People fear to change things because all change involves some loss. It is a kind of death -- and yet without that change, we would be static, not really alive at all.
I change, year by year, little by little, learning new things, trying new things. Revising my opinions based on new evidence, discarding old cares as I see my fears were poorly founded.
With that in mind, I wonder about the idea of the Death Of The Author -- that once a work is done and published, it is out of the author's hands, and any further commentary from the author has only slightly more interpretive weight as anyone else's, like how a child grown into adulthood and out of the house of their parents is no longer under their authority.
Some people hold this opinion to a strong degree, and say that even if the Author can tell someone what they were thinking when they were writing a work, it has no bearing on the interpretation of the text -- that the text stands alone. Any reader of a random old book from an obscure author finds themself doing this, as for example when I pick up a decade-old copy of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Others believe that the text can be interpreted on its own, but that understanding the author's mindset and time period can help to put the book in context -- to see how the author's work reflects or defies the culture of its origin, and thereby illuminate some things that would have been clear to readers of the time and place, but totally obscure now. For example, Lewis Caroll's various Alice stories, which are stuffed full of allusions to the popular culture of Victorian Britain, such as would otherwise be long forgotten.
And most readers these days do not care for such airy notions as the Death of the Author, as they flock to any public statement the author says about their work, because they seek divine authority for a particular interpretation.
Though many writers these days flock to the genre of Fanfiction, and defy any notion that the Author has any authority over new textual interpretations.
As for me, I must believe in the idea that the Author is Dead, not because I write fanfiction, but because of how long I take to complete any of my works. By the time I have finished writing anything, or even halfway through anything, I have changed -- I have learned more, done more, seen more. I am no longer the person who began the work. I no longer have the precise mindset that gave rise to the work. That author is dead, and I am collaborating with them.
The author is dead. Long live the author.