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Matt Haig is famous for writing The Midnight Library, which sold more than 10 million copies and has more than 2.5 million reviews on Goodreads.
He unapologetically writes for a big audience. That's a taboo thing to say in the writing world even though basically every writer wants more readers. So the question is: Are you betraying the craft if you explicitly try to reach as many people as possible?
We also talked about how to tell better stories, how AI will change writing, and what to think about whenever you write a first draft.
Transcript
00:00:29 How Matt writes his books
00:06:14 What AI can never copy
00:08:21 How books will change with AI
00:13:32 Short words hit harder
00:15:24 Why first drafts matter
00:19:52 What a story is really for
00:26:36 What to do when your books don’t sell
00:36:22 Lessons from writing kids’ books
00:45:31 There’s always another level
00:50:37 Matt’s relationship with publishers
00:53:13 Trust your own taste
David (00:29-00:44)
Can you walk me through how a book actually gets written? How long does it take? Where and when do you write? Are you someone who writes 250 words or 1,000 words every day, or are you more stop-and-start?
Matt (00:44-00:53)
I’m totally stop-and-start; I spend a lot of time stopped. It’s strange because I’m seen as prolific, but I spend most of my time in a state of stopping.
David (00:54-00:55)
A lot of stop.
Matt (00:55-01:24)
Yes, it’s 90% stopping. I swing between two extremes. A lot of my time is spent trying to think of an idea. For me, writer’s block means not knowing which idea to choose. I don’t have a great sense of which idea will work, so I often have to start writing them to find out. Ideas linger in my brain until they’re developed enough to commit to writing.
David (01:24-01:27)
Are these story ideas, character ideas, or what kind of ideas?
Matt (01:28-02:51)
Story ideas. Sometimes, it’s just a title hanging in my head. I’ll think, “That’s a good title,” but I need an idea for it. For example, for ages, I had the title The Memory Thief, but I wondered, “Whose memory? Who’s the thief? Why is this even in my head?”
You can have a title without an idea, or sometimes the title is the last thing that comes to me. It just depends. A lot of the process is simply percolating in my brain. There’s a lot of work that doesn’t feel like work, and I’ll beat myself up, thinking, “Why aren’t I working?” But it turns out to be the most important work because I am actually thinking about things.
It’s that classic situation where you’re sitting in front of a Word document and can’t find inspiration. You need to be away from it. Often, when I’m in another country or traveling, an idea will just come to me. You need to be taken out of yourself a little bit to get it.
So, I swing from that state of thinking, percolating, and secretly working—despite beating myself up for not “working”—to then getting an idea. Then I worry that I won’t remember it all, which creates an impulse to rush and write, to get it all down while it’s still in my head.
David (02:53-02:56)
What about the first draft, revisions, and working with an editor? How does that process unfold?
Matt (02:57-05:13)
I’ve had the same editor for 15 years now. I think it really helps to have a good relationship with your editor because you get to know them and their taste. You learn when to listen to them and when to defend your position. You understand when they’re speaking as a general reader versus when it’s their specific taste.
We have a lot of conversations, many phone calls, and plenty of back and forth. My editor, Francis Bickmore, is a nice guy. Sometimes he’s a bit too nice, so I have to dig to understand what he’s truly saying. I tell him to be more brutal. I’ve learned how to translate his feedback.
Sometimes in editing, it’s easier to be brutal because there’s a temptation to correct individual sentences, lines, or small scenes when there’s actually a much bigger problem. It’s not just about a specific page; it’s about addressing a larger structural issue.
What famously happens with my editor and me is he’ll suggest a few changes, perhaps a paragraph here or there. But then I’ll suddenly find myself wiping out 50,000 words. If he spots a small problem, I’ll pull at that thread and think, “What is this problem really about?” Often, it turns out that an entire character or even the whole premise doesn’t need to be there.
For instance, with my novel The Humans, I think I deleted 40,000 words. It was a small novel to start with, around 80,000 words, so 40,000 of those went. Then another 55,000 words were added between the first and second drafts.
It’s strange because you’ll click “send” on your first draft, convinced it’s the most perfect, complete, finished thing you can do. You feel like it isn’t a first draft because you’ve lived inside it and been editing as you go.
David (05:13-05:14)
You’ve lived inside it.
