Matt Haig: Self-criticism, anxiety triggers, and imagination

0:00Before we start, this episode contains some chat that you might find difficult to listen to. so do check the show notes for more details. Hello, I'm Fern Cotton and this is Happy Place, the show that encourages your imagination to thrive. Today, I'm catching up with Matt Haig. Happiness only means happiness because sadness exists and you only see stars in the sky because the dark exists so you can see the stars and I think that is what life is like And one of the advantages of getting older is you've known enough bad times or you've lost enough people to actually truly appreciate in a way you can't necessarily in your early 20s appreciate those good days and those good people around you.

0:48Matt is the most fantastic author. He's written non-fiction and fiction. I think you'll have been hard pressed to miss The Midnight Library in the last few years. What a book. I bloody love that book. His latest novel is called The Life Impossible. And we'll talk about some of the clever themes and beautiful lines in this chat because Matt has such an amazing way of succinctly summing up what it is to be human in his writing. It's not an easy thing to do, but he has got one hell of a knack for it. Matt came on the show right back at the beginning, like six and a half years ago. It's absolutely mad.

1:26So it was gorgeous to catch up with him and how he's been doing over the years. I think one thing, having read The Life Impossible, that I was really intrigued to find out about was his relationship with the island Ibiza. Because when we talked six and a half years ago, he didn't really talk about Ibiza. It seemed like a sensitive subject because he'd had an incredibly tricky time there back in his early 20s. But his new book, The Life Impossible, is set in Ibiza. So I really want to hear about how he's got to the place where he's not only thinking about Ibiza, perhaps even reminiscing, but visiting the island to get proper inspiration.

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4:12All right, here we go. This is the show.

4:37Matt Haig, how lovely to see you. It's very lovely to see you, Penn. It's been so long. It's been too long, yes. I was one of the first batch, wasn't I? Yeah, you were one of the first handful of guests on Happy Place. It was back in March 2018. Yes. Well, so thank you for saying yes, first of all, the first time around, because you were one of like five people that said yes on the planet. So I'm really grateful. It was a pleasure. Yeah, that was a really good time to me. And being on that, I thought, oh, I've got something to say. And it's nice that people are listening. And yeah, that was great.

5:10But I do remember getting lost on the way that time. and I still haven't remembered the directions of how to get here. So some things don't change. That's hilarious. Well, I mean, so much has happened and we're going to, since 2018, we'll cover some of that. But obviously as a massive fan of yours and of your amazing writing, I've been waiting for this book, The Life Impossible, just anticipating reading this and it did not disappoint. I loved every page as I've DM'd you since. it's just the most stunning book I love it well that is very lovely to hear especially as I'm in that neurotic month before it comes out horrible feeling before a book comes out isn't it it is as you know it's uh yeah you you want to be this sort of like you know totally whatever happens happens sort of person and fine with it in yourself and I really thought I would be with this one because I thought well I've written this book for me I've written it for the right reasons I wasn't planning to write it.

6:11It came to me and I wrote it away from social media. I had a sort of like year break from social media. I wrote it during that time and I was very happy with it. But obviously, inevitably, when the sort of like publishers start kicking in with the requests, you feel very out there and exposed and all of that. So that to me is the antsy bit of it. But generally, it's all good. And I'm very pleased that you read it. I loved it. I mean, it's a strange thing, even when you are one of the most successful authors like you are, to have an idea in your brain to then privately execute that idea and create a tangible book.

6:52But it's such a transition going from that to then, oh, millions of people are reading it and have an opinion about it. That I don't think you can get used to. No, I think being a writer is totally, you know, you're dealing with two opposite extremes, like completely opposite. because like when you're writing something especially when you're writing fiction you're sort of like documenting your own daydreams you're sort of like being you know you're like a journalist just of your imagination so you're going deeper into yourself and then when you're published and publication has the word public in it because you're going out there it's the total opposite of that and you're having to sort of like convey it in a way that's totally different to writing about it and I yeah that gear change I think a lot of writers struggle with I'm definitely one of those like I am you know I definitely I'm not you know when people say they're right for themselves I mean that's a bit silly because you're writing a book that's to be read by other people so it's not like that but it's a very private thing and then suddenly to be totally out there it's kind of disorientating it is and also for people to have their own idea about what the book means who the characters are it's going to be a slightly different iteration to your idea which is again a really strange thing it's a very strange thing but it's also can be a lovely thing and it's a way of you letting go of something you've created is when other people respond to it and not you know positively hopefully but they they have a slightly different take on it or like if they're casting it in their heads they see different faces when they see the characters or any of that and i like that and it's a way of you sort of like saying goodbye to it and putting out in the world but i think i've worked out over the years the way to cope with nerves when you've created something and putting it out there is to get on with something else is to just sort of like get on to the next thing and that's what i did so i've been writing something else after a long break from writing before i wrote that i've written two very close together so that was my way of coping so mentally you're slightly moved on and you're slightly protected when you're talking about the thing before yeah i totally get that i'm on to my next one as well for that very reason i just wanted to be happily distracted quite frankly but i think it's really important to talk about because i'm sure like you i've met so many people who have got great ideas for books or tv scripts or art or whatever but there's that big block of i don't know if i can do this or i don't know if i'm too scared to put it out there probably due to opinion and i think you just have to break through it and just do it there is no easy way of combating that fear there's no way of being a writer or hopefully a good one without having that anyway i mean you need to have your own sort of bs detector where you know you're talking writing crap or you you need a bit of self-criticism as you do it because you know especially with writing because writing is only 50 of it and editing is 50 yeah so it's about what you don't include so you need to see through your own you know you don't want to get too in awe of your own style or work because that's dangerous so you you know it's one thing where actually being a little bit neurotic or self-critical actually can help the process but it's very again you've got two pulling things because to be a creative person you need to be confident maybe even arrogant enough to think the world needs something else out there that you're going to create in a world where there's bazillions of books out there already.

