us into just being surrounded by our same tribe, and our same people, and our same politics and everything's just this echo chamber. And a book is still, a good story is still normally the opposite of an echo chamber, because for a story to happen, there needs to be some conflict, there needs to be some difference, there needs to be compromise and there needs to be different characters, because no one likes a book where all the characters are the same. So I still see like novels as the opposite of the internet, of Instagram. You know, novels are about difference, and, uh, so, um, they're good. But in terms of me, yeah, I mean, Midnight books, certainly, I've put a lot of myself in there because after writing Reasons to Stay Alive, I realised there's limits to nonfiction. And the limits to nonfiction is that, well, you're confined to what happened, obviously but also, you're writing about real people. So you're writing about your parents, and you're writing about, uh, your partner, and you're writing about whoever's around you. So, and I'm not one of those people who wants to like throw everyone under the bus, even if it really happened, because, you know, it's hard. So with Reasons to Stay Alive, that's why it's kind of a messy book, where I'm trying to work out what sort of book I'm writing. So it goes from being a memoir to being kind of self-help book, sort of like pop philosophy. Um, so I found it easier sometimes to be true and real in fiction. Um, and again, I don't really see a massive barrier, because I think imagination is real on one level, you know, our imaginations are real. There's reasons we have dreams and reasons why we think things so it's kind of like being a journalist of imagination writing a novel. You're kind of like, uh, recording your own daydreams. It's nice.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
I think we're here. There’s one. I think there was another one there as well, wasn't there?
Audience
I was just wondering, um, whether your process is different when writing children's books and how that differs.
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah, I mean, I genuinely think children are the best readers and that's why you get really into books when you're a child, because you go with the imagination more. So when you're writing for a kid, you feel freer. Like, people imagine writing for children's books, you've got a list of things you're not allowed to write about and that's true. But in terms of the imagination, they can go with the daydream much easier than adults. Like, if you're doing like a fantasy or science fiction story, or certainly science fiction story for adults, you have to do so much hand-holding to get them to believe the fantasy. Whereas with kids, you can just throw in a unicorn and they might know unicorns don't exist but they so want unicorns to exist that they'll just go with the dream. Whereas adults, you're taught to be so sort of boring and like sensible, that by the time you've left university and stuff, you've had a bit of that drilled out of you. So I feel like I've learnt more from writing for children than I have for adults. So I try with my adult books, actually, to have a sort of children's author mentality, to write a children's story for adults. I mean, Midnight Train is very much a children's story, because I see steam trains and stuff as quite a children's fiction, Polar Express, Railway Children kind of vibe. And I feel like, you know, that's one of the things to think about when you're writing is to try and like speak to the child within the adult reader, um, because I think there's a reason why a lot of our favourite things come from childhood, because that's when we were our purest self and like children are the most unpretentious readers. Like an adult will think, will start reading a book and say, oh yeah, they might be going somewhere interesting with this, or OK, well, you know, uh, the Times say this is an amazing book, so I'll carry on reading. Children don't have any of that. They're like, is this storey good? Am I enjoying it? And that is basically it. So, um, yeah, writing for children teaches you how to be a writer, full stop, I think.
Audience
What's your most recent favourite read and why?
Matt Haig, Author
Ooh, okay, um, well, I've just discovered a writer that I've read because he's sometimes compared to me. I think he's a very different writer to me, um, called Fredrik Backman and he wrote a book called My Friends and that's a great book and, um, so that's one I've just read. And I like it because it's very kind of, um, it’s about, basically, lots of sort of troubled teenagers who interconnect and there's a missing art painting. And it's very eccentric and Scandinavian and, uh, got a lot of heart to it. And it's one of those books that's sort of friendly and optimistic and it's very unfashionable. I think I write quite unfashionably in the sense that I'm trying to be like, uh, optimistic and hopeful, and I like books and writers who do that. I've been reading a lot of, um, Asian, like fiction from Asia, specifically Korea, uh, because we've recently been to South Korea, um, so I've read Han Kang books, which are a bit more intense and dark and about Korean history and atrocities. Um, and I've been reading, um, nonfiction. I read a nonfiction book about parallel universes, which is quite interesting. It was about how every branch of science leads to the idea that parallel universes are definitely real. The book's called The Hidden Reality, and that's good. That's three. I'm a bad reader, though, in the sense that I rarely nowadays start a book and finish a book all the way through without going into other books. I think it's the age of distraction, where you sort of put a book down, pick up something else and, but I'm trying, I’m trying to focus. And also I've been reading old stuff, like H G Wells, War of the Worlds is seen as a really old-fashioned book. But it's really narrow and really small, and it's really written in a very modern style. It's 1800s, but it's written very journalistically, very easy to read. It's better than any film version of War of the Worlds, the actual book.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Georgia, I think we've got one more. Did you spot someone over here?