Matt (05:14-06:14)
Technically, it’s called a first draft, but it doesn’t feel like one in your head. It feels like something you’ve thoroughly revised. You think, “This time, my editor is going to faint in wonder and declare it perfect, with nothing left to do.”
Of course, that’s not what happens. There’s always work to be done, but it requires those outside eyes to see it. Editing is an interesting art because you have to approach it knowing there’s no such thing as perfection. You understand there’s no perfect novel you can reach.
You also learn that there comes a point where, even if each draft improves things, further revisions can start to make it worse. For me, diminishing returns typically set in around the fourth or fifth round. After that, you’re getting so far away from your original vision that the work begins to suffer. You see this in the film industry all the time when projects have been meddled with too much.
David (06:14-06:42)
This is a common complaint about electronic music. I was getting a haircut yesterday, listening to super pop EDM, and I thought, “It feels flat. It’s too perfect.” All the notes hit precisely on the fours and the eights, and there’s none of that organic feel.
If we go to a pub here in London tonight and hear a really good live band, there’s a messiness, a chaos that is very human. Something about that feels more alive.
Matt (06:43-08:20)
This is my one optimistic take about AI: it will make humans more human. We will realize we cannot do what AI does, nor do we work like AI. In fact, we will work in the opposite way, becoming more human. I feel the taste will be for weirder stuff.
AI examines everything that has come before. True creativity will become more valuable, meaning the creation of new things that AI cannot do because they don’t yet exist. AI only knows what has existed; humans strive to create what hasn’t. Therefore, the trend of looking backward at past trends and patterns will no longer work because AI can do all of that. We will have to find new, messy, human things.
From a creative standpoint, it’s interesting to consider the fundamentally different nature of AI compared to human evolution. Life famously evolves through mistakes and mutations; that’s how DNA works. In contrast, AI is designed to be a perfectionist. It weeds out all mistakes and halts any equivalent of mutation. Thus, life and technology evolve in fundamentally opposite ways.
I think there’s optimism in recognizing that being human is something quite different, something AI won’t be able to replicate, because we create more beautiful mistakes.
David (08:21-08:33)
Take me forward 20 or 30 years. When we look at the books people are reading, how will they differ in a world saturated with AI compared to the books we read now?
Matt (08:33-10:05)
I have no idea, but the romantic in me will answer this question and say that: For me personally, and for many people, the moment we know a human hasn’t created, felt, or endured the pain being written about, the work somehow becomes less potent or redundant.
When I hear a song, watch a film, see an actor, or read a book, part of its power comes from knowing there’s humanity behind it, an authentic articulation. Like everyone, I have felt a lot of pain in my life. One reason I’m drawn to art is to ease that pain, to feel understood and less alone.
If art exists to make us feel less alone, how can AI, which makes us feel more alone, help with that? We will need other humans more; we will need art more as our world changes in the face of technology.
The romantic in me feels that books made by humans—even if “human-made” becomes a sticker like “organic” or “fair trade”—will always hold value for other humans. Art will always have its place as a human form of expression.
David (10:06-11:24)
When you think of school, what comes to mind? For me, it was lectures, homework, and sitting at a desk. The worst part is, it often doesn’t even work. Fifty-four percent of Americans read below a sixth-grade level—that’s over half the population. We need something new.
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Matt (11:25-11:48)
This is what I hope: that things become out of sheer rarity, perhaps. As our inboxes and the internet become more clogged with artificial content, our eyes and ears will crave the beautiful, authentic, messy chaos even more.
David (11:48-12:09)
I’m so desperate for that. I want to read writing where, when I read it, I feel the voice, the soul, and the personality of the person on the other side. I want to feel that I’m getting you, getting Matt, getting David in an email, and I can feel your presence through those words.
Matt (12:09-12:32)
I think we’ll be more forgiving of mistakes and imperfections. Young people, for instance, have famously felt pressure to look perfect. I believe that pressure will fade away because we will realize we either fail to compete with AI or we simply value what is inherently human within ourselves. I think that’s the only way we can go.
David (12:32-12:43)
What I hope doesn’t happen is for it to become like modern art, where it’s about shock, novelty, and saying, “Look at what I did that no one else has ever done before.”
