Respect the one-hit wonder not for his one hit but for all the days he must have suffered afterward, trying for another.
Sarah Manguso
Respect the one-hit wonder
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‘One-hit wonder’ = going viral in those days.
For those who are well-prepared – with a backlog and plans for the future – that hit is a stepping stone. For the rest, it might be the door to opportunity that closes and locks after a single use.
“Can they do it again?” is the question asked of the debut authors cast into the limelight by a novel which might have taken years to write, followed by the ‘sophomore slump’ when the pressure becomes too much, along with deadlines, for the unseasoned author – and the second book either doesn’t materialize at all, or is not very good. And the third…?
That’s what I saw as I studied the industry.
Before Indy, I saw that those who thrived after having their first book be a huge hit were those who put out a collection of short stories, before they tried a second book.
– The collection gave the critics something to chew on, gave them a chance to reduce their overinflated expectations.
I saw time and again how the second book would be slammed as being worse than the first, yet when you look at those books a decade later, they were actually better than the first book.
Always remember, too, that a one-hit wonder had one more hit than the vast majority of those in the arts…