Matt Haig's Blog

I don't post here very much but just to tell you lovely folk I have finished a new novel. It is called The Life Impossible and it will be out in most places this August and September. I put everything into this one, and I really hope you enjoy it.

Cheers!

Matt

People should read books. Books are good.

But many are intimidated. One of the reasons people are put off reading is snobbery. You know, the snobbery that says opera and lacrosse and Pinot Noir and jazz fusion and quails' eggs and literary fiction are for certain types of people and them alone?

There is something innately snobby about the world of books. There is the snobbery of literary over genre, of adult books over children's, of seriousness over comedy, of reality over fantasy, of Martin Amis over Stephen King. And it is unhealthy. If books ever die, snobbery would be standing over the corpse.

So here is my message to book snobs:

1. People should never be made to feel bad about what they are reading. People who feel bad about reading will stop reading.

2. Snobbery leads to worse books. Pretentious writing and pretentious reading. Books as exclusive members clubs. Narrow genres. No inter-breeding. All that fascist nonsense that leads commercial writers to think it is okay to be lazy with words and for literary writers to think it is okay to be lazy with story.

3. If something is popular it can still be good. Just ask Shakespeare. Or the Beatles. Or peanut butter.

4. Get over the genre thing. The art world accepted that an artist could take from anywhere he or she wanted a long time ago. Roy Lichtenstein could turn comic strips into masterpieces back in 1961. Intelligence is not a question of subject but approach.

5. It is harder to be funny than to be serious. For instance, this is a serious sentence: 'After dinner, Alistair roamed the formal garden behind this unfamiliar house, wishing he had never betrayed Lorelei's trust.' That took me eight seconds to write. And yet I've been trying to write a funny sentence for three hours now, and I'm getting hungry.

6. Many of the greatest writers have been children's writers.

7. It is easy to say something to people who are exactly like you. A bigger challenge lies in locating that universal piece of all of us that wants to be wowed, and brought together by a great story. There isn't a human in the world who wouldn't enter the Sistine Chapel and not want to look up. Does that make Michelangelo a low-brow populist?

8. It does not matter about who the author is. The only thing a book should be judged on is the words inside.

9. Martin Amis once moaned on the radio that there were too many writers talking across the table to their readers rather than down to them. This was the point I went off Martin Amis.

10. You don't have to be serious about something to be serious about something.

11. You don't have to be realistic to be true.

12. You are one of 7,000,000,000 people in the world. You can never be above all of them. But you can be happy to belong.

13. The only people who fear people understanding what they are saying are people who have nothing really to say.

14. Books are not better for being misunderstood, any more than a building is better for having no door.

15. Shakespeare didn't go to university, and spelt his name six different ways. He also told jokes. (Bad ones, true, but you can't knock him for trying.)

16. Avoiding plot doesn't automatically make you clever. (See: Greene, Tolstoy, Shakespeare.)

17. Freedom is a process of knocking down walls. Tyranny is a process of building them.

18. There can be as much beauty in short (words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters) as long. Sparrows fly higher than peacocks.

19. Snobs are suckers, because they have superficial prejudices.

20. The book I am least proud of, that I didn't work hard enough on, was my most ostentatiously highbrow one.

21. Reading a certain book doesn't make you more intelligent any more than drinking absinthe makes you Van Gogh. It's how you read, as much as what you read.

22. Never make someone feel bad for not having read or not read something. Books are there to heal, not hurt.

23. Imagination is play. Snobbery is the opposite of play.

24. I used to be a snob. It made me unhappy.

25. Simple isn't always stupid. When I write a first draft it is complicated. There is mess. The second and third and fifteenth drafts try and get it to make sense, to trim away the frayed edges.

26. Stephen King was right. Books are 'portable magic'. And everyone loves magic.

27. Inclusion is harder than exclusion. Just ask a politician.

28. The brain can absorb many things. So can a novel.

29. For me, personally, the point of writing is to connect me to this world, to my fellow humans. We are all miles apart. We have no real means of connecting except via language. And the deepest form of language is storytelling.

30. The greatest stories appeal to our deepest selves, the parts of us snobbery can't reach, the parts that connect the child to the adult and the brain to the heart and reality to dreams. Stories, at their essence, are enemies of snobbery. And a book snob is the enemy of the book.

When I was 24 I very nearly killed myself. I was living in Ibiza at the time, in a very nice villa, on the quiet east coast of the island. The villa was right next to a cliff. In the midst of depression I walked out to the edge of the cliff and looked at the sea, and at the rugged limestone coastline, dotted with deserted beaches. It was the most beautiful view I had ever known, but I didn’t care. I was too busy trying to summon the courage needed to throw myself over the edge. I didn’t. Instead, I walked back inside and threw up from the stress of it.

Three more years of depression followed. Panic, despair, a daily battle to walk to the corner shop without collapsing to the ground.

But I survived. I am days away from being 38. Back then, I almost knew I wasn’t going to make it to 30. Death or total madness seemed more realistic.

But I’m here. Surrounded by people I love. And I am doing a job I never thought I’d be doing. And I spend my days writing stories, that are really guide books, the way all books are guide books.

I am so glad I didn’t kill myself, but I continue to wonder if there is anything to say to people at those darkest times.

