I am a strong believer of writing what you want to write. I'm sure I've said this before many posts ago, but it is still true. When I think of strong world building and believable characters, I think vaguely of the worlds, books and characters that I fall in love with over and over again. Fantasy is an interesting genre. You can't really call anything yours in this world, not unless you've created something that hasn't been done. I'm a person who instantly recognizes a repeat, whether it be in a world or in a character. Repeats annoy a lot of people, but I'm strangely indifferent about it. There is always a redeemable quality in the book, something that is strangely familiar, but twisted in a different way to make it different and new. I read a new book by a favorite author of mine that unsettled me. It is a trilogy, (I think, I'm not sure if there will be a fourth book yet.) But anyway, I read the first two books back to back to refresh my memory for the third, which is what I usually do, but this time it felt weird. After I finished the second book it felt like I had just finished the first. The plot, the dialogue, everything seemed so similar it left a bad taste in my mouth. I brushed it off hoping the third would redeem the other two, but I was wrong. If you put all three books together, they would be the same. You could take the first half of the first book, the middle of the second book, and the ending of the third and it would seem like you were reading one solid book. This unsettles me in so many ways. First and foremost because I consider this person to be one of my very favorite authors, and second because when I think about what kind of writer I want to be, she has always popped into my mind. I've said before that authors very rarely stray from what they know how to write, which isn't always a bad thing. Most authors know how to twist a story without straying from what they know. This is an extremely difficult thing to do, and very often it ends up being bad and unreadable. What makes the difference is knowing your characters and your world to the very bone. Knowing the way it breathes, knowing every small detail. A lot of people say that process isn't necessary to write a good book, but I don't agree. Personally, I cannot write a book if I don't know how my character would react to a minor issue. I cannot write a book if I do not know the origins of my world, how it started, how it is now. How it will be twenty years from now. This is a personal preference and is not for everyone. I mean shit, books have been written on even less information than a simple description.
But I almost feel like something has been taken away from me after re-reading those books. Don't get me wrong, I still love the author. Her first series of books are still outstanding in my eyes, but it makes me realize a few things about the writing world. One of which is to always try to stretch the borders of what you know. Don't become an expert in one thing, become an expert in plenty of things. What is most important is to write what you love, not what you know.