Timely versus timeless

What kind of legacy do I want my work to leave? I’ve been listening to authors who actually think while writing about how their work will be received in 100 years–well after their own death. But there are other authors who focus on communicating with the people here and now in this moment of history. I don’t expect any of the LitRPG or isekai novels I read will be read in 100 years.

Timely writing and timeless writing are conflicting high-order features built from lower-order components. Do you mention specific cultural references? Is your language contemporary? Are your themes topical? What technology do you reference? Is your structure more Netflix, or hero’s journey?

And it’s not that timely writing disappears forever. The context that made The Handmaid’s Tale relevant in 1985 came back forty years later. And the book 1984 keeps being relevant every time some new form of surveillance is invented. In fact, that might be one way that writing can balance these conflicting features, by creating its own context that keeps people returning again and again to the story as a touchstone for an idea.

Timelessness is a bit like the buoyancy of a ship. It keeps it riding above the concerns of the world. Timeliness is the anchor that roots it in a specific time and place.