Literary Rock Stars: What can we learn? 6 Lessons

Literary Rock Stars: What can we learn? 6 Lessons

Voice, sovereignty, and the courage to become yourself are unmistakably a necessity. It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll, after all.

Helen Higgins

Oct 19, 2026

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Author’s note:

There are a plethora of incredible writers that I could have chosen to discuss and use as examples here. I don’t intend offence with any of these choices. I am simply using them as examples. I am also aware that some writers here may be scrutinised for their personal lives or long-standing beliefs. Again, this was not chosen deliberately, and I urge you to separate the art from the artist.

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I used to think literary rock stars were simply writers with enormous audiences.

It seemed like a reasonable assumption. Surely the most influential writers were the ones with the biggest readerships, the bestselling books, the sold-out events, and the longest queues at signing tables? Success and significance, on the surface, appeared to be the same thing. Over time, though, I’ve become less convinced.

There are countless talented writers in the world. I've encountered some extraordinarily talented writers on this platform. They construct beautiful sentences, and they’re exceptional researchers. Others can build an argument with such precision that it’s difficult to find fault with it; I feel it slice into my psyche like a surgeon’s scalpel.

Very few writers become unforgettable, though.

The writers who stay with us tend to possess something else entirely: a voice. Not style.

Voice

. That distinction matters because style can be copied. Voice can’t be.

People imitate the fragmented observations of Joan Didion, the wild energy of Hunter S. Thompson, the poetic intensity of Patti Smith, and the philosophical tenderness of Nick Cave, but what they can’t imitate is the perspective underneath it all.

Voice isn’t a collection of writing techniques. Anyone can learn a technique; trust me, I’ve taught creative writing and continue to teach English. Instead, voice is born out of a way of seeing.

That is why certain writers become cultural landmarks while others remain merely talented.

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Take Patti Smith. Reading her work often feels like encountering someone who refuses to separate art from life. Music, memory, poetry, love, grief, New York, devotion, rebellion… all of it exists within the same emotional landscape. You leave her work having spent time inside a very particular consciousness.

Lesson 1:

Don’t just write like Patti Smith. Care deeply enough about something that your interests begin to form their own ecosystem.

Joan Didion teaches a different lesson entirely. Her gift was observation. She noticed details that other writers walked past. She understood the tension between appearance and reality, and she rarely rushed to resolve contradictions simply to make readers comfortable. Alan Bennett did the same thing in his own way, bringing the mundane into contact with the absurd by noticing the details other people overlooked. He would name a brand or linger over something seemingly insignificant.

I’ll always remember Bennett’s description of a small packet of cocktail sticks that his shy, introverted mother kept in a cupboard, hoping she might one day use them for a dinner party. He described the plastic packaging and the wooden points in such detail that the objects stayed with me. Later, when he wrote about clearing out his mother’s house after her death, he returned to those same cocktail sticks. They were still there, unopened.

Lesson 2:

Many writers strive to become authoritative. Didion and Bennett became attentive. Readers trusted them because they looked carefully before speaking, and, in describing those details, those worlds became relatable.

Irvine Welsh takes this a step further. His voice isn’t simply a matter of what he observes, but its the literal language through which his characters experience the world. In his work, dialect isn’t something to be tidied away for the benefit of the reader. It’s the substance of the experience itself: its rhythms, its humour, its ugliness, and its beautiful tenderness. Translating that world into a more conventional literary register would lose something essential about it. In doing so, Welsh proves that voice isn’t just a worldview. It’s also a linguistic identity.

Lesson 3:

Don’t translate yourself into someone else’s idea of what a writer should sound like. Welsh demonstrates that a voice can be unmistakable precisely because it refuses to make itself more comfortable for its audience.

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Nick Cave offers another variation on the same idea. For decades, he has returned to many of the same questions: faith, creativity, grief, love, mortality, and meaning. None of these subjects is unique, and every human being encounters them eventually. The old adage that everything is about sex or death in art feels made for Cave. What makes him distinctive, though, is his willingness to continue examining them without embarrassment.