Matt (12:43-13:31)
Right. Again, AI could almost replicate that. True human feeling, when I talk about creating something new, isn’t about inventing a new form or medium. It’s literally about trying to articulate emotions in a way they haven’t been articulated before, or telling a story in a different way.
Because if you’re not creating something new—if you’re simply replicating things that have already been written—then where is the impulse to write them? You might as well just read what already exists. Creativity is essentially anti-AI from the outset because it’s about creating what isn’t already there.
David (13:32-13:39)
You think about short words and long words. You have a line I like: “Sparrows fly higher than peacocks.”
Matt (13:40-14:46)
I like short words. My favorite is probably “home.” I also like “sky” and “love.” I gravitate towards monosyllables.
In British writing tradition, particularly over the last hundred years, writers are often encouraged to value less common words. I’m quite the opposite. I remember my English teacher at school always saying, “You must never use ‘nice.’ You must never say the word ‘nice.’” I often wondered why. People do use “nice,” and I actually like the word. It can be a lazy word, but “nice” holds many subtleties.
I don’t think any word should be avoided simply for being overused; it’s about how you use it. Simple words are very accessible. A word like “home” or “sky” possesses an infinite, archetypal power because everyone has their own understanding of it.
David (14:47-14:50)
An infinite archetypal power? What do you mean by that?
Matt (14:50-15:23)
If we consider language as something that connects people, then the most simple concepts and words within it are arguably the most powerful. They are the most widely shared and understood.
I’m not sure why, but ending a chapter with a word like “sky” or “home” always leaves a lovely note of universality.
David (15:24-15:29)
What do you love about first drafts, and what frustrates you in the editing process?
Matt (15:30-17:16)
A first draft is inherently new. The impulse to write a novel, by its very definition, is to bring something new into the world. In a first draft, everything is new; it’s new to you. This is the closest you’ll get to being a reader of your own novel because you’re essentially reading from your imagination and dictating what appears.
I like first drafts because they’re never boring to write, unlike editing, which can become monotonous, repetitive, and familiar. When writing a first draft, you’re fishing your own imagination, standing on its banks, waiting to see what emerges.
I’ve written both nonfiction and fiction. The key difference in the first draft is that with nonfiction, you are confined to literally what you know — what you absolutely know. Fiction, however, is much more mysterious. You write what you know, but also what you don’t realize you know. You wait to see what’s there, discovering new aspects of yourself and your imagination.
It’s like entering your own dreams. Nonfiction keeps you in the land of shared, objective reality, but fiction is much “trippier,” leading you into your subconscious.
David (17:16-17:19)
The idea of entering your own dream is crazy. Describe that.
Matt (17:20-18:10)
It doesn’t happen all the time, but you can reach a flow state in the middle of writing a first draft where you’re not consciously thinking about the act of writing. You’re not even aware of what you’re doing; you’re just writing.
When you perform any activity proficiently and often enough, you can reach an unconscious state. With fiction writing, this is often when interesting things happen; it becomes almost automatic and unplanned.
I’m not a planner. I like to know roughly what I’m writing, have a title, a concept, and my characters. But beyond that, I don’t linearly plot out chronological events.
David (18:12-18:16)
When it’s working for you, what do you feel?
Matt (18:20-19:52)
I feel excitement, but also a sense of anxiety and pressure. For me, it’s equivalent to being a reader. I have a story in my mind, and I’m trying to dictate it, experiencing it for the first time. I rush to get it all down before I forget it. I feel a duty to capture the entire book from my head before it disappears.
This is my primary issue with first drafts. While I generally love them, mine tend to be quite rushed. It’s like a six-year-old recounting events from the sandbox: “And then Sammy pushed me over, and this happened, and that happened, and then, and then, and then.” Every sentence practically starts with “and then,” a garbled rush of writing.
I even have “and then” tattooed on my wrist as a reminder of this habit, which I probably shouldn’t do, but life always has an “and then.” It’s my weakness, this constant rushing. The flip side is that I don’t linger on unnecessary details. I get the story down, and then I can embellish during the editing process.
David (19:52-19:59)
It’s implied that the plot, the story, is what pulls you.
Matt (19:59-20:24)
With my writing, I want people to feel something and gain something slightly beyond the narrative. The story serves as the vehicle to convey that feeling. A story is a way of carrying an emotion or a thought, delivering it to someone else in the best possible way I can.