10:27But also to have that self-doubt where you can actually say, okay, I don't need to write that. I can chop that character out or whatever it is. It's a bonkers balance. It is a bonkers balance. It's so mad. I mean, I love this book for so many reasons, not only because you wrote it, but also it's set on my favourite island on the planet, the Isle of Ibiza. Now, last time you came on the podcast, for anyone who hasn't listened, go back and listen to that one. I'm sure if I did, I would cringe at my early podcasting technique, but hopefully I've progressed over the last six and a half years. But obviously in that episode, we talked about Ibiza even back then.

11:04I can remember. Because you've got history with this island. Now this is obviously, it's got a bit of everything with that sort of Ibiza energy, which we know can be super intense for good and bad reasons. And you've been on the receiving end of that yourself. Yeah. So was diving into the world of Ibiza, immersing yourself in the culture of Ibiza, the location, some sort of closure for you? Totally. And in fact, I was, yeah, back in the 90s, late 90s, I was suicidal in Ibiza. I'd done all the partying, all the crazy stuff. But in the third summer we were in Ibiza in 1999, we had a relatively normal, stable existence there.

11:48But my problem was that I didn't want to grow up. I didn't want to go back to London and get a real job. I didn't want to do any of that. So when September came around, I was going out, staying out later, drinking loads. Drugs, but it was mainly the drink with me, to be honest. And I had a job, unfortunately, where I was sat at a bar selling tickets to all the nightclubs and just getting free drinks all day from 11 in the morning. So it wasn't the ideal thing for my temperament at that point. and I ended up in a hospital in Ibiza in San Antonio and prescribed mega strength diazepam and I was an absolute mess and even though we'd had a lot of great times up until then in Ibiza it then became this place that I couldn't even think about it became something that was very traumatising to think about because I had so many vivid memories of the worst days of my life of this continuous claustrophobic feeling of panic and actually you know wanting to take my own life at a specific location in Ibiza which I've been to since and that obviously took a long time to get over and process especially because when I came back to the UK I was still very depressed and had panic disorder for years and all of that and in my head one thing that helped me in the early days was to sort of blame it all on a beefa blame it on the place rather than the person because the person was me and i couldn't escape me but i could escape the place so just putting it all on a beefa i was like yeah it's just like a crazy place i escaped from whereas that can only get you so far you know that avoidance thing and um it took me two decades until I actually realised, even after I'd written things about mental health, like Reasons to Stay Life, I'd never had proper ongoing therapy myself.

13:45And so I was offering advice to people. I was, you know, talking about my experiences. Yet at the same time, there was a part of me that knew there was a sort of missing piece of the jigsaw that wasn't quite there. and then I am mid-pandemic during one of the lockdowns I got really in a bit of a state I was drinking too much again after a long time of not drinking I was a nightmare to live with I was just like I was a mess again really and then I realized okay I've got to you know I've got to take this very seriously and so I got a very good therapist who I saw on zoom once a week and the theme of that therapy was about facing up to all kinds of things that I've been running away from it wasn't this kind of therapy where you know you end up feeling justified and everything or blaming your mother for everything or this it was very raw and very exposing and i had to sort of like do a lot of work and not find new better excuses for things and so fitting that theme of sort of like facing up to things everything i i've said i need to sort of like go back there to where i nearly died and to this place that people love but i don't love because I've got all this memory so I went out of season in April under overcast skies to Ibiza and it was a very very interesting experience and it was a very cathartic experience and it was emotional but in a very sort of distant kind of way because it felt like centuries had passed you know rather than two decades like Ibiza was a very different island partly because it is but also because I was a very different person and it's never the place it's who you are reacting to that place and the interesting thing about a beef of course is it's whatever you want it to be it's like the mona lisa smile you can look at a beef and see what you want to in it so it can be a very hippie-ish very chilled out place it can be a very frantic frenetic 24 7 uh you know getting off your head sort of place it can be a family place it can be you know like how the locals live just a real spanish life kind of place so it's whatever you want and there's a lot of nature there and a lot of beauty there and i was interested in the island and how it itself is a place of healing and also because it has such mass tourism how it could do with some healing itself in parts as well and i just thought there's a lot there and then i had this idea of this very non-ABIFA person, this retired maths teacher is quite stiff and buttoned up.

