Mindy: Welcome to Writer Writer Pants on Fire, where authors talk about things that never happened to people who don't exist. We also cover craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, publishing, industry, marketing and more. I'm your host, Mindy McGinnis. You can check out my books and social media at mindymcginnis dot com and make sure to visit the Writer Writer Pants on Fire blog for additional interviews, query critiques and more as well as full transcriptions of each podcast episode. at WriterWriterPants on Fire.com. And don’t forget to check out the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire Facebook page. Give me feedback, suggest topics you’d like to hear discussed, and let me know if there is someone you’d love to see a a guest.
Mindy: We're here with Matt Haig and we're talking about his new book, The Midnight Library. So why don't we just start off with you telling us a little bit about what it's about?
Matt: Well, the Midnight Library of the title is a library that exists between life and death. And, it's a very unusual library, it’s an infinite library, and the shelves in that library go on forever. Ah, woman, the central protagonist, Nora. She finds herself there. She has made an attempt on her own life, which is why she's between life and death, and she's drowning in regret. Within this library, she gets to try the other lives she could have lived with the help of the librarian within this library of books, this sort of godlike librarian, Mrs. Elm. She gets to be guided through different versions of how her life could have Been and to access those lives is as simple as taking a book off the shelf on opening the book. And then she's in those other versions of her own existence. So there's the Life where she carried on with her swimming career and became an Olympic swimmer. There's a life where she pursued music and became a rock star. There's the Life where she was good at science and is a glaciologist. There’s a life where she's a perfect wife, perfect mother, all of these different versions of how her life could have Been, which she's sort of been having wish fulfillment fantasies about in her real life. She now actually gets to see if the grass really is greener and works out how best to live her own life and whether her life is worth living.
Mindy: You talk a lot about time in many of your books. It seems to be something that you think about a lot.
Matt: It’s interesting, isn't it? Because I suppose when you've written a few books, sort of themes start to emerge. But they're not necessarily conscious themes. I suppose I do, I do always, um, think about time and mortality and all of that stuff. Um, but I sometimes wonder why we're all not doing that. I mean, I feel like, you know, we're here. It's so easy to get sort of lost in a sort of trivial sort of stresses or get lost in the Internet and get lost in politics or coronavirus or whatever it is, we lose sight, I think, of so much and so much of sort of existence, really. And we don't take into account enough of a sort of like the miracle of actually existing.
We Look out at the world and we see some of this sort of hellscape sometimes and how horrendous it is. But essentially we are alive. We are on this planet. This is, there's only planet. The only planet we know of with life on it and we Get to witness that. We are like the universe witnessing itself, and we get so swamped by our sort of human concerns- quite rightly. So there's a lot to get angry about. I'm not belittling any of that, but I think sometimes to look at the big picture to look at our place in time, look at our place in space. Um, yeah, I think novels are a perfect way to do that because obviously, you're telling a story. But within that story, you can have a lot of sort of philosophical asides and, uh, points about existence. And it's, you know, I I believe first and foremost a book should be entertaining. But I also think you can have your cake and eat it and put stuff in there, which makes people think and contemplate on, but can be part of the entertainment itself I suppose.
Mindy: Yes, absolutely. I agree as someone that has an English degree and has never really been able to use it in any useful way, moving through the world, trying to get a job or anything like that. Miss those discussions, I miss sitting in a classroom with people and saying, Well, you know, what is this book really about? What is the author saying or what is, you know, really having a discussion as opposed to Like I mean, I freely admit to like occasionally combing through reviews, looking for someone that maybe hopefully actually got it.
Matt: Well, that's true, isn't it? Because people sort of say, You know, when you say what happens in a book? People are generally talking about plot, but I'm interested in what really happens. What is this book really about, what you know, because even... I don't know, even the most sort of potboiler thriller I think you know, is always about something. The author is kind of coming from a certain perspective or a certain place in time. You know, whether it's Agatha Christie or whatever. There's something going on you can't always mind read. You can’t always do a Jedi mind trick and work out what that author is precisely meaning by that, but I think it's a fun game, and it is a good form of communication or a way to interact with the book, too. Not just thinking in terms of plot and spoiler warnings. And you know, what you can say about plot? But what is that author actually, where are they coming from? Why does this story exist? Why they wanted to tell them. And I think that's an interesting way of reading and looking into it.
Mindy: I agree completely. So I wanted to talk. You mentioned COVID. You mentioned the epidemic and all the things going on in the world right now, which it does seem to be like I'm in the US and, like, practically half of our country is on fire, and then what’s not literally on fire is metaphorically on fire. So you mentioned before your memoir, and a couple other books that you've written specifically, Notes On A Nervous Planet, I enjoyed very much in dealing with depression and anxiety. But if you could talk a little bit about being a creative, being a writer, specifically, in the current environment, how to handle or how you maybe handle or find ways to handle things like depression and anxiety as being a creative helpful in this arena. Do you use writing as therapy in a way, or is that a separate act for you?
