Well, either, but specifically writing.

Yeah.

I'm always sort of nervous about talking about creative writing processes because people have such strong views.

And I think it's entirely subjective what works for different people.

But I would say, like, for me, I'm at the point now where I'm almost glad I didn't have kind of like formal creative writing training because I feel like everything...

I feel like the key to where my career took off and what made me different was often not following what were established rules.

I break so many, I commit so many sins.

But I don't know if that's something that's aligned with your experience of your readers.

And then first draft revision, working with an editor, how does that go?

Um, well, I've had the same editor for 15 years now.

So I think it really helps to have a good relationship with your ed- editor because then you know them, you know their taste, you know when to listen to them and when to sort of fight your own corner.

Um, and y- y- you know when they're saying something which a general reader would think versus when it's them as a person.

You know what I mean? So y- you know them well enough, know what is their specific taste versus what could be a general point that lots of people would make.

So, um, it's a lot of conversations, a lot of phone conversations, a lot of back and forth.

He, he's a nice guy, my editor, Francis Bicknell.

You said this, that I thought was interesting, about sales numbers: "If we were number two in the bestseller charts, the only book we would ever be thinking about is the one selling more."

Yeah, right.

And I thought, "That must've been such a massive change to go from pre-car to car." But that was, at that time, that was pretty much it.

That was the technological change, and we've had so much.

It feels like every five years, there's some massive new change, and I think part of the sort of, like, mental health epidemic, part of the issues we face is just through the shell shock of, like, this continual barrage of stuff, and I do think a lot of what we call progress is actually regress from one side of things, in the side that it takes us further from nature, from, like, being a fellow animal on the planet Earth and looking after the planet.

I feel like everything that we've called human progress, whether it be the Agricultural Revolution, Industrial Revolution, Digital Revolution, has, has taken us more away from being a, the living organism that we are into something that's unnatural, that we're not made to deal with.

Like, even, even the amount of people we know is un- unnatural.

Like, I don't know if you've ever heard of Dunbar's number, but there's a professor, Roger Dunbar at Oxford University, who a good few decades ago came up with Dunbar's number.

Did you go to a cliff edge?

I don't suppose you wanted to do that.

Which I didn't, I wasn't equipped for, but I was in a sort of two states of mind because obviously when you're a struggling writer you just wanna be a bestseller, and this book was a bestseller, and then you wanna be sort of have readers and you have readers, but it wasn't in the way that I planned.

And in fact, when I was writing Reasons to Stay Alive, I got paid a lot less money to write that than if I'd have turned it into a novel, about a quarter of money.

But I always felt that it had to be me writing it, 'cause I remember when I was depressed, I just really craved hearing stories from real people who'd survived.

Because if you go back 20 years, the mental health conversation like pre the sort of Stephen Fry documentaries didn't really exist in any meaningful way.

So when you were hearing about depression, your mind was drawn to the suicides, it was drawn to Kurt Cobain or Sylvia Plath or whatever because the famous figures you knew with depression, you associated with that, with tragedy.

Whereas now that's very different and I'm pleased to have been a tiny part of that sort of conversation in terms of like talking about depression as something you live with rather than die from.

Find a Dee Dee's Discount store near you and go check it out today.

Are you encouraging readers to write their own alternate endings now to change our lives while we still can?

I think so.

I think-- Well, you know, a novel isn't a self-help book.

It's not there as an instruction manual to tell people how to live.

A, a novel's job, such as it can be, is to help us think and sort of reflect and explore things.

And this book, in a way, is saying something quite different to The Midnight Library.

The Midnight Library, I suppose, was very much about acceptance.

trauma.What drives you?

Where did the idea for this one come from?

This happened very slowly.

Like, originally, it wasn't The Midnight Anything.

It was a book called The Memory Thief, and it was called The Yesterday Train, then it was The Midnight Train, and I realised I was having this conversation.

But, yeah, a lot of life stuff was going on while I was writing this.

My dad, who's recovered now, he was going through cancer treatment.

My son was ill for a while.

Okay, what was it that resonated? Why do you love it still?

Now, of course, it can't be okay, but we have to appreciate the moment and think about the future and remember the past, but don't wallow in the past and don't think, oh, well, if this happens…

And I think it's increasingly important.

I think it's no coincidence that we have everyone, you know, the whole world and his wife seems to be yabbering on about mindfulness and living in the moment.

And there's a whole genres of books around it.

Me and you have contributed to this as well and stuff.

But I think the reason is that it's suddenly risen up in recent years is because A lot of the world is designed to take us away from that.

So we need these continual reminders because it's very easy to get sucked into the sort of treadmill of needing more X, Y, Z.

Does that make sense?

Where did the idea for this one come from?

This happened very slowly.

Like, originally, it wasn't The Midnight Anything.

It was a book called The Memory Thief, and it was called The Yesterday Train, then it was The Midnight Train, and I realised I was having this conversation.

But, yeah, a lot of life stuff was going on while I was writing this.

My dad, who's recovered now, he was going through cancer treatment.

My son was ill for a while.

Okay, what was it that resonated? Why do you love it still?

Kept going

... did not stop.

It kept going.

It, uh, sort of drained my whole system.

Um, I couldn't keep food down.

I was just... everything was flooding in.

The sort of summer of sleep deprivation, the sort of low-level depression I'd had since a teenager, and all the sort of mental health issues I hadn't been aware of or artic-articulating to myself just sort of, like, burst up.

[laughs]

H- um, have you ever had a mentor or someone that you would consider a mentor?

I mean, in my life, in terms...

I mean, the person who first gave me confidence in writing was an English teacher called Mrs. Kurzweil at my secondary school.

