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The new health kick is progressing well. Another 6km run this morning and even though we’re all a little under the weather at the moment it wasn’t too arduous (though I was pretty tired by the end of the day). I listened to Matt Haig’s “The Midnight Library” on audiobook, which I have mainly downloaded to see how much it crosses over with “Everything Happens For No Reason”. It’s certainly a similar conceit, though coming at the idea from a less overtly comic direction (there are some jokes in there, but it’s about a depressed woman committing suicide, who then gets to see the lives she could have led). Ultimately it’s annoying similar, though no one has been falling over themselves to publish my version. I would like to visit the alternate universe where the people who made the decision about the Channel 4 version weren’t total arsewipes and my show was already in its second series and I’d written the novel. But even in infinite universes some things will remain constant and TV executives will naturally have antipathy towards my ideas.
It’s early days in the Midnight Library. I suspect that Nora will visit all the lives she regrets not living and discover they weren’t that good and that she should make the best of the one she is in (but there might be some twists in it). The problem that I encountered with the infinite universe idea is that just selecting one version of a different life isn’t really representative (and I think Matt is smart enough to include this and may well have). Sure you may be able to find an infinite number of universes where you married the guy you left, but they wouldn’t all be the same. By definitions some might be worse than your current life, but others might be better. In truth I am not sure how much our life is guided by our own choices anyway. A bit, for sure. But other people’s choices and random events have a huge influence too. Not only huge things like someone dropping a nuclear bomb on your city or genocide, but the random minor actions of complete strangers that impact on you down the line. Say a tourist stops someone to ask for directions, which delays someone and someone else gets the cab they were about to get and then the next cab takes a wrong turn and then a million incidents down the line, you fail to meet your potential future partner, or get knocked off your bike or something even more minor that then impacts on everyone else.
In terms of making compelling fiction these distinctions are boring and get in the way. But I don’t think we are quite the masters of our destiny. Our decisions and choices are impacted by everything else, so changing our mind about something doesn’t mean things will be better or worse. Sometimes they will be, sometimes they won’t. I’m also suspicious of stuff (and I’m only just at the beginning of the Midnight Library so this might well not be the case here) where you realise your own life was the best it could be anyway. Because clearly it could always be better and you could always be happier. Whether striving for more happiness is worth it is another question. I am really pleased with the way the dice have fallen in my own life, but accept that I might be just as happy or even happier with a totally different set of results. There’s no way of knowing. And it’s quite hard to quantify. I just think we’re more at the mercy of outside forces than we are from our own decisions. And given every action has infinite outcomes then every decision has the potential to be brilliant or awful or have totally unforeseen circumstances for you and for everyone else in the world.
It’s interesting stuff to think about. Matt Haig may well have fucked up my own project by getting his published first. Or I might have fucked it by thinking too much about the ultimate logic and thus making it impossible for me to write something that was a satisfying narrative. Or Channel 4 might have fucked it by appointing the only two people who read the script who didn’t seem to love it as the people who made the choice about it.
I can still make it on my own though. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Oh look, turns out is is all down to us after all. And totally not. Because every eventuality occurs.
