Matt Haig is the author of novels, screenplays, children’s novels and journalism--and now a memoir, Reasons to Stay Alive. From his interview with Kate Kellaway for the Guardian:Why did it take you 15 years to get the courage to write about depression?Visit Matt Haig's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.
I was meant to be writing a blog for the Books Trust, as their writer in residence, about novel writing but ran out of things to say and was starting to repeat myself. So I thought: OK, I’ll write about depression, this thing I had always had inside me and wanted to get out. And I got an incredible response, not because the blog was great but because I’ve noticed when anyone talks honestly about depression, it breeds a warm, sincere response from people. Everybody has a story about depression yet, for decades, we have been silent about it.
Is writing a way out of depression?
Writing is not the way but it helps. In February 2000, I was in the depths of depression. I was 24 and back from Ibiza, living at home in Newark [Nottinghamshire], in my childhood bedroom. I started writing bits and pieces – unreadable, angsty stuff. Articulating what is in your head is therapeutic. Words are a shared thing – depression lends itself to melodrama: you believe you’re going through something no one else has been through. At 31, Abraham Lincoln wrote: “I’m the most miserable person now living.” That is the drama of being a young man. That is the drama of depression.
How did you recover?
I still get bouts of depression but I am a lot better than I was. Staying sane and well is...[read on]
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--Marshal Zeringue