David (20:24-20:28)
Break that down. How would it show up differently in various books for you?
Matt (20:28-22:00)
Even though I’m seen as quite an uplifting, optimistic writer in recent years, my earlier books were quite depressing. For instance, my third book, The Possession of Mr. Cave, which you won’t have read—no one has—is arguably the most depressing book anyone has ever written. Everyone dies in it. There is no hope whatsoever. I would recommend no one read this book.
It wasn’t badly written, but it was so pointless and depressing. I was quite depressed when I was writing it. That’s an example of how you can feel extremely low and have that reflected in your work.
Now, when I’m writing something uplifting, it’s not because I’m feeling truly happy. It’s because I’m wanting to do something more difficult than when I was younger. I want to explore the tricky areas of life and try to find some authentic optimism—not an easy optimism of unicorns and rainbows, but to find something within the reality, depression, and darkness of life. I want to find some light or hope in there.
I believe this is a more useful thing to do with the one life we have: to create something that can give someone a little bit of hope or optimism.
David (22:01-22:10)
We’re talking about what pulls you as a writer. How does a premise pull you—a question being asked, an idea you’re exploring?
Matt (22:11-23:12)
A concept, for me, is everything. If I get a concept that seems simple enough to articulate easily in a sentence, I know I’m not overthinking it. It’s neat. This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s special.
The Midnight Library was definitely one where I thought, “That is a very simple idea.” I had that idea for a long time, and it became simpler once I had the title. For a while, I didn’t have the title; I just had this idea of a library. The original title was The Library of Lost Lives, which would have been too long and a bit pretentious. The Midnight Library condensed it, making it a simpler concept. That’s an example of the right title simplifying the concept.
David (23:13-23:14)
What’s wrong with pretentious?
Matt (23:16-24:53)
There’s nothing wrong with difficulty or complexity. However, when it’s simply meant to impress, with no other purpose than to say, “Aren’t I a clever person? Aren’t I a clever writer?” then what’s the point?
That’s a trait I used to have when I started out. I think writers face two temptations that can lead them astray or prevent them from being themselves. One is the desire to be too popular, too liked, too much of a people-pleaser on the page. The other is the desire to be taken seriously, to be seen as a “proper” writer, to be awards-worthy, to get big reviews.
At various points in my career, I’ve fallen victim to both of those traps, driven by certain insecurities. There’s the commercial trap and then the capital-L literary trap. To write purely, you simply have to find an inner voice immune to both temptations. Someone else reading it might still think, “This is too commercial,” or “This is too literary,” or “This is too pretentious,” but if you, the writer, wrote it from a pure place, that’s what matters.
David (24:53-25:02)
At what point in your career did you feel you could transcend at least the commercial instincts? Did you come out of the gate saying, “I need to make money from this”?
Matt (25:03-26:35)
A simple understanding is that the moment you try to be commercial or research the market, you will fail to be commercial and fail to reach the market. There’s a paradox inherent in that.
I’ve noticed in publishing, and it’s understandable, it exists in every industry, that it becomes quite backward-looking. Trends are dictated by what sold last year. Even what sold last year goes further back in time, as it was acquired and edited two years ago, written three years ago, and conceived four or five, or even a decade, ago.
So, by looking at the market—by going out and looking at bookstore tables—you’re just looking at the past. If you started writing a book now, and it’s good, it will be on those tables in five years. That’s not the current market; that’s the past from where you’ll be. Thinking commercially in that sense, I don’t even know what that means because we don’t know the future of the market.
The only reader you truly know is yourself. You simply have to be honest about the book you would want to read and the book you would want to write. Hopefully, those two things are the same. When that happens, you’ve found something worthwhile.
David (26:36-26:47)
What if I came to you and said, “I am being honest; I think this is good, but it’s just not working. No one is buying what I’m making. Help me.”
Matt (26:48-29:14)
That was my situation. The Midnight Library was my big breakthrough novel, but it was my 20th book overall. I had written many books, been rejected by numerous publishers, and even dropped by a couple of publishers. Despite that, I had to find what I truly wanted to write because I had no other way to approach it.