16:44Taking someone like that to a BIFA and, you know, having some radical transformation, that was the starting point. Did you have the idea why you're out there? I had bits of it. It's always hard to, you know, know exactly where it came from. But it definitely was going out there that got me that idea. And I wasn't looking for an idea. I had sort of psychologically retired not from everything i wanted to do stuff but i wasn't seeing myself as a writer at that point i hadn't written for a year i wanted to do something real world like uh i don't know i had this idea because i'd given up alcohol and like everyone that gives up alcohol i was very sort of evangelical about it so i thought i'd set up a sober bar and that was the idea of like you know I know they exist, but to do one in a very non-worthy, non-earnest way, quite a hedonistic place that just happened to be sober.

17:43I sort of play so, or when I go, because my whole big thing is that being British and being male and being my age and generation, you know, every meeting place is alcohol based. And so, you know, to do my bit to sort of like change that. So that was my idea. and then you had, you know, every writer's fantasy of maybe a bookshop or this. And I thought, I can't do a bookshop because that's just going to make me neurotic about every other writer, aren't I? Too much competition. Yeah, oh yeah. That would be too awkward. So, yeah. I just had to face the fact that I'm probably not that kind. I couldn't run a business.

18:26I couldn't. I've not got the multitasking abilities. But I still wasn't writing. And I said to myself, I'm not going to write again after the Midnight Library unless I really want to. I have a real reason to. And so I had this idea. And I thought, I'll write it for the sake of writing it and see if I want to send it out to the publisher. And yeah, I did. I think the best ideas always come when you're not searching for them. They just turn up. Yes. And they certainly don't come when you're like staring at a laptop. No way. Arctic, blank, white. Yeah, horrible. Thing. Terrifying. No, they always pop up, I think, when you actually do allow yourself to have a bit of room from everything.

19:14And you're just going about your day. That's certainly where I've had most of my ideas. And I've just not been thinking about anything much at all. Yes. But I'm sure that, you know, that trip that you've just described of going back to Ibiza for the first time. How could you not have stuff cognitively whirring? Because you were processing so much. How do you feel knowing that, you know, yes, you've had that sort of element of exposure therapy. You've been back to the island. You visited the places that in the darkest depths of your memory caused you the most pain. And knowing that, okay, it's perhaps not, it doesn't have to be as scary as you've internalised for all those years.

19:52Yet you might never 100 % get over those mental demons. I don't know if any of us ever can. No. I think sometimes with exposure, it's about being able to live alongside it because I can't live in a world where that past didn't happen or that place doesn't exist. So it's about coming to terms. We live in a world now for understandable reasons because we've got a mental health crisis and we've got overstimulated left and right where people are very conscious about triggers and avoiding things and stuff like that. But sometimes I think avoidance is the trigger. Like when you're avoiding everything, you end up, you know, like agoraphobic.

20:41You end up, you know, I was agoraphobic. That was a big part of my panic disorder. Every time I went outside, I'd have a panic attack. And I used to count progress in lampposts because it's sort of like, I was back at my mom and dad's house and there's like 12 lampposts to the corner shop and so you know when I was coming back from the shop I was like counting down the lampposts to get back but ultimately it doesn't stop the panic of agoraphobia by staying indoors because you know the you then become scared of going somewhere else in the house or you know there's always something so at some point you have to say well okay going outside is very triggering but also there's a bigger fear i don't want to end up like howard hughes trapped in my room forever um with my long fingernails going insane you know you want to sort of like go out into the world so you have to you know there's no comfortable route to that no if you're if you're suddenly you've fallen into this hole for whatever reason and sometimes the annoying thing is you don't know the reason i mean part of my reason was probably i was adhd and autistic as i've been diagnosed since i don't sort of define myself by those things but you know i've had various things about me that i didn't understand if you have that and you don't know it can be very easy i think to want to sort of like hide away not face up to things but you have to um to progress you have to like in the case of agoraphobia you have to go out and know you're going to have a panic attack and you have to get to a point where you're not as scared of that as the other alternative and eventually your brain will catch up or my brain caught up and was like well this isn't going to kill me this train journey is not going to kill me and it's going to feel unpleasant it might even exhaust me but it's not going to you know the sky is not gonna fall in and like you say it's a more preferable route than the other one which is doing nothing i've i've so been there and i think one of the worst therapies i did was emdr because you are totally exposed to all your worst thoughts all your worst memories yeah and it's horrendous but the game-changing progress afterwards is so much more preferable than being stuck in a place like I was mentally before having done that therapy.

