Mark Manson’s uncomfortable truth: Road to new book felt like everything was f****d
Mark Manson was catapulted to fame overnight for putting the F-word on books. But the rock star of writers had to accept a few hard truths in order to deliver his highly anticipated follow-up.
Books
Don't miss out on the headlines from Books. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Mark Manson knows everything is f****d, but how do we fix it?
We don’t, he says. “It’s the desire to fix it that’s making it so f****d.”
When we spoke, it was a few days before his new book Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope saw the light of day.
In it he questions what makes life worth living while picking apart what people assume they need to make life worthwhile.
“It’s a critical look at how our instinctual desire to run away from discomfort or conflict actually ends up making things worse,” he said.
To write it, Manson had to get uncomfortable and face a few hard truths of his own.
This book is his first follow up to his major success The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck and he admitted he didn’t think his round two would be good enough.
In order to write A Book About Hope Manson had to set aside his pride and learn to write without the hunger to be a best-selling author.
He already had that in the bag, so what was next? His books and advice blog had helped millions, but he needed some help himself.
“The first book really messed with me. I didn’t expect it to be nearly this successful. I was a young author when I wrote it and in my mind, I was going to have a long career. I had all these long-term goals and The Subtle Art smashed those in two months so the expectations I had for my entire career were gone. That is disorientating enough, and I was (also) thinking ‘oh crap, how do I follow this up?’.”
“I realised that nothing will be as commercially successful, that’s a downer too. I had six months of despair and feeling lost. This is supposed to be the best moment of my life, but I didn’t have anything to hope for,” he said.
Eventually he accepted the highest point in his career was never meant to last and his hope for the future became the driver for Everything is F*cked.
“There’s a weird paradox we all have to live, with being content and satisfied but also striving for something greater. We need both yet they’re contradictory, that’s the sick thing about our minds.”
Manson is not a therapist or even close to a medical professional.
He’s the first to admit he’s not an expert on life either.
Instead he considers himself as a translator, who takes old knowledge and explains it in a way that is accessible to a modern audience.
“99 per cent of the ideas I didn’t come up with, a lot of it comes from academic research that is readily available but it’s not like there’s some professor somewhere that I’m ripping off, I reference them all,” he said.
Growing up in Texas, Manson had big dreams of being a rock star.
He played guitar furiously since he was 10 and got as far as music school before he ditched it to become a writer.
As a kid he found comfort in heavy metal and video games, two of his biggest loves still in his thirties.
Like many creatives, he wasn’t the biggest fan of his adolescence.
“I was a very lonely growing up in Texas. People there worship two things, Jesus and football, I didn’t like either of them, so it was pretty dark and lonely.”
The idol who resonated with angsty teenage Manson the most was funnily enough Marilyn Manson, who shook up music as the God of F**k in a similar way he would shake up books as the man who got F**k on book covers. Now the word is everywhere in bookstores and airport stands, but Manson will always be the man who put it there.
“I have mixed feelings about it. It would be nice if fewer people put it in their titles. When Subtle Art came out, I had serious talks with the publisher about using f**k in the title. Back then it was seen as a huge risk and a lot of really smart people thought it would not pay off,” he said.
Now he feels f**k on books has been done to death and he’s ready to move onto something else, holding firm that Subtle Art will never become a series.
“What I resent is I don’t want to be pegged as the f**k guy my whole career. There is going to be a day when I step away from the brand. It’s important to be in a position to do that.”
Manson’s next big dream is to write a novel — possibly fantasy or sci-fi.
At home he enjoys the comfort of mega-fame without the need to be recognised. He’s still able to live a normal life in New York with his wife. His name is famous, but his face is not and he likes it that way.
While he has doubts about his future, he doesn’t appear to be running out of steam as a writer at all.
“Last year is the busiest I’ve had, and it felt great. I need some degree of stress and challenge in my life. There’s a Goldilocks level of anxiety that makes me a happy person,” he said.
His diary in 2019 is jam-packed with speaking tours and he’s locked in to co-write actor Will Smith’s book. That probably wouldn’t have happened if he wasn’t the f**k guy.
At a time when Manson is finding his way out of his own box, teaming up with Smith seems logical. He too was boxed early in his acting career as The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
But with Manson’s words, comes responsibility. His inbox is swimming with emails from people who think he has the answers for all their problems. He doesn’t.
“I feel weird about it … Very early in my career I did the classic self-help thing, put on a hat and pretended I knew everything. That quickly made everything awful. I constantly felt pressured to live up to everything I was saying. I realised that I was struggling with the exact same things my readers were so why don’t I just be honest about that.
“(Now) I specialise in ‘mild-life’ problems. it’s my opinion, my experience but it’s not gospel.”
Mark Manson’s Everything Is F**ked: A Book About Hope is out now via Harper Collins. The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F**k is also available at all major bookstores. He also writes regularly on his blog MarkManson.net.
Originally published as Mark Manson’s uncomfortable truth: Road to new book felt like everything was f****d
‘What happened? Who is guilty?’
Four girls disappear from a school camp and a male teacher goes after them. The girls return – but the man does not. Wouldn’t you be asking hard questions, writes Nikki Gemmell.
‘She had shot her husband dead’
She has told the stories of a murderous royal mistress, Christian Dior’s Nazi-fighting sister and the real Miss Moneypenny. Now Christine Wells has Jackie Kennedy in her lens.