As someone with ADHD, I can’t write what I don’t genuinely want to write; I get too bored. I can’t just be motivated by a deadline or necessity; I have to enjoy the process. Otherwise, I get too distracted by more interesting things. It simply has to be the most interesting thing for me to write.
Often, being dropped by a publisher was one of the best things for my career. It happened at a tough point in my life. We had just had our first child, had no money, and were burdened with a lot of debt. This financial pressure might suggest one should write something safe and commercial. However, at that very moment, for some strange reason, I decided to ignore all that.
I wrote my first book that truly reflected my authentic voice. It was a book with elements of science fiction, strange tonally, shifting from comedy to serious, and featuring an alien as a central character. It was called The Humans. It was a very odd book to write at that time. It didn’t fit neatly into the market; it wasn’t pure science fiction, a pure literary book, purely comedy, or purely romantic. It encompassed many different things, making it very much a blend of me and all my influences.
That book became, at that point, certainly in the UK, by far my most successful. Because I had been dropped, I adopted a devil-may-care attitude. I thought, “No one’s probably going to read this anyway, so if I’m writing something, I might as well just write it for myself.” Often, when you get into that mode, and you feel a little bit of nervousness in your stomach about what you’re writing, that’s often when leaning into the nervousness, the anxiety, the self-consciousness, and pushing past it, makes you realize, “This is going to work for me.”
David (29:15-29:33)
With that book, what stood out to me is a recurring theme: the idea that when you write about something disconnected from yourself, that very disconnection grants you the freedom to explore profoundly intimate themes.
Matt (29:33-32:00)
Exactly. That’s a perfect way to put it. The Humans was my most personal book, yet it was also my most fantastical. It was literally about an alien from another planet coming to Earth to destroy humanity. So, it wasn’t my life, not in a literal sense.
However, it exemplified how writing fiction can lead you to discover things about yourself that you didn’t previously know, sometimes in a very literal way. Many people read that book and told me, “Thank you for writing a fable of autism. Thank you for writing a book about what it feels like to be autistic.” I responded, “I haven’t written a book about autism. What are you talking about?”
Years later, after my son, who presented very clearly as autistic, was diagnosed, I went to get diagnosed with ADHD. During that process, the psychiatrist also told me I was autistic. It made me realize that perhaps I was writing about what it feels like to be neurodivergent through this alien in a human body who doesn’t understand human rules. Maybe that’s what I was writing, but I wasn’t aware of it at the time. I thought I was writing a Douglas Adams tribute about an alien coming to Earth.
That’s what I find addictive about creating: that unknown lagoon you sit beside, watching things bubble up. It’s truly tantalizing.
There comes a point in your career where it transitions into a job with contracts, deadlines, advances, expectations, and a readership. Then you start to question if you’re writing for the right reasons. Would I still be a writer if this wasn’t my job, if it was just a hobby? Would I still go away and simply write stories? You never 100% know the honest answer, but I genuinely believe I would.
After The Midnight Library, I experienced a mental health wobble. I gave up alcohol and had therapy for the first time in my life, something I probably should have done 20 years earlier.
David (32:00-32:02)
After the book came out?
Matt (32:02-32:03)
Yes, after the book came out.
David (32:03-32:04)
After it was successful?
Matt (32:06-33:45)
It was successful, but I don’t think my struggles were necessarily due to that, other than the fact that success can bring a sudden guilt if you’re not constantly happy. People might think, “What have you got to worry about?”
However, I had various challenges going on: my dad was battling cancer, my son was ill for a while, and many life stresses converged simultaneously. At the same time, this other great dream was being fulfilled with a big, successful novel. It was simply a lot to process, and it was a suitable time to seek therapy.
I also considered it might be time to step away from writing. I thought I didn’t need to write as a job anymore; I could take a break, just leave it there. So, I spent about six months to a year not writing, but I found I had nowhere to anchor myself or channel my mental energy.
Ultimately, I did end up writing. I wrote a very strange novel called Life Impossible. I felt like I was writing a first novel again because I was genuinely writing it for myself. It wasn’t an outward-facing or reader-centric novel; it was simply me processing things. It served as a form of therapy, a way to order the world that I couldn’t otherwise.
David (33:46-34:01)
When you’re pulled into a story, what adjectives do you feel you embody? Is it curiosity, play, wonder, or something fantastical?
