Do writers have to be 'relatable'?

In 2018, I remember being in a marketing meeting about the second book I was about to release.

“We have to make it relatable,” someone said, in a big boardroom. “I think it would be great if it can appeal to as many people as possible.”

The thing is: I knew instinctively that the premise wasn’t actually very relatable. Not the specific story I wanted to tell at the time, anyway. The book was called The Multi-Hyphen Method all about working in a different way; being a multi-hyphenate creator and having multiple income streams.

Most people I knew at the time wanted to have one stable job. I didn’t think the majority of people who stepped into a bookshop would necessarily want to read about becoming a multi-hyphenate at work—and I never expected or assumed that. I specifically wrote the book with a small group of readers in mind who might like it. The idea of trying to make it more ‘relatable’ to an imagined audience felt wrong. The truth was: it probably wouldn’t relate to most people.

But, of course, publishing is a business, and you don’t want to tell your team that your book idea is too niche. You want to sell it. So, you try your best to broaden it out.

When the book came out I felt the pressure to make it relatable at every turn. At events, I wouldn’t show up as me—instead I felt like a saleswoman trying to make the book’s narrative digestible for others. Instead of simply talking through my book, I was trying to second-guess what would be the most ‘relatable’ soundbite to the audience. It felt bizarre, unnatural, and to be honest, kind of exhausting.

Only later did I hear the phrase: "If you try to make something appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one," which is usually attributed to David Ogilvy.

It might be partly down to my burnout episode, or just getting older (I was still only in my twenties when The Multi-Hyphen Method came out) but I don’t have the energy to try and make my work ‘appeal’ to people. I just do it.

A writer friend of mine recently said it drives her mad how much people preface and over-apologise these days. Instead of simply stating what they mean, they start sentences with “sorry if this doesn’t relate to your situation…”

Personally, I don’t expect authors to always be relatable. I just read a piece by the author Coco Mellors in this month’s print version of ELLE about her love of fashion and designer clothes—how authors are often expected to dress ‘normally’ in order to give an air of being a serious literary person. If Coco wants to wear high heels and shimmering gold dresses (and have a very cool name like Coco) this surely doesn’t have any bearing on the writing she produces. Her aspirational lifestyle in New York is not very relatable, but so what?

Another author I love sold out the London Palladium and Sydney Opera House like a rock star. I’ve overheard people talk about how “relatable” she is. She too wears Reformation dresses and drinks white wine and goes to Wilderness Festival. The thing is… she’s not relatable though!! Because she’s headlining the Palladium and is a genius!

As a reader, I don’t open a book expecting it to mirror my own experiences—I read because I want to hear someone else’s story. What makes a good memoir, to me, is that it is so far away from my own life. I get to step into someone else’s reality for a bit, and hopefully greet it with empathy and curiosity. I don’t need a book to promise it will change my life. I just want to read it.

I was lucky enough to read a proof copy of Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir All The Way To The River earlier this year (it’s out this week!) I read it in two days and gobbled it up, ignoring my poor husband—I was enthralled by its pages and I was in awe of Gilbert’s ability to tell an extremely powerful, pacy story. It is so far away from Eat Pray Love, and I love the boldness of this. She is an author at the top of her game, she knows what she’s doing, she’s in complete control. It had the hallmarks of all the best memoirs: laugh-out-loud funny, sad, entertaining, and most of all: truthful.

Did I relate to it? No! I related to zero of it. I’ve never been in a same-sex relationship, I’ve never been addicted to drugs, I’ve never lived in New York, I’ve never dealt with any proper ‘fame’, and I’ve never had to nurse anyone I love dying of an illness. Why would I need to relate, in order to feel deeply moved, inspired, or invigorated by a book?

But as we know, relatability sells. Deep down, I think we relate to the simple things that underpin most works of art: whether it’s someone overcoming hardship, finding love, or searching for themselves. I watched Stans the other day, a documentary Eminem produced about himself and his fans. The ‘Stans’ say they love his music because they relate so strongly to him—his struggles, his upbringing, his mental health battles, his lyrics. Relatability is the central theme. And there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s powerful to feel connected to someone else’s story. Writing someone letters can be therapeutic. But I can’t help but wonder if there’s a slippery slope in over-identifying with someone—and how much we are, in fact, projecting onto them. After all, that’s precisely what Eminem’s song Stan is about. The temptation to merge your reality with someone else’s.

(Liz Gilbert once recalled someone stopping her in an airport to say how much they related to Eat Pray Love and shared their favourite part. But the scene they described wasn’t in the book—they had imagined it, slipping their own story into its pages.)

Freud, of course, understood all of this when he came up with his theory of “identification” in 1900— where the individual develops a personality through imitation and idolizing someone. In my twenties, I related to the work of many authors so closely that they helped me identify myself. I wrote their quotes in my journals, went to their events, framed posters of their books. Then, they would change tact, write about things I didn’t love as much, became different people, and I no longer identified with them. This can lead to feeling almost ‘let down’ by the author, a feeling of having to untangle yourself. I decided I didn’t want to put pressure on the writers I loved anymore. I also didn’t want to feel so passive—it wasn’t their job to help me make sense of my life. I stopped needing them to pass the relatability test.

Maybe one day we can stop promising the reader anything at all—and instead offer a book, or any work of art, simply as a gift.