Georgia
Did you have a question?
Claudia Emerson, Partner
I think there.
Audience
Thank you so much, Matt, it's been so interesting. Um, sorry, I've got another question on process, but, um, I'm really curious how your, as your kind of mental health journey has evolved, how that's influenced your creative process? Um, because it sounds like from another question, you've tried to make it more fun, like doing it from the couch, etcetera but I imagine like at times, depending on your mental health, you're going to feel much more positive or negative about a project.
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah.
Audience
Um, yeah, and sort of how you, how you work with that, um, and then relatedly, on your point about how saturated we are these days with technology, do you have a way of kind of harnessing boredom to facilitate creativity?
Matt Haig, Author
Um, yeah in terms of like boredom, I feel like because I'm sort of, because I’m ADHD, that sort of like is my state. So I've got this restlessness that I sort of always want to create. The danger with that is that you start writing something, and you're instantly wanting to write another thing. So my challenge is like the first 10,000 words or something is sticking with it to get enough done to see if there's anything there because I very often have about 6 different Word documents all called different things and it would just be random sentences written in each one. So I have, that's when I have to be disciplined and like sort of go through the boredom and just write, uh, 10,000 words. I feel like when you get to 10,000 words, you kind of there, and you're in, and you're going to write the whole thing. The best bit of writing happens about the midway point. I don't know if anyone's a runner, but there's a rare thing that happens in running where there's a sort of mid or early midpoint of a run where you're just kind of flowing and, uh, it doesn't happen very much to me, because my body starts to break down and then I'm in pain, and my knees and my hips and everything go. But I do know the feeling of like when you're 3 kilometres into a run and you're hardly thinking about running, and you're just sort of feeling it. And I feel like writing, that happens like 10,000 to 30,000 words, where it doesn't really feel like work yet, and you're building this world, and it's starting to flow. You've done enough of the work at the beginning with the characters, and you're just sort of going. Um, and then it becomes a bit of an addiction, because you have in your head the book at that point, and then you're rushing to sort of finish it before you forget it. So you're sort of like dictating it, and that's the first draught. I'm bad at the editing because then you're having to go, you know, your mind's often moved on, but then you're having to go back. Um, so I suppose the hardest bit, like with so many things, is the starting and the sort of focus needed at that point. And you feel a bit silly, like you feel a bit silly creating anything. Like, art is fundamentally embarrassing, isn't it? Because it's not an essential thing. It's not like fixing a drain. It's not like, you know, it's fundamentally, there's something slightly ridiculous about being any kind of artist or writer or painter. You just say, oh, you know, I've just done the shopping and I'm going to just paint a castle, you know, it's like, why? And you know, there's something sort of silly about it. So you have to get past that sort of embarrassment of, A, doing something that seems a bit extra, and also that seems you know, like you, that you’re to, to start writing, you have to think, I'm a writer because I'm writing. And you have that sort of doubt that comes in every single time because every book you've written, you've had more positive stuff, but you've also had more negative stuff about you. The best thing that happened to the Midnight Library was there's this YouTuber in Brazil who's the biggest YouTuber in Brazil. He's like the Mr Beast of Brazil. He's got like 32 million followers. He did a whole video on the Midnight Library saying it was the death of literature, said it was the worst book ever written and within 2 days, it was number 1 on Amazon Brazil. And I thought, embrace the negativity, we're in a divided time, you need division it's good. I'd worry more if I had a book that was just all 3 stars and 4 stars and I was like, you want. It's a sort of unhappy product of the internet, but things become bigger with debate. And I suppose book club books, you need this sort of difference of opinions. And I realise I'm not really answering that question anymore, but I'm just on my own train of thought therapy session.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
And that's our time.
Matt Haig, Author
Yeah, well thank you.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Thank you. Thank you so much for coming in.
Matt Haig, Author
And I'll chat to anyone afterwards and I'll sign books and if anyone wants.
Claudia Emerson, Partner
Thank you, everyone.