Matt (34:01-34:45)
I like both fantasy and realism, but my safe space, the place I prefer to work, is a recognizable real world where something odd is happening within it.
In the 2000s, I find it increasingly difficult to write about objective reality. While some excel at it, the internet age and our divided society make it hard to agree on a unifying idea of what reality truly is.
David (34:45-34:47)
How would this show up in a novel?
Matt (34:48-36:21)
In a novel, I prefer writing a recognizable reality with a surreal element because it feels more realistic to me now. We all exist in our own reality bubbles, which aren’t necessarily capital-R Reality. It would feel arrogant to write a novel asserting, “This is reality,” or “This is what London or British life is,” because everyone has a different version of that.
When you introduce fantasy, you enter the land of dreams. Dreams are not only safer in that sense, but they are also more revealing and can bring diverse readers together. I believe dreams foster a shared empathy and understanding between people.
The thing I am most proud of in my career is not having a specific reader. When I do a book event, my audience includes men, women, young people, and old people. I don’t have a set demographic. My goal when writing is to reach that level of shared empathy and understanding.
David (36:22-36:28)
How did writing children’s books help you get there?
Matt (36:28-38:10)
Writing children’s books is the purest kind of writing for me. Children are the best readers because they are so close to their imaginations. Of course, when writing for children, there are subjects you cannot and should not address, and you must be aware of that responsibility.
At the same time, there is great freedom. Children are so willing to embrace a daydream. You can set a novel in London, have a unicorn walk down the street, and a child will readily believe in that unicorn. If you did that in an adult novel, you would need an essay on quantum physics to explain its possibility.
I value writing for children and children as readers so much that if I get stuck writing an adult novel, I consider what the children’s story version of it would be. For example, the first draft of my last book, The Midnight Train, was very adult. It was an AI dystopian story that wasn’t working. I asked myself what I could draw from children’s literature. Children’s books often feature magical trains or railways, like The Railway Children, Harry Potter, and The Polar Express. That observation led me towards the train.
David (38:10-38:15)
That’s how things happen in The Polar Express. I love that book.
Matt (38:17-38:41)
There’s something about a child wanting to step on board for a magical adventure and go somewhere. That’s what stories do. The power of a book for a child is immense. It’s why so many people include a children’s classic when they talk about their favorite books, like Winnie the Pooh. The books you read when you’re younger stay with you.
David (38:41-38:42)
What do you love about Winnie the Pooh?
Matt (38:43-40:54)
Winnie the Pooh is a book I loved as a child, and then again at 24. During a breakdown at my parents’ house, when I was agoraphobic and couldn’t leave, I found comfort reading my old children’s books. It felt like the ultimate self-help book.
A.A. Milne had served in the First World War, at the Battle of the Somme. He suffered from what we now call PTSD and was experiencing significant mental trauma. Yet, he wrote what is arguably the most comforting book, along with The House at Pooh Corner and further stories. These books were so comforting and fulfilling.
One reason for this, I believe, is that every character represents an archetype of a different mental state. Using modern language, you can easily assign them mental health characteristics or neurodivergences. Piglet embodies anxiety, Eeyore depression, and Tigger ADHD. Owl displays dyslexia and narcissistic traits, while Pooh, for honey, gets into all sorts of scrapes. Christopher Robin experiences a mass hallucination event in the forest.
I believe Milne, perhaps unconsciously, created the Hundred Acre Wood as his own escape, a world that kept him sane. Often, it’s the most troubled or difficult minds that create the most comforting work. We tend to think tortured geniuses will produce dark, strange pieces, but the impulse is often the opposite: to create a land where one feels safe and comfortable.
David (40:55-41:05)
Tell me more about what writing children’s stories taught you that you then applied to your adult novels.
Matt (41:05-42:13)
What isn’t discussed enough in traditional writing advice is feeling. Feelings are contagious. Very often, what you feel as you write is precisely what the reader experiences when they read.
If you’re genuinely happy and enjoying writing a story, the reader will hopefully feel that joy by the end. This is especially true with children’s books. If you’re writing a silly scene with a rude elf, for example, it won’t resonate if you’re simply meeting a word count rather than genuinely engaging with the material.
