Matt Haig – “In fiction, you can talk about things in a freer way”

Tell us about how your relationship with Ibiza and how it has changed over the years.
When I was younger, I was a very insecure person. I did not know what I wanted to do with my life. I had ambition but I had no confidence. Back then, I didn’t believe that someone like me could write and publish a book. My dependency on alcohol, drugs and anything really to gain the confidence I didn’t have, to gain self acceptance, was a lot. So Ibiza to me at that time became the epitome of escape.
I first visited the island in 1996. Me and my girlfriend had gone to Barcelona, and from there we caught a boat to Ibiza for a weekend to experience the nightlife. After the weekend, we returned to university that winter in the north of England. The thing about the north of England is that it makes you want to go back to Spain, and so we did. There, I indulged in a lot of hedonism and debauchery. It wasn’t that Ibiza made me ill; I was ill because of the way that I was living and because of how insecure and nervous I was. I did not know how to become an adult.
What happened in Ibiza and what was it like going back there after so many years?
At the age of 24, after a terrible winter in London, where I did a lot of dead-end jobs that I didn’t want to do, where I barely lasted three weeks and walked out even before I got paid, I was coming to the end of the summer in Ibiza. There were no drugs involved at this point. I was relatively healthy, and I remember going for a run that morning; so it wasn’t really like an episode caused by alcohol or drugs. It was just a tearful breakdown that happened at 11 in the morning and it didn’t stop for weeks, months, and even years. I was in a state of depression and panic disorder, which stopped me from having a normal job, which stopped me from entering society in a normal way for a very long time. And that’s one of the reasons I became a writer because it was literally the one thing that I could do from home. Writing comforted me.
I went back to Ibiza when I was older, sober and recovered. More than 20 years had passed and Ibiza was always the same place as it used to be. Ibiza, for me, was a place that I escaped to and then a place I’d escaped from. I never wanted to go back there because it reminded me of how stupid I was as a younger person; how addicted I was to alcohol and drugs. It was a place I was scared of because there were too many bad memories – of being suicidal or nearly dying.
How did writing help you recover?
I didn’t begin writing novels right away. When I started, I wrote very boring books, mostly business books, because it was one thing I was allowed to write about, that I could get commissioned for. Publishers wanted business writers and I became one for a while because it was a way to earn some money while still being quite ill.
Many years later, after I had therapy… a big theme of the process was about facing up to your past, facing up to yourself. It wasn’t the easy kind of therapy where you can just blame other people, or blame your mother for everything. It was really intense. The therapist didn’t suggest it, but I thought I needed to go back to Ibiza and see the place where I nearly died. So I went back to Ibiza out of season, in winter, when there are no British tourists, or no tourists at all, to see the real place. That was a very healing experience because Ibiza is a very natural and beautiful place. Yes, it is a place that has the biggest nightclubs in the world but you can easily avoid all that. It was a very cathartic experience and it showed me how much I had changed as a person. That was a big part of recovery and writing this book was a way to intensely focus on this thing that I had avoided, this place where I had these bad memories of, that in itself was a kind of exposure therapy.
What aspects of mental health recovery do you feel are still not discussed enough in contemporary literature and media?
The good thing is that we’re talking about mental health a lot more than we used to. The potential to feel less alone is definitely there, which back in 1999, certainly in Britain, was very different. There were academic books about mental health, and some very intense, brilliant books about depression but when you’re actually in that suicidal moment, you want access to something that can speak to you, that you can relate with. That’s what I’ve tried to do in my fiction.
The problem is that all conversations around mental health are often a substitute for the real evolutions of mental health. Politicians, for instance, in my country, in both the main parties, like to talk about mental health without actually necessarily doing anything. I think mental illness is a product of society. I always look at lists of the happiest cities in the world with suspicion because these places (like northern Europe, Scandinavian countries) have very high mental illness and suicide rates. This speaks about the problem that people isolate mental illness and don’t see the cultural side of mental health.
Just like there is a cultural side to physical health, like diets that say processed foods lead to obesity, it’s exactly the same with mental health. It’s a cultural thing. Obviously, mental illness exists in every country and society on earth and I think the bigger picture is looking at the whole of mental illness and health, and not isolating it. It should be seen as an ugly mirror of capitalism, of inequality, of all sorts of things that are happening in the society we live in.
We’re in a strange moment where I feel, on the one hand, we talk a lot about mental health/illness, on the other hand we’re in a very judgemental age. So, if a mental illness causes you to behave in a certain addictive, compulsive way, even potentially criminal ways in some cases, at some point there needs to be an understanding of what is truly causing that behaviour. I think we’re all very good at talking about it in the abstract but the specifics of it, the stigma is still very much there. So, yes, progress has been made, but more progress could be made and I think we need a more holistic, wider, social view of mental illness.
What role do you think fiction plays in therapy and healing?
Therapy, if you think about it, is made up of words and language. You’re speaking these words to a therapist, sometimes you’re also writing these words. Language is a way of externalising internal things. It’s a way to share emotions, imagination, and experiences. You don’t have to literally write about mental illness for it to be therapeutic. I think the idea of shaping a world that’s in your head makes you the master of this imaginary world and it creates a nice balance because in real life, perhaps, you don’t have everything under control. Also, in fiction you can talk about things in a freer way. When I wrote Reasons to Stay Alive, there were always things that I couldn’t say, or people I didn’t want to hurt, but in fiction, I could alter things. In The Life Impossible, I changed the gender of the protagonist, changed her age, so I am very clearly not writing about myself. When that happens, I am able to put a lot of myself into the book.
How does your creative writing process differ when you’re writing for adults and when you write for children?
Writing for children is slightly different from writing for adults. Children, I feel, in some ways, are better readers than adults, in the sense that their imagination has yet to be stunted. Children can read about unicorns or fairies and they don’t have to necessarily believe in those things but they will go with the narrative. Whereas if you’re writing a fantasy story for adults, you have to do a lot of work in terms of taking the adults into that fantasy world. It takes a lot of holding their hands, chapter by chapter, to get them there. With a child, there’s something very fun and free about just writing the story. I haven’t written for children in a little while and I kind of miss writing for children. As my children have gotten older, I haven’t had the incentive to make up stories and stuff but I want to write another children’s book.
What are you working on next?
I’ve sort of written a new novel but I don’t know if that’s going to be my next book. I’ve got about three novel ideas that I switch between: one of them is a sequel to The Midnight Library, but we’ll see if that happens. Another one that I have in mind is quite different, because it’ll be my first totally realistic novel like a love story. And the third one is another sort of wild, weird one, a bit like The Life Impossible.
You’re a very prolific writer. What’s your writing process like?
I write fast when I’ve got the idea but I spend a lot of time doing nothing to get to the idea. I’m a very all or nothing kind of person so once I know, I write pretty much every day, from when I wake up to about 6 pm to 7 pm. I just write all the way through, sometimes even through the night. It’s not the healthiest work life balance but it is what it is.
Arunima Mazumdar is an independent writer. She is @sermoninstone on Twitter and @sermonsinstone on Instagram.