As I s- uh, as I said in the other podcast, I, um, was branded s- uh, special needs at school in some subjects, and I lacked self-esteem, and I was autistic without knowing it, and, um, I had a lot of stuff going on and wasn't The most well-behaved or academic teenager.

But I had this one teacher, Mrs. Kurzweil, who kind of gave me faith in myself, and I dared show her some creative writing I'd done and things like that.

So I'd say her early on.

And then in terms of other writers, um, when I started to write my first novel, I sent it to Jeanette Winterson, and she, uh-- 'cause I'd had some contact with her as a journalist and freelance journalist, and she was the one writer I vaguely knew.

When it comes to writing, Matt, would you say you're a risk-taker?

Mm-hmm.

Um, so for me, uh, like, time is everything.

Like, I was convinced at the age of 24 I would not live to be 25 years old, and my depression was very convincing and very sure of itself that, you know, I, I wouldn't last long.

So time for me was the enemy of, uh, depression 'cause time disproved depression.

You hold on long enough, and then, um, you know, uh, depression loses some of its authority because you're literally disproving what depression is.

So for me, time and change, you know, is everything, and it's something I, I always want to get across to people, especially when I'm writing about mental health.

Um, the hardest question I ever had at an event like with this was someone, and it was about one of my, uh, nonfiction books called Reasons to Stay Alive, and the question was, "You had a partner.

Have you felt it?

So, so just introduce us to, to, to your main cast and y- and the main characters that we follow through this.

Well, the main character is called Wilbur Bud.

Um, he had a quite impoverished background in Sheffield, um, in the '40s and '50s, and we meet him again as an old man in his 80s on, um, on his last day on Earth, and, um, in between, he falls in love with a woman called Maggie, Maggie Shaw.

And, um, a lot of the book is actually, well, quite a bit of the book is set on their honeymoon in Venice.

And, um, he's outwardly a very successful-Man.

He's got a chain of bookshops, uh, so he's a sort of a recognized business person.

He's been a guest on Dragon's Den.

... you know, with some grown-up ideas, but do you think your heritage as someone who wrote for kids is in there?

Can you give us a synopsis of The Midnight Train?

I will do my best.

Yes.

The Midnight Train is about a, um...

No. It's about a man called Wilbur Bud, who, um, at the end of his life, he, uh, finds himself on a train station and, um, a train arrives to take him back through the entirety of his existence, from birth right the way through to his mid-80s when he dies.

And, um, he's got...

A little bit similar to the protagonist of, um, The Midnight Library, he's got a lot of regrets in his life.

Mm-hmm.

There is.

But, um, yeah, no, I, I...

So I, I think 'cause I'm, I'm quite an annoying person, and I'm quite sort of like trying to sort of like r- rebel against myself even sometimes.

So I almost am drawn to unfashionable things sometimes, like stubbornly...

Uh, because, because I recognize certainly like when I was a young man and I did a MA in literature, and you're sort of encouraged to think a certain type of thing as literature, and you're s- taught to be suspicious of story, happy endings, cleanings-

Yeah

... yeah.

I mean, he's very different to Wilbur.

Tell us about the day of the arrest.

Oh, dear.

It was in Boots, the chemist, and I was showing off again, um, to a couple of my friends because by this point, and it may have been living in Nottinghamshire, but I'd fooled my foolish teenage brain into thinking I was like a modern-day Robin Hood, because I, I had these little rules.

I didn't at this point steal from, like, small local businesses or...

And I, I a- always gave, I, I stole things I didn't want and just gave to other people and stuff like that.

So I had this silly little fake moral code.

And so anyway, I went in to Boots, and the two items I stole, and I do remember this vividly, was a Crunchie bar and some wet look hair gel.

And what stopped you?

Mm.

And obviously, you know-All of us are at the mercy of our minds and our environments as well, but you, you like to fool yourself, but you're not.

And anyway, I, I had some bad experiences, uh, early on.

I went to, uh, initially, uh, after, uh, I tried to die by suicide, I was sent to a Spanish hospital where I was given this sort of like industrial strength medication, which did not work for me at all, made me worse.

So I, I, I was developing a kind of phobia of help and doctors.

But then I went back, when I was back at my parents house in Nottinghamshire, um, I went to the GP.

I f- I sort of fought through agoraphobia.

Yeah.

Mm

... to face things, and, um, I needed to have a breakdown.

If I hadn't had a break- breakdown was saving me.

Breakdown almost makes me believe in God, 'cause, uh, it was like an act of sort of intervention that had to happen.

Uh, kind of self-intervention maybe.

But I, I'm actually pa- even though I, I'm still kind of got PTSD about, uh, going through a breakdown, 'cause it, it's like hallucinations, it's like vomiting, it's just like pain.

It's, it's like feeling like the sky's falling in, m- running out of supermarkets and shopping centers, hiding under tables.

Ted Hughes, yeah.

[laughs]

A little bit, um, ambitious.

But, uh, yeah, it was accidental in the sense that I was a novelist.

I saw myself as a novelist.

Then there was a charity in the UK, a very good charity called BookTrust, and I was their writer in residence for a while, which basically meant I had to write a blog once a week.

And so I started with your basic blogs about being a writer, writing tips, and I was, I was starting to bore myself about three months in, uh, repeating myself over and over.

So...

Mm-hmm.

If someone is listening right now, is struggling, but feels like they can't tell anyone, what would you want him or her to hear?

Basically, um, the thing to remember is that you're not always going to feel exactly this way, and that, um, you are, your, your, your feelings are gonna change.

You are going to change.

Um, if you have anyone to speak to, obviously that helps.

Um, you know, the way out is very rarely through yourself.

You know, it's through other people.

So get help.

Mm.