You must enjoy what you’re writing; it directly improves the quality. Editing is different, of course, but when you’re creating the core of a scene, you need to feel the emotion you want to convey.
David (42:14-42:23)
Is there room for excruciating agony? Could that actually be a good place to write from, or should you process that emotion before writing?
Matt (42:23-42:50)
Yes, I think so. Consider art. When people stand before “The Scream,” they absorb some of the panic or torment Munch experienced. The same applies to books.
Often, there’s comfort in knowing a character or author experienced something similar to what you’re reading.
David (42:50-42:53)
When you’re writing, do you think about originality?
Matt (42:53-43:40)
I realized early on that many ideas one considers unique have already been explored. There’s a balance in understanding that, in a sense, there are no truly new stories. Archetypes like the hero’s journey appear repeatedly.
What matters are the ways of telling them and the emotions they convey. So, you have to think about originality. For me, it’s an ADHD trait; I simply don’t want to bore myself.
As you write more, finding newness within your own work becomes increasingly difficult, even on a simple level.
David (43:40-43:43)
It’s an originality contest with yourself.
Matt (43:43-45:29)
Yes, you realize how much you’ve written, how many character names you’ve used. You avoid reusing names from other books.
The one type of character I find difficult to write, especially as a narrator, is someone like myself: a middle-aged man. In fact, the first draft of The Midnight Library featured a man named Adam as the main character, not Nora. I nearly gave up on the book because I couldn’t visualize him.
It’s like how you might not truly see yourself after looking in a mirror too long, or how a word loses its meaning when you stare at it. When I’m writing someone who is basically me, two things happen.
First, it stops being a character because it’s just me, and you don’t perceive yourself as a character, but rather a complex state of existence. Second, I became guarded because it felt like writing nonfiction.
By changing the gender, age, and slightly altering the location, it suddenly wasn’t me. Paradoxically, I was then able to infuse more of myself into the character—my experiences with mental illness, feelings of regret and guilt. More of me went into this character as soon as it wasn’t me.
David (45:31-45:42)
You made an interesting point about sales numbers. If we were number two on the bestseller charts, the only book we would think about is the one that’s number one.
Matt (45:43-50:35)
I wrote that before I’d ever been number one, in my 30s. I am very ambitious, and I’ve always felt this in my career: there’s always another level I’m looking up to.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more aware of this ambition and resisted it, sensing a pattern in my career. Before I was published, I believed I’d be happy forever if my name was on a book. I thought that validation would last indefinitely.
Two weeks later, however, something else emerges. You want your book on the tables in bookstores, then in the window. You aspire to the Sunday Times bestseller list, then international recognition. You want a foreign publisher, to appear on their charts, and eventually on the New York Times list—perhaps even at number one. Then you see someone else getting an adaptation, and you want one too. This pursuit is endless.
When you’re plugged into that mindset, there’s always another level. While it’s not entirely useless—it provides drive and hunger—you need more. You need an innate desire to articulate something.
For a while, we often perceive ambition in a crude sense. But when we delve deeper, it’s about something else entirely, not just money or status.
For me, my experience with mental illness and being a troubled teenager played a significant role in shaping my ambition. One of my core incentives to write is the desire to be understood.
If you’re selling a lot of books or have many readers, it provides a different kind of fulfillment. It makes you feel accepted and understood. You realize you’re not the “weirdo” you once thought you was, or if you are, you’ve found other “weirdos” who share similar thoughts.
That’s also part of my ambition. I recall about ten years ago, I was offered more money by a larger UK publisher to write a nonfiction book I wasn’t entirely comfortable with. I declined.
Since then, I’ve been proud to define my career by what I say no to, as much as what I say yes to. I’ve turned down many opportunities, including film adaptations.
This isn’t a selfless or humble act; it’s simply that I don’t get any buzz or satisfaction from doing things that don’t feel authentic to me.
Before writing novels, I had a brief career writing books about marketing and business for a business publisher. I was far from a business person, merely a jobbing writer who had contributed a column to a magazine and written a newsletter for my girlfriend’s PR company. Yet, I was commissioned to write these business books.
It felt utterly pointless and a drag to simply write words for the sake of a paycheck. Of course, I needed the money and don’t resent that period; it taught me valuable lessons about meeting deadlines.
