Please I beg of you if you want to be a published author read one effing book published in the last 5 years. Just start with one. I’m BEGGING. — Sarah Nicolas on Twitter
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Last week a YA author posted the above tweet, but the reaction to it was quite unexpectedly divisive. While quite a few authors completely agreed with her, there were just as many who acted as if she’d took the lord’s name in vain or something similar.
To be honest, I totally get what she means by it, but it’s not something I can easily explain in just a few words. Personally, I’ll admit to reading a lot of books that have been published within the last five years, and hardly any that are older than that. It’s just my tastes, I guess? I did a ton of reading of the classics when I was younger; I was a middling Asimov fan and had a brief obsession with Vonnegut, but I kind of grew out of that in the mid-90s when I started reading more recent titles.
For me, it was never about trying to stay on top of whatever happened to be popular at the time. Even then I understood that it would no longer be hip by the time I got my own manuscript out there. It was more about checking out different voices and styles. Each writer has their own way of using and even subverting trusted ideas and tropes to make them unique to their own style. It’s informed not just by their imagination but often by their culture.
Sure, I’ll occasionally pick up an old book now and again. I still have to get through the last few books of Kate Elliott’s Crown of Stars series, nearly all the CJ Cherryh Union-Alliance books, reread Mary Gentle’s Ash books, and all those Robotech tie-ins. I’ve been wanting to revisit the Transmetropolitan trades, and I’m about to get caught up with John Allison’s Giant Days trades as well. So many books, so little time!
But back to that tweet. I mean, I can understand how some might have been upset by it (though to the point of trolling harassment is just a titch overboard, mind you), but let’s be honest: there really is a lot more out there nowadays. A LOT more, thanks to indie and self-publishing, e-books, anthologies, Kickstarter-funded publications, and even concerted efforts by big name publishers to introduce new voices.
If you want to write similar to Tolkien or Asimov or even George RR Martin or Stephen King, by all means, go for it. If that’s the style you’re best at, that’s cool. But this tweet isn’t about forcing you out of that style — this is suggesting that perhaps you should check out more recent books written in a similar style. Perhaps you’ll see that the genre has evolved in ways you hadn’t expected, giving you an even wider playing field for your created universe.
Welcome to Bridgetown 