23:12And it's so interesting, there was a line that jumped out at me in this book that relates to something you said a moment ago, which was the fact that you can't change your past. You can't go, oh, I've done so much therapy, my past doesn't exist, and now I'm free of it. You cannot. And I've got things in my past that are horrendous to look back at and all you can do is have a level of acceptance but the line that jumped out at me which I think helps with this one so much for anyone listening that has got stuff in the past that they hate to look at or things that really flaw them when a memory jumps out is this it's a beautiful line that Grace the maths teacher says to the student Maurice in the books in the form of a letter and she says don't think of the bad times as unconnected to the good And it's such a simple line, but it's so punchy because, you know, I can't sit here and say, oh, yeah, the bad times are unconnected to everything good now.

24:09It pains me to say that they are heavily, deeply connected to so many of the good things that are in my life today. But none of us really want to give it, I guess, that weight, the bad times or give it any energy. but there is quite a lot to be grateful for a lot of the time when you see that there are so many connections threads that that pull from the the bad times to the good yeah totally and everything is literally relative isn't it so like happiness only means happiness because sadness exists and like you only see stars in the sky because the dark exists that can see the stars in the sky you can't see the stars in the sky in pure daylight and i love all those things and there's a there's a really um pretentious art term called chiaroscuro which is about um the contrast i did a module of art history in my um at leeds university a long time ago but anyway i remember chiaroscuro which is like the renaissance painters would use a lot if they were doing a very religious painting they'd use a lot of black paint and shadow in the painting to make john the baptist to have a look sort of like bright and um or glowy yeah or glowy and religious and spiritual and it was the darkness that made the light and i think that is what life is like and i think you you you you get more grateful for the stuff that's not absolutely terrible when you're you know and you can appreciate it and you know understanding the fragility of happiness sometimes or not even happiness but you know of being around people that you love and like and the nice rhythms of life you know that that can when you know that that can sort of like go off at any moment it can be a positive thing knowing the negative because you you are actually grateful and that's why you see sort of lots of you know you hear all the time about people who get some terrible diagnosis and suddenly that's when they learn to live and i think um you know as you get older one of the advantages of getting older and i'm a hypochondriac who has all sorts of fears about getting older but one of the advantages of getting older is you've known enough bad times or you've lost enough people to actually truly appreciate in a way you can't necessarily in your early 20s appreciate those good days and those good people around you yeah and also i think getting older does give you a time frame that allows you to look back at the darker times and see the threads to the better times because i think if you if i'd read that line eight nine years ago i'd say absolutely not nothing good has come from this period of my life but with a decade past or so I can absolutely see it.

27:05I think time does give you that perspective. And I think people get, yeah, people can get quite cross and react to that. And I think a lot of people's problems with self-help is often, it's like, it's all right for you to say, you know, that sort of like privilege, I suppose. But it's like, everyone has a life that is not one note, that you have like good and bad. And some people's lives are full of very good things and very bad things at different times. and often that's simultaneous of what i what i struggle with and i still struggle with i because of the way i'm wired is when there's a very good thing happening at the same time as a very bad thing you know how you how you how you balance and navigate that and i think it's another thing i think like therapy taught me is that i don't have to have all the answers to myself even and no one has the answers to themselves and I think in the past maybe possibly because when I was starting to write about mental health you kind of adopt a role or people perceive a role you have and you play into that role where you kind of expected to have the answers rather than what I was which was a person who went through something and tried to articulate what I went through as best as i could and the progress i was made and why i think that happened but i think the danger is sometimes when when you're known for as someone who who people want they want you to have answers you can start fooling yourself into thinking you know everything about everything and you've got all the answers and that's actually i think that's when problems can happen so i think it's important and to always know your limitations and that you'll never have the answers to anything no one's ever had the answers you know the wisest philosophers in ancient greece didn't have all the answers no one has all the answers we're all in this together and we're all trying to work it out yeah but like you say i mean certainly with your book reasons to stay alive a huge lump of responsibility sort of landed on your lap due to the success of how far reaching that book was i I mean, it massively changed my life.

29:14That book came into my life at exactly the right moment, like it did for so many people. But of course, with it, like you say, comes an expectation of answers. But also, I guess, and it's probably to a slightly lesser degree me, but with Happy Place, people feel comfy enough to come up to me and tell me things that are particularly deep and sometimes very dark. And I feel really privileged that I'm in that space. but it does feel like oh god I'm not a therapist I don't know I don't know what to say here or am I getting this right I mean that responsibility is huge for you yeah and I love the way you've done it though Fern because I think you've created a community where people aren't necessarily thinking you've got all the answers or even any one of your guests has got all the answers or anything but you've created a space where people feel comfortable talking about things that may they may not have elsewhere and that's an important thing to just create that space out there and i think you've done that very clearly and and well in my opinion i think that's good and i i suppose in a sort of like smaller way with an individual book you try and just create a talking point you know that people can use as a sort of like you know like especially like say young blokes sometimes famously find it hard to articulate to people around them what they're feeling but if they have a book or a film or something they can point to or give someone to read and i think i love it when i hear those sort of things or when i hear like a lot of readers of reason stay alive aren't people going through depression they're people who know people have gone through depression know people have been suicidal people who've even lost people but they want a window onto that and I think that was something that I could give because I'd been through that.

