Show me the
aspiring author who hasn’t, at some point in the writing of that first novel,
imagined it being instantly recognized by the critics and selling like hotcakes
with the general public. I don’t believe such an author exists.
The fantasy
is as universal as it is elusive. The author who writes the occasional first-book
best seller is like the guy on unemployment who wins the lottery. Sure, it in
fact can be done, but the odds are beyond astronomical — Fifty Shades of Grey notwithstanding.
Then there
are the authors (think Harper Lee, Ralph Ellison and Margaret Mitchell) whose
first novels were terrific and are still read today, but who never wrote
anything of consequence afterwards. I have a little theory about that, and it
begins by imagining that To Kill a
Mockingbird, Invisible Man, and Gone
With the Wind weren’t their first novels, but rather their third.
The Path to the Masterpiece
Suppose
they had written their masterpieces after first producing a couple of good but
flawed books, from which they learned a great deal about themselves and the
craft or writing. That’s the curve for most good authors, and I would submit
that it’s a beneficial thing in a number of ways.
For
starters, publishing a flawed book (and nearly every book is flawed) teaches an
author the value of realizing that at some point you have to say, “This is as
good as I can get it. It’s time to let go and move on to the next one.” Like
any artist or craftsman, an author wants to get the work right, but right is a
relative term. Bad Shakespeare is still better than almost anybody else’s best.
Having a
sense of perspective is essential to avoiding writer’s block and demented
perfectionism. When your first book is a hugely successful masterpiece, you
probably feel (I’ve never had the pleasure myself) that the second one has to
be at least as good, which can be setting the bar too high. If the third book
is the masterpiece, you know there are two others out there that were worse,
and that knowledge is likely to make the writing of book number four a lot less
daunting.
Working on a Series
I write
mystery novels, which by definition aren’t going to be masterpieces, but I see
some of these factors at work. The first book in my Quill Gordon series, The McHenry Inheritance, was flawed, and
I probably see the flaws more than most. But it told a pretty good story in a
brisk fashion, and I felt it accomplished four things a first book in a series
has to do: Establish a character, a premise, a tone, and a style.
Doing just
that much wore me out, but showing myself I could do those things freed me to
concentrate on other elements of fiction in the second book, Wash Her Guilt Away. In it I tried to
focus on improving three things: character development, dialogue, and
atmosphere. Some of the feedback I’m getting suggests I met with some success.
In the
third book (still untitled), which I’ve just begun to write, my three goals
are: Create a more intricate plot, create a stronger sense of the community in
which the action occurs, and create more of a backstory for my protagonist. If
nothing sidetracks the effort, the book should be out in the second half of
next year, and we’ll see how I did. The way I look at it, every book I write
should be better than the one before. Until I write one that isn’t.