Lesson 4:

Cave hasn't abandoned his driving questions because they've become unfashionable. He keeps returning to them because they remain important to him. His audience follows because it recognises the territory, not because he's constantly searching for new ground.

Not everyone likes Hunter S. Thompson, but perhaps no writer demonstrates the power of an unmistakable perspective more clearly. Popularity and critical approval become almost beside the point when nobody could mistake your work for somebody else's.

Lesson 5:

Thompson’s voice emerged from a worldview so singular that anyone attempting imitation only ever captures the surface. People can borrow the style. They can’t borrow the perspective that produced it.

Leonard Cohen offers another lesson, and one that I think is possibly one of the most important. His voice was never dependent on volume, provocation or the performance of certainty. He could write about sex and spirituality, or desire and devotion, and it came with a tenderness that never quite dispensed with irony. His work occupied a territory that was recognisably entirely his own, even when he was writing about experiences as familiar as heartbreak or the search for meaning. It made him relatable, but it also made him unique. What makes Cohen interesting is that he never seemed particularly concerned with competing for attention because he knew that a voice doesn’t need to shout to be heard, provided it has something unmistakable to say.

Lesson 6:

You don’t have to become louder, more controversial or more entertaining to distinguish yourself from other writers. You have to become

more yourself

. The temptation to imitate what attracts attention is considerable, particularly when you’re actively trying to build an audience, but the qualities that make your work distinctive are often the very ones you’re tempted to edit out.

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This is something so many aspiring writers misunderstand; they imagine literary rock stars are universally admired. In fact, many are divisive.

Distinctiveness inevitably creates friction. Some readers will find your work fascinating, but others will find it irritating. A few will describe your voice as insightful, but there will be calls that it’s repetitive, too. Some will love your intensity, and others will wish you would simplify yourself. However, a writer trying to please everybody usually ends up sounding remarkably similar to everybody else.

Literary rock stars understand that popularity and recognisability aren’t the same thing, so they’re not trying to create work that appeals to everyone. That requires a form of sovereignty, though.

Sovereignty isn’t main character energy, although the two are often confused. Main character energy places the self at the centre of the world, whereas sovereignty places the self at the centre of its own life. One seeks attention whereas the other accepts responsibility. One depends upon being perceived whilst the other depends upon self-possession.

A sovereign writer doesn’t ask permission to be interested in what fascinates them. Instead, they keep returning to the same questions, themes, obsessions, and curiosities, and, over time, those recurring interests become a body of work.

The body of work becomes a voice.

I suspect a voice isn't something we find. It's something we accumulate over years of trusting our curiosity rather than chasing approval. It emerges when we stop asking what people want us to write about and start paying attention to what we can't stop thinking about.

This is why the writers we remember are rarely trying to become literary rock stars in the first place. They’re simply trying to become more themselves. Everything else flows and follows from there.

The lessons aren’t about how to gain an audience, build a platform, or go viral. If that’s what you were hoping for, my apologies, but you won’t find those here. I have no interest in those things, and there are plenty of content creators who will give you those tips. Following that kind of advice means those things may well happen, but then again, they may not. No one can predict it for certain.

The more interesting challenge is becoming unmistakable.

Develop your interests.

Cultivate your obsessions.

Trust the questions that you continue returning to.

Pay attention to the subjects that refuse to leave you alone.

Most importantly, stop measuring your voice against somebody else’s.

The literary rock stars were never copies. They were, and continue to be, originals.

The old image of rock-star rebellion involved smashed hotel rooms, broken guitars and televisions thrown out of windows, but today, as we’re continually shaped by algorithms, trends and personal branding, I’d argue the more revolutionary act is to refuse to turn yourself into a product.

Develop a genuine voice. Follow your curiosity. Practise sovereignty over the work you make.

There may be nothing more memorable than becoming unmistakably yourself.

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