31:03So, yeah, that's what I tried to do. The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead. No rigid long-term contracts. Just the right expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork. Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Post a job for free and get started today. Hi, this is Knox from the Popcast with Knox and Jamie. And maybe like us at the Popcast, you also know people who have been smokers or vapers.

31:45And Zen is the one product it seems like everyone is talking about. Because there are many good reasons to make a change to Zen nicotine pouches. Reasons like Zen nicotine pouches are still America's number one choice for smoke-free, hands-free nicotine satisfaction. And you can choose between 10 varieties, each variety available in either 3 or 6 milligrams. Check out zen.com slash find to find Zen at a store near you. Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Hey, I'm Dr. Z and I'm a neurosurgeon. So that means long hours, early rounds, late nights, and everything in between.

32:18And through it all, I wear figs. they're comfortable when it counts and functional when i need them the most so where do you wear your figs on shift on call on the couch in the break room listening to this podcast wherever it is they fit right in and now listeners of this podcast can get 15 off their first order just head to wearfigs.com and use code figs rx at checkout that's wearfigs.com code figs rx show you what i was thinking about this chat i've been thinking about it for a long time not only because I've been reading the book but also just things have popped up and I thought I really want to know what Matt Haig thinks about this because someone said to me recently it's someone that I think is particularly knowledgeable and wise and has a long history of experience working in mental health therapy kind of stuff and their and I'm sure it's not their idea but the thing that they expressed to me was that often anxiety is suppressed anger and I've thought about this obsessively since I heard it and I've really looked at the things that I know I'm a bit pissed off about or angry about but I haven't accessed at all and it's just sat there and since I've been looking at that stuff I'm definitely less anxious yeah and I don't know if it's like a psychosomatic kind of scenario going on but something very incrementally is shifting due to me looking at the stuff that I'm not properly even cognizant of that is anger down here somewhere yeah what do you what are your thoughts on that it's not even a question it's just what it's a it's just something that I feel really interested in well the expression because you know talk around mental health has changed a lot since i was had panic disorder in 1999 but one expression that was still there then and still there now was fight or flight yeah so that need to flee and escape is very related to that fight impulse and so anxiety like i've noticed it in my career at my more neurotic moments especially when i was younger and sort of struggling novelist are my anxiety around my own career instead of really addressing what that was about you know i'd look at someone more successful than me or like uh or some someone i didn't like or you know and i'd project my own inner insecurity onto that i wouldn't publicly do it but it would be in my head as a thing and what's the use in that that's just utterly negative thing but it it was sometimes it's easier to do that projection than to actually look at what's going on but it's much more important to get to a place where you can look at those ugly intestines of your thinking and really know what what's happening there and the best thing is all of us i think this is still this sort of strange myth that there are people out there that don't have any dark thoughts that don't sort of internally despise other people or have weird thoughts we're all walking around going oh look they're coping so well and they're really normal and i'm this weird freak with all these strange thoughts in my head all of us have this we're problematic we're broad humans we all we are we've got you know stuff going on and so you can either deny that and you know live an entire life like it's gone for an instagram filter yeah or you can actually realize that you know it's okay to have these sort of negative feelings it's what's what becomes not okay is when you're in such denial of them that you can't see what you're doing to other people, what you can't see what you're doing to yourself, to your health and to people who care about you and you can't really see what's going on.

36:25So I think you've always got to have one eye on not just what you're thinking about someone or something, but why you're feeling that way. and often you know you can't change external things that much but you can massively change internal things by realizing what's going on and sometimes just seeing as you say sometimes just seeing it makes you mindful of that and i know people talk about mindfulness all the time to the point it means nothing but mindfulness for me is literally having that awareness that five second kind of check when you actually think oh i know why i'm thinking that about that person I know this is coming from a jealous place or an insecure place and I don't need that.

37:13Yeah, it's a much harder route. And that's why people less often pick the route to sort of have a look at themselves. I mean, we'd all get out of it if we could. But I think if you've committed to this is the path I'm on, you've got to keep walking down it. It's the only way. Yeah. And I'm sure you found it. But as you reach different points in your career, you realize it's quite useful to have different points in your career, points where you felt like you're a failure, points where, you know, you're externally seen as successful. Because then you realize, actually, there's things that all this external stuff can't give you in any way.

37:51And actually then pushes you into a crisis because you're like, well, I'm expected to feel this, but I don't feel this. and I've been striving towards this because I thought all the problems and insecurities were to do with not having this, but now I have this. Yeah. And I've got to realise the problem was something else. It wasn't this lack, I thought, this external lack of whatever, money or career or whatever. It was actually something that was always there and the striving was just a symptom of what was there and then I have to actually face up to that shit and just deal with it. Because I'm sure when you were a struggling writer back in the day that you assumed, oh, if I ever sold, like how many books has the Midnight Library sold now?