Matt: It's interesting. Well, I mean, firstly I’ve got to massively checked my privilege here because I think being a writer and being a writer who earns enough money to just do writing who has a publisher wants to publish me. And All of that means that the transition in 2020 hasn't been that big for me compared to other people. So my life hasn't fundamentally changed. Obviously, the new situation, the global situation, situation in your country, the situation in my country isn't even great. We’re like handling everything the worst in Europe. Yeah, all of that stuff gets in, obviously, but I have to acknowledge that so many people have it worse. Even within this sort of arts and culture sector, I feel like books have been relatively - certainly the sphere I'm in has been relatively insulated, compared to say, if you're working in theater or something like that.
But, you know, I I feel anxiety for me, you know, Anxiety for me is one of the things that sort of continually dogged my health. And this year it has been full of anxiety, and what's been so strange has been realizing that ah, lot of the symptoms of My anxiety and my breakdown when I was younger have been sort of almost enforced upon us. You know, like the compulsive washing of the hands, the distancing for social awkwardness that we've got on almost like compulsory agoraphobia. All of that stuff. And I feel like, you know, that's potentially so, triggering I mean, for my own mental health. Personally, it's not been great, but it hasn't been like a disaster. Had way worse times in the past. Actually, I've got a lot of writing done. And writing, and writing fiction has been, you know, such a therapy this year it's been so good to literally sort of take my mind somewhere else. And also, I think another therapeutic aspect of writing fiction is you, You're literally creating a world you can have control over. So in 2020 when all of us feel desperately out of control, I'm sure in the U. S. That's even more magnified. Um, it's so nice to have that world, you can have shape to your own will.
Mindy: Absolutely true. I agree.
Matt: Which makes me sound, which makes me sound like a megalomaniac, doesn't it bending the world to My will? Which I suppose. Yeah, that is basically what writers are doing.
Mindy: That is pretty much what we do. I decide what happens here. That's good. I agree with you. I also am fortunate enough to be able to write full time and so many of my friends and not just writers, but also, you know, just people out moving through the world, you know, lost their jobs there, had to stay home, and they would talk to me, and people would ask how was lock down going. And I'm like, you know, my life. Basically, didn’t change. I'm home every day. I'm alone.
Matt: I’ve been on lockdown since 1999.
Mindy: That's kind of how I felt. I was like, Well, and it does make you question a little bit about how you're leading your personal life, but yeah, I mean, the world ended and it didn't really affect me. That's definitely leading an insulated life. But interestingly enough, some of my friends that are writers who, fortunately for them in their past, have never really had to deal with depression or anxiety, and suddenly they do. And the world has just become too much. And I have quite a few friends. They didn't have any coping mechanisms that they already honed for themselves, like throughout their lives. And I know quite a few people that just had almost mental breaks. There were like, I can't I can't do it, In some ways I was already like you said, You know, I was preconditioned for this. I'm doing fine.
Matt: I think that's true. And actually, I was literally in an anxiety dip in December, January this year, pre COVID. And so I was recovering from that. Watching world news happening on my own anxiety, actually, sometimes in a strange way, is almost. It's almost better when I have something really to worry about something outside of my own brain. The worst type of anxiety for me is when I get into this sort of loop of self referential anxiety where you're anxious because of the anxiety or you're depressed because of the Depression, and then you can't get out of it. And sometimes, like when we used to live next to a river in York, in the north of England, And I remember nearly falling into a depression. Then the river flooded and the water came into our house and it destroyed our kitchen and it was a sort of everything.
Everyone was suddenly so sympathetic towards me and saying, Oh this must be dreadful and it must be devastating and all of this. Actually, I felt better in a weird way for having that sort of like caveman brain kick in. And it's like I had a real situation to deal with. It certainly took me out of myself into an external reality. The trouble is, I suppose, this year our external reality has felt so beyond our immediate control that a sense of uncertainty adds to it and stuff. There's a great book, actually, When Things Fall Apart by an American Tibetan Buddhist Pema Chodron. I read that for the first time this year, and it is what's great about it. Even though I'm not Buddhist, is just a great book about uncertainty and about how we sort of frame, in the West, we frame uncertainty as this negative thing, but actually uncertainty is also the source of hope, and it's a source of good stuff and how we have to sort of accept despair and suffering as part of the same whole as joy and contentment and calm and all those things. And we've almost conditioned ourselves to believe that our life is a failure if it has any kind of suffering or pain within it. But this kind of Buddhist holistic approach, I think in 2020 has been very soothing for me. So, yeah, I have been getting a little bit spiritually.
Mindy: That's wonderful. I will definitely check that out. That sounds like a good read for right now. Why don't you let listeners know where they can find The Midnight Library, which, It's going to be all over the place. It was recently picked for the Good Morning America, book club read for October. So congrats on that.
Matt: It was published yesterday in hardback. I'm very lucky. Viking has given it gorgeous cover design and everything, and yeah, I mean, my My other regret about this year is that I'm not actually able to do a book tour in person, and I'm I'm stuck in in England doing Zoom, but it has meant I've been able to chat a lots of people and contact people, and I'm very active on Instagram on Twitter and all those things, so feel free to say hello there, too.
Mindy: Writer Writer Pants on Fire is produced by Mindy McGinnis. Music by Jack Korbel. Don't forget to check out the blog for additional interviews, writing advice and publication tips at Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com. If the blog or podcast have been helpful to you or if you just enjoy listening, please consider donating. Visit Writer Writer Pants on Fire dot com and click “support the blog and podcast” in the sidebar.