Why Being “Authentic” Isn’t Enough for Your Writing to Break Through

An unexpected lesson from actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Substack.

Photo by Pixabay.

“I don’t get it,” a writing client told me once. “I’m writing the most authentic stuff I’ve ever created. I’m being completely myself. Why isn’t it connecting with more people?”

I get where he’s coming from.

With AI slop all over the internet, the common advice to new writers out there is: “Be authentic,” or “Be personal” because that’s the kind of writing that AI can’t do.

And yet.

The answer came to me recently as I read Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s recent Substack article about Nirvana.

How to make your authentic self reach more people

“There are a lot of artists who are honestly weird, and there are even a lot of artists who are quite popular,” Gordon-Levitt said. “But it’s a rare gem of an artist who can be both honestly weird AND super popular.”

He compares Nirvana’s cover of another band’s song, called “Oh Me” by Meat Puppets.

Here is the original. And here is Nirvana’s cover.

Gordon-Levitt concludes:

“It’s instantly clear that the vocal…