38:3710 million worldwide or something? Something. Something like that, I don't know. It's an absurd, like in book land, 10 million is absurd. Like it's insane. It's an insane amount. But I'm sure you would have thought back then, if one of my books sold 10 million, I will be happy. And it doesn't work like that. And no one wants to hear that. No one wants to hear that. Because you hate yourself, don't you? You hate yourself. No, I think it's so important to say this. Yeah, no, yeah. I think it's so important. But I still know my younger self hates myself moaning about this stuff that younger person wanted.

39:10But I'll say that what happens very easily, I think most humans are like this, is goalposts shift so quick. So quick. You can be at uni and just wanting that job and getting that job and you're saying you'll you'll say before you get that job you think i'll be happy if i get that job you know that's where my ambition will stop i'll just be happy doing that and you have about a week yeah before you're like actually wouldn't it be nice to just like be a hungry hippo and just like keep grabbing and it's really hard but it's another thing about getting older i think i think once you hit i've hit i'm 49 years old now and so you have a sense whether it's real or not of having passed over the hump in the bridge a little bit and you think you see you have a different perspective a perspective that looks back as well as forward and it's not so striving and it's more about okay let's instead of always going in that forward line let's just expand out and look around and see where we're at.

40:16And it's a nicer way to be than always that forward, ambitious momentum of, you know, rat race and wanting to be respected by your peers, whatever that means. And interesting thing about the internet age is of course no one, you know, when I was younger, it was possible to be naive enough to think you could be a person that everyone liked. The internet. It's a terrible idea. Pratically shown that that's not true. No. There are no people that everyone likes. And, you know, even people get, you think, hey, you're almost like this. You can find some Reddit thread or something. Oh, that would be someone that doesn't like Taylor Swift out there.

40:57Yeah, no. Yeah, it's definitely true. And you just have, I suppose that's a good thing now because everyone so knows that you can't reach that point. That we all, anyone who's vaguely public or even if you've got an outward-facing job in any capacity, you have to understand that you can people please to an extent but you're not going to win everybody over no no so so knowing that's futile as is perhaps having lofty goals about oh if i sold 20 million books i've been any different or whatever the next goal would be movie or the movie so considering you've done all of this stuff where do you place your happiness now or what does it mean to you I mean again to put it into context with this book a line that I absolutely loved was somewhat related where Grace again says we beat death by living while we are here and I think that's what I mean is what does living mean what is it to you now that brings you that sense of I feel alive um I think it's it's weird like happiness sometimes happens at that point where you you stop worrying about it like it's often life often the best moments of life are the ones that you're not thinking too deeply about when you're in your happiest moments you're never tweeting them you're never instagramming them or doing a selfie in those moments so it's as many of those sort of natural living moments i mean my indulgence and it's always been the case all my life has been traveling i love travel and i think the thing i like about travel is when you're in a different country you get a perspective and you remember that your life isn't that important that at any moment of the day there are people in this uh restaurant in japan or spain or america doing these things walking down that street there's that man in the corner busking there's this happening nine billion times and i've always since was a kid been fascinated by that one of the things i one of my happy memories it's a strange one but when i was a kid i did that thing of looking out the window as we passed like sheffield or nottingham and seeing the distant lights and imagining all the lives that were going on in that city when you're passing it on the m1 or whatever and i i i'm i love travel for giving you that sort of broad sense of a whole planet and a whole world out there and that you're small but you're beautifully small and part of this beautiful whole and actually it makes it can make you feel bigger in a sort of more zen way because you actually feel part of something much much bigger than your little concerns about your little work and your social media feed and this that and the other but you're part of something and i think that is where true escape and comfort is it's never by yourself it's via other people other things other places and how you interact with them i think we're very focused on and it's important to do work as we've been talking about but very focused that all the answers are inside us and they're not i think the way out is through other people a lot of time there's something magical about when you when you're flying into another country specifically at sunrise yeah and you can sort of see the sun coming up and you're almost imagining like people having their coffee people making their breakfast that always blows my mind like oh my god right down there having many thousands of feet below are people just like having cereal and waking up about to go and do all the stuff they need to do in their day all right that is my favorite perspective shifter yes i love it i can remember once my mum and dad took me we never went to cities on holiday but we went to paris once i remember it was like my mum was a teacher there's a scheme where they exchanged houses with other teachers so we went to this parisian teachers flat and just looking out in the morning street cleaners and the people and in france obviously they go to like you know have breakfast outside and you can see life happening out on the streets and it was just so sort of like spine tinglingly lovely uh for someone who'd been so wrapped up in their school life and home life to just see the world out there and I thought yeah I want to get out there and see yeah but I love that I love that we've just talked about that and like how how our happiness and and our aliveness is through that connection to other people and essentially sort of that storytelling like learning about other people's lives and their experiences and their days and do you find when you're writing a book a fiction specifically that you do have a beautiful level of escapism where you can almost park your life whilst you're writing and diving into that world yeah and I think that's for me it you know everyone focuses like when we think of writers or want to be a writer they think of it in the bookshop and all that the actual beautiful thing about writing um and maybe any creative endeavor is the creating and the organizing and with fiction what are you doing when you're telling a story you're sort of creating a world that you have a control over which you don't necessarily have a control over the real world but you you're ordering you're creating a world full of like causes and effects that you've got sort of mastery of.

