There will always be that flash in the pan, that one-off novel that strikes the fancy of publishers, sells a few million copies, and gets made into a successful--or unsuccessful--film before the person who wrote it fades into permanent obscurity, laughing, as they say, all the way to the bank. These types of writers have always existed.
The creators of those largely forgettable and sometimes laughable pieces of prose bang them out, often with nothing more to recommend their work than a fairly decent idea badly realized, a fairly bad idea decently realized, or a schtick of some sort--author as former policewoman, forensic pathologist, weight lifter, beauty queen, seriously abused child, seriously abusive adult come to the Lord or an excellent publicity campaign that worked like a charm.
What these creators of fiction have in common tends to be that they got lucky. They wrote their novels without an idea in the world what they were doing and they managed to pull it off. Problem was, though, they could not do it again.
Elizabeth George in Sometimes the Magic Works by Terry Brooks, 2005
The creators of those largely forgettable and sometimes laughable pieces of prose bang them out, often with nothing more to recommend their work than a fairly decent idea badly realized, a fairly bad idea decently realized, or a schtick of some sort--author as former policewoman, forensic pathologist, weight lifter, beauty queen, seriously abused child, seriously abusive adult come to the Lord or an excellent publicity campaign that worked like a charm.
What these creators of fiction have in common tends to be that they got lucky. They wrote their novels without an idea in the world what they were doing and they managed to pull it off. Problem was, though, they could not do it again.
Elizabeth George in Sometimes the Magic Works by Terry Brooks, 2005
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