Here’s an attempt. Here are things I wish someone had told me at the time:

1. You are on another planet. No-one understands what you are going through. But actually, they do. You don’t think they do because the only reference point is yourself. You have never felt this way before, and the shock of the descent is traumatising you, but others have been here. You are in a dark, dark land with a population of millions.

2. Things aren’t going to get worse. You want to kill yourself. That is as low as it gets. There is only upwards from here.

3. You hate yourself. That is because you are sensitive. Pretty much every human could find a reason to hate themselves if they thought about it as much as you did. We’re all total bastards, us humans, but also totally wonderful.

4. So what, you have a label? ‘Depressive’. Everyone would have a label if they asked the right professional.

5. That feeling you have, that everything is going to get worse, that is just a symptom.

6. Minds have their own weather systems. You are in a hurricane. Hurricanes run out of energy eventually. Hold on.

7. Ignore stigma. Every illness had stigma once. Stigma is what happens when ignorance meets realities that need an open mind.

8. Nothing lasts forever. This pain won’t last. The pain tells you it will last. Pain lies. Ignore it.

9. Or, to plagiarise myself: ”Your mind is a galaxy. More dark than light. But the light makes it worthwhile. Which is to say, don’t kill yourself. Even when the darkness is total. Always know that life is not still. Time is space. You are moving through that galaxy. Wait for the stars.” (The Humans)

10. You will one day experience joy that matches this pain. You will cry euphoric tears at the Beach Boys, you will stare down at your baby daughter’s face as she lies contentedly asleep in your lap, you will make great friends, you will eat delicious foods you haven’t tried yet, you will be able to look at a view like this one and feel the beauty, there are books you haven’t read yet that will enrich you, films you will watch while eating extra large buckets of popcorn, and you will dance and laugh and have sex and go for runs by the river and have late night conversations and laugh until it hurts. Life is waiting for you. You might be stuck here for a while, but the world isn’t going anywhere. Hang on in there if you can. Life is always worth it.

Welcome to my second ever blog.

I thought I’d just hastily scribble down everything I know about being a writer, after a decade and eight books worth of relentless experience.

If you are a writer you might disagree with every word of this. Maybe this is just my reality. In which case, disown me and pretend I’m using the royal ‘we’. I decided on 37 points. Don’t ask my why. I’m 37. Maybe that was it (writers are all self-obsessed, forgot to mention that). So, here it is, the writer stripped bare.

1. We live on toast. And cereal. And caffeine. And wine. But mainly toast.
2. By the time our book comes out, it feels like a childhood memory. But more distant.
3. Our daily word-count was approximately three thousand words higher before the arrival of Facebook and Twitter.
4. At parties someone will always say, ‘So have you written anything I’d have heard of?’ Or, ‘How are the books going?’ Both questions end in awkward silence.
5. If we were number two in the bestseller charts, the only book we would ever be thinking about is the one selling more.
6. We never know if the book we are writing is the right one until we have written it. And even then we are not sure.
7. It is harder to make friends after you become a writer than it was before. But way easier to make enemies.
8. People think you are automatically a bit weird. (Or is that just me?)
9. We need editors ‘like a fat kid needs cake’ – to quote that sensitive literary soul, 50 Cent.
10. The best day is when we get to see our book cover. Unless we don’ t like the book cover in which case it is the worst day.
11. ‘Royalty statement’ is latin for disappointment.
12. We get stomach pains every time another writer wins something. (We have continual stomach pains).
13. We all want to be Hemingway, minus the suicide part.
14. We would probably all be writing poems, if people actually bought poems.
15. We spend a lot of our time going on five hour train journeys to events where eight people turn up (and only three of them buy the book).
16. We chose not to choose life. We chose something else.
17. We are generally quite bad at dancing.
18. In most cases, the person we don’t like more than any other just happens to be another writer. But then, the person we admire most is one too.
19. We may have our name on the front of a book but we always feel slightly outside the publishing industry, looking in. Like Keats at that metaphorical sweet-shop.
20. If we were a neurotic wreck before we were published – and we were – we remain one afterwards. Our brain chemistry doesn’t fundamentally change.
21. If we get good reviews, we want good sales. If we get good sales, we want good reviews.
22. We are happy for five whole minutes after a book is sent off. Then we realise all the mistakes we made.
23. We start off wanting to be published. We get published. Then we want a nice review. We get a nice review. Then we want an award. We get an award. Then we want a film deal. We get a film deal. Then we want a film to be made. And so on. For ever. (We are never happy).
24. If someone reads our work midway through the writing process we need them to faint in awe or it goes in the bin.
25. We are a little bit lonely.
26. Bad reviews are always taken personally. Always.
27. Writing a novel is like a relationship. During the early stages every other possibility looks incredibly attractive. But commitment pays off.
28. We rarely write in coffee shops.
29. Writing is heaven. Re-writing is hell.
30. We are rubbish at other jobs. And DIY. And most other things too.
31. We say the wrong things at parties.
32. The definition of discomfort is the moment after your mother reads your semi-autobiographical novel.
33. There is no praise more treasured than that of an author you worship.
34. The best book we have ever written is the one we are about to write.
35. The best ideas we have are the ones that arrive accidentally.
36. There is no email in the world nicer to receive than the one from a reader who has been moved by your work.
37. We know, in our heart of hearts, that we have the very best job in the world