46:25And it's like, it's a lovely feeling to shape that. I'm not the best editor. I'm a bit too sort of ADHD to sort of like go back through, go back through over and over, dealing with all the criticisms. But that first draft of creating something, I love that. It is the best. I mean, I've only done it once, but I was like, it was like going on holiday every time I opened my laptop. It just felt remarkable. I mean your fictions all have a fantastical element to them in this one you've got this is not fictitious you've got the seagrass that sits outside of the island of Ibiza but the the sort of fantastical bit is would you call it a magic yeah I mean it is this is very much I think it's my weirdest book in that yeah you know I think people will find it a bit I mean Midnight Library is obviously science fiction and goes off into fantasy yeah this possibly goes a step further into life on other planets you know a sort of portal that's in the ocean that connects to higher life forms there's a lot of weird stuff you know which possibly comes from having spent too long in a beef from my young years my brain going a bit wild on uh yeah um so it's it's a strange weird book but i i kind of like that i didn't you know because it was a lot of pressure off midnight library to do you know another midnight library or like i don't know the sunset bookshop or something that would have been but to just do something that's very different yet also i think thematically quite similar in that it's about a woman who goes through a transformation and sees life very differently and has a perspective shift but everything else how i get there is kind of very different to the midnight library.

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49:52What do you think it is that draws you to a sort of a fantastical element to your fiction? Because I don't, I get really, really bored. And so if I'm writing a very realistic book, after the third chapter i will be wanting to you know go with my imagination like i think like we have imaginations for a reason and it's all made up you know if you're writing a novel it's made up so you're kind of writing about parallel universe anyway so why not go really made up and also i think having written non-fiction it makes me want to go a bit weirder in fiction because I realised that even in non-fiction there are things that you can't say.

50:36Whereas in fiction, especially if you make it a real fantastical, proper story, fantasy fiction, you can then be very honest about the stuff you're being honest about. You can be very... And this is one of the reasons I often get asked, not all my books, but the last two books had a female protagonist. And it's like, I want that person to be very clearly not me and a different age and a different place. and then you can put a lot of yourself into it and you can be very exposed and revealing without having that risk in non-fiction of hurting your parents or whatever it is. Yeah, it's nice that sort of the boundaries move a bit.

51:14You can really kind of stretch out your limbs and go, right, where are we going to take this? Because there are no rules. I mean, as long as you're writing in a sort of coherent way that people are going to understand, you can really push the boundaries. It's so exciting. yeah and it's fun to i think one fun moment it's almost like fishing you when you catch yourself thinking or going somewhere that you didn't plan i'm not much of a planner and so when you're imagining stuff and then you imagine something really crazy you think where did that come from yeah and it reminds you that you don't know yourself that much and i think like i think probably musicians get that feeling and film directors get that feeling of like surprising yourself and understanding yourself so in a way writing very weird made-up stuff can be a way back to seeing yourself it feels like an essential practice in this day and age where daydreaming and having an imagination seems harder we're distracting ourselves constantly so there's no actual room to daydream and in terms of imagination it's like everybody's imagining everything for us in the form of AI or movies or whatever we're being bombarded with constantly because it's hard to avoid screens, that we're not sat idle like we would have in the 80s and 90s going, oh, that's a strange idea.

52:38We almost need to work harder to give ourselves the time to really explore that imagination. And I agree with you. I think whenever I allow myself to properly daydream or just sit and see what comes up, or if I'm out walking or running, I'll not listen to anything. I'll just sort of let my brain freely wander around. And I do think it does show you something about yourself. It's almost, I feel like new parts of my brain are opening up. Like, I didn't know that existed. Like there was a little door over here with another room that I'd never seen. So I think we all need more time just to let our minds wander and see what comes up.

53:15Yeah, definitely. And I think it's no coincidence I wrote my weirdest book when I was away from social media. because I got I when I was having my mental health dip going through therapy I couldn't be on social media I you know had my fingers burnt too much with social media I you know all sorts of stuff and I was well away and I didn't I've obviously like everyone who says they're leaving social media I came back to social media when I realized I've got to promote this thing now but for a little blissful while i i'd left it and um and i think that as well because i wasn't plugged into other people's opinions so i could actually work out what i like and my own taste because we're all so second guessing everyone's opinions on everything from politics to everything we're so worried about stepping out of line on any issue and it's so good to sort of like step away from that for a while and i've definitely even i've come back to social media and around this i'll be sort of instagramming a lot but i'm a very different attitude to it now i don't really do twitter i use twitter as a sort of like mailing list really i don't really you know i don't really put as much of the sort of stuff i was putting out there out there anymore so i've had a got very i don't i think i wanted too much from social media i wanted something that because i hadn't had the right therapy i wasn't going to get from social media and you can never get it because going back to the thing about moving goalposts social media is you know it preys yeah from a very young age whether it's snapchat with their sort of like um the friendship streaks where teenagers feel like they've got to contact you know build up the street you've all it's about encouraging you to always want more want more followers want more you know interaction and you'll never reach the limit never no and there'll always be um someone bigger someone cooler someone more popular always be selena gomez with like 77 gazillions it's just ridiculous crazy so post being diagnosed with adhd autism now being in therapy having had a good chunk of time off of social media it seems like a lot's changed for you and you're in a place where you're perhaps aware of what works for you and what doesn't and I know that I've read even recently that you know much like myself you have to always keep an eye on your mental health I mean most of us will have that but you really have to keep an eye on your mental health how are you doing that what does that mean especially going into a really busy bit where you're about to promote a book I think, you know, for me, I'm aware now of the times of day that I'm happiest.