However, my impulse to write what I truly wanted to write grew stronger and stronger.
Now I understand my ambition: it is to be read. I am not one of those writers who claims to write only for themselves. I write to be read, but crucially, to be read and understood as myself.
I don’t see the distinction many people make: “You either write for readers or for yourself.” Instead, I write for readers so they can understand what’s going on inside me. Writing for readers and writing for myself stems from the same impulse.
David (50:37-50:48)
Talk to me about your relationship with the publishing industry itself. You once referenced a Keats poem about standing outside a sweet shop, looking in.
Matt (50:49-53:12)
Pressed against the sweet shop window. I used to study Romantic literature at university and was always drawn to Keats. Even by today’s standards, he would be considered quite posh and upper-middle-class, yet he felt like an outsider. Lord Byron famously looked down on him, calling him ‘piss-a-bed Keats,’ because he wrote about delicate, what Byron perceived as feminine, topics rather than wars and heroes.
Regarding the publishing industry, I struggled for a while to figure out what type of writer I am, because in the UK especially, books are very related to class.
Growing up, I never knew where I fit in. This feeling likely stems from my mother, who was adopted, never knew her parents, and was very class-conscious.
I grew up in a working-class town, yet I was considered quite posh because my mum was a teacher and my dad was an architect. Then you start writing books, enter the publishing industry, and realize you didn’t attend an expensive school or a top university. Suddenly, you feel like you’re at the lower end.
I never truly understood my position. At university, my writing influences included Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot, but my personal inspirations spanned children’s books, Choose Your Own Adventure Stories, John Hughes movies, and Borges.
Borges was definitely an influence. In my early days, having been published by a highbrow publisher for my first three novels, I was self-consciously literary to an extent that I wasn’t truly myself. It took being dropped and metaphorically left on the scrap heap to actually find my voice.
I still wouldn’t say I necessarily belong in any one particular box, but I actually like that feeling now.
David (53:13-53:24)
Let’s end here. Stories are easy. The plot of every book ever: someone is looking for something. In the commercial version, they find it. In the literary version, they don’t. That’s it.
Matt (53:25-54:27)
I think that’s it. There’s a commercial literary version where they find it, perhaps in the next unwritten chapter. I like to demystify the process. Sometimes the difference between literary and commercial is the difference between comfort and discomfort. What’s wrong with comfort? What’s wrong with hope? What’s wrong with a bit of positivity?
It’s interesting how often this idea comes from a certain type of critic: that sentimentality is the worst thing anything can be. I remember a music magazine from the 1980s, which is still going. NME was like the Bible in Britain for bands, and the critics could be very harsh.
David (54:27-54:39)
What sticks out to me about that story is trusting your instinct. It’s like, “I just like the song.” That song has brought me so much joy in my life, and I don’t care what the critics have to say. That probably applies to my art too.
Matt (54:40-55:06)
Exactly. It’s about trusting your feelings, trusting readers, and trusting yourself.
It’s about not needing a real or imaginary gatekeeper’s approval to trust your own opinions. That’s what you need as a writer, and possibly as a human being: the ability to trust yourself.
David (55:07-55:55)
I was talking to a friend the other day, an amazing writer. I mentioned I had just visited the Louvre and didn’t like it that much. He replied, “Seventeenth and eighteenth-century French painting is crap. Nothing good was made there in 200 years.”
I don’t know if he’s right or wrong; he knows a lot about art. He trusts his own taste enough to make such a bold statement, and he can back it up with his knowledge of art history. It’s cool to be so in tune with your own sense of what is good and bad, and not be caught up in what critics or society dictate you should think.
Matt (55:55-56:49)
I tell my son this often because he’ll go on Reddit and figure out the collective opinion. Instead, I ask, “What did you feel when you listened to or read that?” That is your correct response.
I try to remember my actual feelings as I send off my book before anyone else reads it. It’s easy to have your mind swayed by outward views, but you have to trust yourself and be a bit stubborn.
Writers can be difficult people, but that difficulty has a purpose. It’s about protecting yourself, setting boundaries, and having those battles with commercial interests or people pushing you. It’s about saying, “No, I want to do this.”
David (56:50-56:51)
Great to meet you, Matt.
Matt (56:51-56:54)
You too. Thank you. That was a good one.