56:05And I'm happiest when I'm walking my golden retriever in the morning, Bruce, on Brighton Beach. And yeah, we're about to go on a little road trip with Bruce through France while we're going to a beefer and meditating. So I'm really looking forward to that. I think that's the perfect thing for me to not think about work. spending time with people and animals i love and traveling and things like that and focusing on that i think front and center it always used to be the work and it didn't actually help the work it didn't help me having that you know because you'd be doing the wrong things and so now having focus on people and the sort of quieter moments and to realize that this is it this is you know life isn't something you're working towards it's a very sort of fleeting moment in the cosmic scheme of things that we're actually here it's the literal blink of an eye and we're always wanting more out of it or we're wanting the next thing or the next chapter and we always have you know forward momentum is very important but if it can come a point especially in the west where we have so much forward momentum we're not actually aware that this is it this present moment this being this right now is it and writing at its best and living at its best is when you're sort of lost in that moment and you're not thinking too deeply about it you're just in it you're just throwing stones on the beach for your dog or whatever it is and and you're there and you're you're here you're like it's the best i had one of those days the other day where i happened to have an afternoon free and i would normally go well you've got podcasts to research and you've got things to be getting on with whatever i thought i'm not i'm not going to do that and my husband was around and we got line bikes and just cycled without a goal we didn't even know where we were going we're just cycling about and stopped for food for a bit and then cycled a bit more and it was one of i was cycling going oh this is like a core memory like this is one of those things i'm going to think back at like this is i'm looking at the beautiful pubs and the little muses and people outside on little cafe chairs and tables i was like oh yeah i'm in it i'm like not thinking about anything else this is it and i just don't give myself enough space to do that but as you say it's all those little wonderful fleeting they're very they're ephemeral moments accidental spontaneous moments that's where it's at like that well people like say like darwin said that evolution happens by mistakes you know when a species evolves it's by mistakes and i think our life's like that it's like we we find ourselves in the accidents and the mistakes and the things that aren't planned yeah things that are away from it and yeah i'm cycling i'm gonna get an e-bike in a bifur and just whiz around and just that's my heaven you and bruce on the beach cycling around it's gonna be heaven yeah we've got a nudist beach very near us which i'm not gonna partake in but you know it'll be a way of sort of like taking myself out of it with your lots of nice german men well it's always um it's been an absolute joy catching up with you this book gave me just the best sense of escapism and lots of lines that i've written down that i'm going to look back at again and again and i wish you all the love and luck with the promotion and the success that will follow from this wonderful book no it's lovely chatting to you as always thank you thanks Matt oh I just love Matt I just think he's brilliant and obviously I'm a huge fan of his writing but getting to catch up with him it feels like a real privilege to sort of pick his brains and get behind the story and know the whys of the story and just understand how a brain that expansive and that creative and that imaginative works that to me I would never not be fascinated about and he's just really nice which really helps just a lovely bloke my own fears around getting into the world of fiction having released my first fiction this year was that people in the fiction world would be a bit snobby and Matt is the antithesis of that he's someone who could not have more success in terms of fiction but is so unsnobby and so lovely and just encourages all of us to use our imagination So for that, I'm massively grateful.

1:00:27The Life Impossible is out on August the 29th. Now, another book that we absolutely have to talk about is this book. How do I even how do I talk about this book without exploding with joy and intrigue and fascination? The book I'm talking about is Want by Gillian Anderson. This is our happy place book club read for September. And it's all about sexual fantasies. Gillian has collected the anonymous fantasies of hundreds of women from around the world, including her own. She is anonymously in there too. And they are full of desire and fear and intimacy and shame and at times weirdness and tenderness.

1:01:10And there's kinks in there and passion. It goes on and on and on in the best possible way. I couldn't put it down. this is a real expose of how women really feel about sex when they have the freedom to be totally themselves i can't wait to talk to you about this book some more over at happy place book club on instagram that's where we are throughout september there's going to be much discussion going on so you've got to be following at happy place book club to get in on this chat i'd love for you to come and get stuck in there we can talk about all of it and better yet i'm going to be talking to the actual Gillian Anderson on this very podcast very soon.

1:01:51So just stick around, basically. All right, back here very soon. But until then, a massive thanks to Matt, to the producer Anushka Tate at Happy Play Studios, and to you, your ace.

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